re: What started New Orleans on its downward trajectory?

It all started with white flight then the oil crash was the nail in the coffin

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Jefferson Parish continues to distinguish itself as one of the most poorly run rich counties in the United States. Its schools and roads are as bad as those of Orleans Parish (even though Jefferson's per capita income is much higher), and it has far more venal public officials (as an investigation of graft in public works by the U.S. attorney's office continues to show).

The migration of whites to the suburbs in the sixties was less virulent than that experienced by the cities the East. In New Orleans, between 1960 and 1970, the white population fell 16 percent while the black population rose by the same percentage. In Newark and in Atlanta, during the same period, the white population fell by 33 percent and 18 percent respectively while the black population rose by 50 percent and 33 percent.

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The population of Orleans Parish continues to decline, as it did in the sixties when there was net emigration of both blacks and whites, but the rate of decrease seems to have slowed by about half. Between 1970 and 1974, for example, the New Orleans population declined from 593,000 to 569,000, but by 1976 it had leveled off at 562,000.

Many of the people who leave New Orleans are moving not to the comfortable suburb of Metairie but to the more fertile employment territories of Houston, Dallas, and New York. New Orleans is thereby losing some of its best and brightest. A few years ago, a TV commercial for a local bank featured a young black man who had graduated at the top of his class at Xavier University. The commercial told how the bank had financed the young man's education and how he was now a great addition to the community, working for a leading engineering firm. What the ad didn't say was that the leading engineering firm is in Atlanta. Similarly, top graduates of Tulane Law School regularly go to work in New York.

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Well into the 60’s it was on par with Houston and Atlanta and then just fell off the map. Did it start with moon landrieu or was it headed down prior?

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Houston Dallas and Atlanta all built massive airports in the 60s and 70s, and new Orleans did not, thus they got left behind economically

60 years ago NO was twice the city ATL and HOU dreamed of being.

The truth is, New Orleans was better than ever up until this corona thing. If you enjoy life and restaurants and bars, New Orleans is 10x better than Houston and Atlanta. Not in the 1980's 1990's but TODAY. If you are dumb enough to send your kid to a government school or like the suburb life, then stay in Houston and Atlanta. Now if you think bigger is better than ok. But Atlanta and Houston both were propped up by the fact that Presidents and Vice Presidents were in office, which is always a BOOM to a state and city. Give me fun, eclectic, walkable city like New Orleans over those other hapless places.

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ed New Orleans on its downward trajectory? by tgrbaitn08
Oil crash in the 80’s

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Then what started the decline in the 70s?

New Orléans showed a steady growth until the 1960 census; however, the 70 census had their population down over 5%. It’s declined ever since until this decade.

1950 570,445 +15.3%
1960 627,525 +10.0%
1970 593,471 -5.4%
1980 557,515 -6.1%
1990 496,938 -10.9%
2000 484,674 -2.5%
2010 343,829 -29.1%
Est. 2018 391,006 +13.7%

I think I read somewhere that new Orleans was the same size as new York City in the year 1900, population wise, and the leaders of the city ran it like it was always gonna be that way, they still do till this day, they don't understand new Orleans is not the major city it was

Ninety five percent of the people who comment on here have never been to New Orleans or think that Bourbon St is the epicenter. Idiots.

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It all started with white flight then the oil crash was the nail in the coffin

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Damnit samso beat me to it

This great 1978 Atlantic article calls it

LINK

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New Orleans: I Have Seen the Future, and It's Houston

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For the past century or so, New Orleans has been a city that has gotten by on charm alone. Very few people here seriously consider New Orleans part of the "New South" or of the "Sunbelt" or of any other geoeconomic entity conjured up in the past two decades. And, until a few years ago, hardly anyone in New Orleans minded being left out. New Orleans might be poor, but it is happy. In fact, during last year's mayoral race, one of the candidates ran TV commercials that showed a bustling skyline with a voiceover ominously intoning, "Do you want New Orleans to become another Houston?"

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Despite the fact that New Orleans has perhaps the finest natural location in the country for commerce, the city's economy has stagnated for at least twenty years. Population has declined; unemployment is among the highest in the South; and New Orleanians have remained among the poorest in the nation. Little has changed since the 1970 Census, which showed that out of the fifty largest cities in the country, New Orleans had the highest percentage of families living below the federal poverty level: 21.6 percent, against 18.4 percent for second-place Newark. New Orleans also ranked last among the fifty cities in percentage increase in median family income between 1960 and 1970, and forty-third in median years of education per adult.

It wasn't until 1975, when James Bobo, a University of New Orleans professor, published a highly critical report on the state of the local economy, that the public began to pay attention to what was going on. Bobo's report was entitled "Pro Bono Publico?"—a play on the motto of the most prominent Mardi Gras parading club, the Krewe of Rex, whose members are the sort of civic leaders that Bobo blamed for the city's stagnation. Bobo's thesis was simple: New Orleans had lost its industrial base. Manufacturing jobs were declining year by year, with the slack taken up by lower-paying, less stable jobs in service industries, mainly tourism. The steady fall of the economy had taken place with the acquiescence, if not the blessing, of the city's political and business leaders, who tended to like things the way they were and who probably feared the kind of social change that more industry would bring.

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The Superdome did not, however, turn out to be the greatest building in the history of man, or even the second greatest. It was beset with cost overruns and political scandals. Voters in 1966 were told that the Superdome would cost $35 million, the same as Houston's Astrodome, which it would dwarf; instead, the final figure was $165 million. The Dome was supposed to make an operating profit its first year; instead, it has shown a large deficit for each of its three years of operation, and no one today seriously thinks the Dome will ever come close to paying for itself. Last year's operating loss was $5.5 million, not including debt service, which runs to $10 million a year. In fact, the Dome costs $50,000 a day to keep open—whether it is used or not.

Civic boosters in New Orleans tend to point to the Dome as the main impetus behind the city's building boom of the past ten years. It is probably true that hotel chains such as Marriott, Hyatt, and Hilton have come to New Orleans in large part because of their expectations about the Dome. But it is hard to see how the Dome can take credit for office buildings such as the sixty-story One Shell Square (an undistinguished piece of architecture, a copy of a banal Houston tower) or for the $500 million Canal Place office-condominium project which local developer Joe Canizaro is building, with help from the shah of Iran's Omran Bank, along the river at the foot of Canal Street.

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The power of status quo
But the main power of the gentry is a purely negative one. A brash businessman from Texas, such as Jimmy Jones (or even a non-brash businessman from Texas, such as Jones's successor at the bank, Rodger Mitchell), who would have been a definite celebrity in Houston, couldn't make the Boston Club or the Dock Board in New Orleans. Along with top executives from Shell and Exon, Jewish real estate barons, and politicians, Jones would lunch at the frankly unsocial Petroleum Club or International House or the Sazerac Restaurant in the Fairmont Hotel (formerly the Roosevelt Hotel, Huey and Earl Long's haunt).

The style of these nonnatives dos not seem to mesh with that of the dean of Carnival society—men such a Richard Freeman, who owns the local Coca-Cola franchise, and Darwin Fenner, as in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith—so they aren't accepted into the inner circle. This sort of exclusion is practiced on a smaller scale every day in New Orleans, and it is cited by members of the city's Economic Development Council as a major deterrent bringing new businesses into the city.

New Orleans society is not rich or clever or fashionable or outrageous or any of the things that society tends be in more cosmopolitan cities these days. It is simply well-bred and bland and its blandness is reflected each morning in the Times-Picayune, the city's leading daily paper (the other daily is the States-Item, which has half the circulation and about a tenth the influence,

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Samso

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God Damn it you beat me to it

it is fun place to visit or live if single..no kids..retired....rich...etc....
just not they place for raising a family for most people..... with that said i have considered moving back to the quarter or warehouse district now that i am retired.... but then medical...traffic....etc comes up....
prob best to just come visit now and then