re: What was the biggest mistake of each of Louisiana's 5 biggest cities?

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Baton Rouge: No loop?

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Letting a judge integrate our schools.

The 10/12/110 mess

The lack of a comprehensive drainage plan

Please elaborate. Legitimately Curious

Saying that Lafayette could have been a global manufacturing powerhouse like Houston is today is a big statement. Where did the state screw up?

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The port, once a powerhouse, was gutted by automation and containerization, losing jobs while Progressives did nothing.

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Progressives can be blamed for many, many things but this is not one. Automation and containerization was coming.

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For Chalmette it’s Leander Perez… that racism is the source of our trashy reputation

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Is it though?

You can't really explain the lack of progress in Louisiana without considering government corruption and the resulting lack of educational and economic opportunities that flow from it. The flash point was Katrina which overwhelmed BR with refugees from which it never recovered. Shreveport, Monroe, and Lake Charles were always going to fail because they are too close to states that are more functional. Lafayette has done well on a relative basis.

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New Orleans: ?

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Not aggressively focusing on white collar economic development beyond tourism; allowing major oil/gas companies to leave for Houston 50 years ago was a big deal. Corruption, urban decay, and high costs of living were all major factors that lead to the initial leak of that industry to Texas.

Also - New Orleans East was the worst possible timing. Seemed like the right move at the time to compete with the Texas cities or Atlanta with affordable housing. But then the bottom fell out of public schools and New Orleans east went to hell very quickly.

I'd also say that New Orleans didn't move fast enough to demolish housing projects and allowed major crime issues to linger.

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Baton Rouge: No loop?

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Letting the feds carry on a 5 decade long desegregation case that destroyed neighborhood schools and public schools in general has hurt everyone in this region and the economic competitiveness of the area as a whole.

Failing to take infrastructure seriously until it's too late - including both flood protection and transportation. That's especially true now since affordable housing and decent public schools are primarily a suburban offering at this point, so more links to the suburbs are needed. More, improved links to the northern and western suburbs would help a lot; plus another Amite river crossing somewhere around Hooper Road. It would also help if Livingston and Ascension finally got their shite together on their own local infrastructure.

Improved highways in this region (including a new bridge) + shoveling cash into LSU would help Baton Rouge and the state of Louisiana in general. The Baton Rouge metro area is growing despite all of these mistakes in part because of deep water river access. Most of that industrial growth will be on the west side of the river moving forward. West Baton Rouge needs to develop more housing and improved public schools, but more importantly a new bridge is needed somewhere around Plaquemine.

Baton Rouge also needs to undo what Broom did and focus on downtown again. Following up a very good mayor (Holden) with Broom was a disaster. Now your current leader will spend his entire term fixing Broom's budget problems instead of showing results with infrastructure.

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Shreveport: ?

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Over reliance on casinos and failing to develop a robust industrial base and market itself as a durable goods manufacturing center. General Motors built a massive factory there in 1981, and that facility cranked out a lot of very popular compact pickup trucks and SUVs for decades before being shuttered in the recession. Bad luck.....but more could have been done to develop other manufacturing facilities like that over the years.

Right now Shreveport is, IMO, in the worst shape of all Louisiana cities. I'm very bearish on its future. I'm not sure if it can be saved unless a new industry is developed there somehow. But it's on track to be Louisiana's Flint if we can't figure this out.

It's got good infrastructure bones, but it just isn't recovering from some major hits lately.

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Lafayette: Not diversifying from O&G?

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I think Lafayette did a lot of things right, but was a victim of poor timing. The 1980s oil bust really hurt. But IMO this city is exactly what it needs to be in 2025. Improved highway infrastructure could help Lafayette a lot, along with the rest of cajun country.

Moving forward, Lafayette needs to find another niche but try not to over expand or grow too fast.

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Lake Charles: Not doing gambling earlier?

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Lake Charles (at least its metro area) has been a boom town for a couple of decades until it was hit by 2 major hurricanes in one year. I think they need to continue doing what they are doing and try hard to develop a home grown industrial supplier business and lure some engineering companies to the area.

I'd try to improve aesthetics of the city and lakefront as much as possible and draw in as many people as they can to the city core.

I think Lake Charles will be a much bigger metro area in 50 years than it is today. The question is if it will be suburban growth with a dead downtown core or if the whole area thrives.

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Causeway didn’t help Metairie - white flight did

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Yeah and now whites are flighting to the Northshore. Would they have done so without the Causeway?

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Pissed away opportunities to be Memphis and Houston.

Sun Records wanted to build a recording studio in town to capitalize on the success of Elvis Presley and the Louisiana Hayride, but the city leaders didn’t want it. Here’s a 15 minute video that some locals produced 10-15 years ago about it Shape of Shreveport

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100% - left out Nashville. Add to this that Shreveport had "Stan the Record Man Lewis," who was a powerful force in the music business and well known nationwide. He was one of the largest record distributors of independent labels in the country in the 50s - 70s. KWKH radio was well known in the business as well for kicking off careers with the Hayride, which started as a radio show.

Shreveport leaders didn't want any part of it.

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Progressives can be blamed for many, many things but this is not one. Automation and containerization was coming.

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Sorry, I should have said we were behind other ports in exploiting it/