re: What started New Orleans on its downward trajectory?

BR is doing better then Nola

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BR is doing better then Nola

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Nah. Nola actually gained jobs year over year in March (pre Rona shutdown). It was the only metro to do so. The state lost 20k jobs.

Large sailing ships that could regularly cross the Atlantic Ocean with "cargo".

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BR is doing better then Nola

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how so?

Three quick bites so far for Boo Krewe

Huey P Long: Dirty Deeds "Win or Lose Corporation"

Stuff like this is why NOLA and Louisiana have been terrible forever.

I regard New Orleans in a similar capacity as Charleston. They were once important and prominent on a national scale, and are now both niche, tourism-focused towns. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Both are great, and equally unique in their own way; albeit, I prefer New Orleans.

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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

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You might have read that somewhere, but the source was very wrong. The population of New York in 1900 was about 3.5 Million. The poulation of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi was about 4 Million at that time. Population of New Orleans was almost 300,000.

That said, culturally New Orleans is America's most significant city.

A few things.

1) The city, and really the metro area, is geographically locked in. Even with the eventual building of new crossings over the MS River and the Lake, the metro area could only get so big. Even if everything was done right, no way it could ever grow to 5 plus million.

2) Hurricane Betsy hit in 1965, and gave a lot of business leaders pause about expanding big companies into the area.

3) Terrible, corrupt leadership by both the city AND the state. Don't underplay the state's role here... they are just as corrupt as the city was.

4) Houston and Atlanta were fortunate enough to have some companies really explode into large companies. Some moved there before they blew up, some blew up there. Remember, Delta Air Lines began not in Atlanta, but in Monroe. Texas Air became huge when it bought Continental and moved it to Houston.

A lot of the oil companies based Texas/Southwest Ops out of Houston GOM ops out of NOLA. After the oil bust, they consolidated their two ops, and far too often, NOLA was the loser. By that time, Houston was a bigger city, with a bigger airport, and it just made more sense.

SYSCO is a local companies to Houston that hit it big. USA Waste bought out Waste Management and moved it to Houston.

Home Depot made it big, Obviously Coke, etc.

New Orleans just never really had companies that made it big.

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Where did the 628,000 people live when that was the population in the 60s. Are there really that many vacant areas now that 300,000 more people could fit in the city?

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Nola East (an area almost as big as the rest of the city) is probably 50% vacant. That's a good thing considering the current makeup of the East.