re: What will baton rouge look like in 20 years?

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It’s not just Birmingham with nice suburbs. Austin, Nashville, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, etc…all have very nice suburbs.

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Austin - 980,000
Nashville - 690,000
Houston - 2,320,000
Dallas - 1,340,000
Charlotte - 900,350

Baton Rouge - 220,000

I think a lot of folks think about suburbs of these cities because those suburbs are large enough to be memorable/notable, without realizing just how small Baton Rouge is compared to these other cities.

For example, The Woodlands started as a master-plan development and is now a suburb of over 100k people with a median household income north of $100k. It’s obviously a hell of a lot nicer than any comparable Baton Rouge suburb, but that’s partially because Baton Rouge doesn’t have nearly enough households with that level of income to support that type of development.

I think what you see happen in large cities is the middle class and upper middle class move to these big developments in the suburbs as the metro area grows and the urban area gets converted into commercial space. And then what’s left is a combination of super rich neighborhoods within the city limits (e.g. Memorial, Museum District, etc. in Houston) and the lower-income population. With nice suburbs that grow into cities of their own.

But mid-sized cities, even those that are growing at an average pace (read: cities that are better off than BR), don’t have the critical mass to support the same level of suburban residential and urban commercial development. So while people are still moving to the suburbs as the city grows, it’s not happening fast enough to create something like The Woodlands. In the end, you wind up with basically a bunch of “meh.”

When you start comparing BR suburbs to other comparably-sized cities, BR still doesn’t look great but it’s not as bad as the comparison to places like Houston or DFW.