re: Pinpoint exactly when BR took a turn for the worst...

Want an honest answer?

Baton Rouge should have and could have been a great southern city. However, it has NEVER had proper city planning.

Between 1940 and 1950 the population jumped from 35K to 125K....this is a 262%. By 1960 we added another 27K people. The infrastructure was not equipped for this population influx. The source of the growth? The refinery which sits on prime real estate in the heart of BR.

Whereas most river cities grow in a concentric pattern from the main port, BR's main port was across the river. So what we saw was pockets of residential communities springing up around the parish. Surface streets were not planned for growth, but rather built in response to growth and thus never really had a plan for moving traffic efficiently.

The influx of population is often looked at as the genesis of the desegregation lawsuit that lasted 40 years. This created the private school system and a huge racial - socioeconomic divide. People with means moved kids to private school, thus creating a situation where you were trying to desegregate a public school system that was 80% black.

Let's not forget the gran idea of splitting the city down the middle with I-110 and all the problems that caused.

And by the way....why did the plant get such prime real estate to muck up values of property around it? A few miles down river would not have hurt their production ability, but it would have provided BR with a growth opportunity for downtown.

Bottom line...the mismanagement of population growth between 50s-60s sent the snowball down the hill and it is still rolling today.

When planet Earth was formed 2018 years ago.

March 3, 1993