re: How would you fix Baton Rouge?

No, that would be Alec or Funroe (which is also experiencing a massive spike in crime and murders).

All of the cities have major drawbacks, though.

Shreveport is kinda boring and has a ton of crime, but they do have a loop.

Lake Charles is booming, but there's a housing shortage, bad traffic, and still not a ton to do (but getting better).

New Orleans floods every time it rains because the S&WB is completely feckless and corrupt, is also stupidly violent (although mostly contained to the East these days), and has a racist mayor.

Lafayette is probably the nicest city, but they're in the midst of a massive, crippling economic depression caused by oil & gas being in the tank. If the oil market doesn't turn around soon, those forclosures are going to turn into a full-scale fire sale along with a massive exodus of retail stores.

Take what I just said about Lafayette and Triple it for Houma and add in a massive meth and heroin epidemic.

BR has one of the better economic situations due to having the state government, refineries/plants, and LSU in town. It's still recovering from the August floods that absolutely ravaged the suburbs. The core of the city is doing better than most, but it would be doing much better if not for the massive crime wave and the inept permitting office which is stymieing rebuilding.

The problem isn't that BR has so many problems, but that most of BR's problems are basically universally shared among Louisiana's cities. There is a common thread of inept/corrupt local officials, soaring violent crime, despicable road and drainage infrastructure, and gangland public schools in nearly all of Louisiana's cities and even most of its small towns. If BR was the outlier, that would be one thing, but it's actually just the state status-quo summed up in one city. The crapfest is almost unavoidable.

Reduce the size of city government, consolidate apartments
De-consolidate the city government from the EBR government
Grant St. George a charter to become their own city
Much more tbh

quote:

---

So... are we all admitting BTR is currently the worst city in the state?

---

Worst except for Ferriday.

Ferriday is a craphole.

EDIT: My crack research team has informed me that, technically, Ferriday is a town not a city. So, it doesn't fit the criteria. Today, filling in for the part of Ferriday, we will be presenting Bogalusa.

Worst except for Bogalusa.

Bogalusa is a craphole.

quote:

---

You left out Covington and Mandeville.

---

pretty much what Prarieville and Zachary are becoming?

How so?

I know some pretty prominent folks uptown that would think differently. You need to quit getting your info from tigerbaitn08

Yeah, but Ascension’s property values are way better than EBR and Livingston at this moment. Especially homes between 300-400k.

quote:

---

Yeah, but Ascension’s property values are way better than EBR and Livingston at this moment. Especially homes between 300-400k.

---

High home prices alone don't make an area nice, convenient, and livable. In fact, they can do the opposite.

What makes those things possible is forsight, planning, a business-friendly climate, a great police force, and infrastructure.

Ascension is relatively business friendly when compared to its neighbors, and it has a Sheriff's Office without peers, but it is utterly lacking in forsight, planning, and infrastructure, which is completely insufficient to support a parish of 120k people and growing.

Ascension had this idiotic strategy of refusing to plan for development because they wanted to still be "rural" while actually taking money under the table from developers, giving them free reign for 30 years. There is no consistency, no redundancy, no grid, no comprehensive sewer system, no public water system, etc. It's like trying to squeeze 100,000 apples into a 20,000 apple sack. Now, the chickens have come home to roost with flooding and traffic, and it's too late/too expensive to fix most of the damage.

And that’s racist how?

First,



Then