re: New Orleans gets a lead story in Daily Mail

Nola has a fundamental problem with high office space to resident ratio. The space is geared for a larger city and we don’t have that anymore. That won’t change anytime soon. There’s just going to be high vacancy.

The remedy to remaining empty space is to lure business in to lease space. Big ask. Any business looking to move a company to Nola and needs any of this office space is going to come take a look at the space. Broadly speaking, They want quality office space, good parking, safe entrance and exit.
Otherwise, beyond the office environs, in general, they want housing that can be both affordable and safe, Good schools, driveable streets, educated workforce, clean streets, and maybe a favorable judicial environment.

Companies generally have options. They can choose another location and now days, they can just avoid office space completely and go the remote route.

New Orleans simply doesn’t meet a lot of what a company wants with the safety thing being a glaring problem. I’m not going to open an office in Nola and ask my employees to go to an office that might put them in jeopardy.
Walk around the streets and smell the weed, see the homeless, grafitti, loud car music, and trash and it becomes clear why it’s a tough ask for business to come here.

There are fundamental issues that won’t be fixed by city services but the safety thing can and needs to be addressed with a heavy hand on policing. No one has time for social programs to work. We need old fashioned police presence. Additionally, Clean up everywhere. Stop the sidewalk merchants. Fix the infrastructure.

If all of this happens, it’ll still be years before business will come take office space. We don’t have years.

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New Orleans issue was no room for expansion and growth, so businesses left.

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No sir. There was enough room in, and around, New Orleans for 10 million more people. Manhattan is about 3 miles by 9 miles, and it has 4 million people there by day and 2 million by night. You could easily drop five Manhattans in Kenner, Metairie and New Orleans East. Space was not the problem; it was corrupt politics.

It's all very simple. Most people don't want to pay to live and work in a shithole.

There's nothing more complicated about the problem than this simple fact.

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I grew up in NOLA, you could see the decline in the 70's, started with Moon Landrieu, corrupt as hell

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I grew up in New Orleans in the 70s as well, it wasn't just the political corruption that drove people out, but the mob ran the city until the 80s. That's when the corruption went from private, the mob, to public, the city government. I tried moving back there in the early 2000s, but the city corruption just made it too expensive to do business.

One thing I remember that really stands out. When I bought a house, I had to have flood insurance,okay I get it - even though the house I bought didn't flood after Katrina. But here's the catch, I had to file the property transfer with the city, and they charged me $1 per page. Okay, I thought. But then I realized I had to include my flood insurance policy of 100 or so pages. This was a standard flood insurance policy that just about everyone in the city had, and I couldn't just file proof of insurance, I had to file the whole policy - for a dollar a page. Filing cost over $150. When I bought a house two years earlier in Baton Rouge, it only cost about $25 to file. Every time I turned around, the city was trying to chisel more money off of me.

And you know what? I would've been fine with those charges if it led to a well-run city, with services I could take advantage of. Nope.

Two big things stick out to me that explain the decline of New Orleans

1 - the city/state did not do enough to capitalize on the geographic position at the onset of globalization. New Orleans was the Gateway to the Americas up until the 60s/70s but by that time other cities had invested heavily into ports and the industrial networks that make a lot of money. Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Tampa, and Miami all surpassed New Orleans over the last 60 or so years. That is high order malpractice by political and business leaders given the geography of Louisiana.

2 - Compare what Texas did with oil money, especially in the 70s. While Louisiana partied, Texas partied but also invested - particularly in higher ed. That has paid off for Texas. Louisiana instead thought tourism would save the city after the oil bust - that is Edwin Edwards lasting legacy.

It is hard to imagine New Orleans would be the level of a Houston or Atlanta these days - there were a lot of challenges old Deep South cities faced after WW2. But it shouldn't be even close to as bad off as it has become.

But the culture, yall. You can drink on da street in the city that care forgot. Yeah, baby.

Keep voting Democrat!! You are so damn close NOLA!!

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Two big things stick out to me that explain the decline of New Orleans

1 - the city/state did not do enough to capitalize on the geographic position at the onset of globalization. New Orleans was the Gateway to the Americas up until the 60s/70s but by that time other cities had invested heavily into ports and the industrial networks that make a lot of money. Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Tampa, and Miami all surpassed New Orleans over the last 60 or so years. That is high order malpractice by political and business leaders given the geography of Louisiana.

2 - Compare what Texas did with oil money, especially in the 70s. While Louisiana partied, Texas partied but also invested - particularly in higher ed. That has paid off for Texas. Louisiana instead thought tourism would save the city after the oil bust - that is Edwin Edwards lasting legacy.

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Edwards and NOLA politicians required steep campaign contributions for O&G companies to do business in NOLA. The O&G companies kindly said frick you and moved to Houston where they could do business with people of higher moral character. It was a really easy decision.

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No sir. There was enough room in, and around, New Orleans for 10 million more people. Manhattan is about 3 miles by 9 miles, and it has 4 million people there by day and 2 million by night. You could easily drop five Manhattans in Kenner, Metairie and New Orleans East. Space was not the problem; it was corrupt politics.

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The water table in NOLA is 2.5 feet and most is below sea level. Manhattan is solid rock and has subways and high rises. New Orleans is surrounded by water and swamp. There was never enough room, environment, or infrastructure to grow. The corruption in the top three cities, NYC, Chicago, and Los Angeles are as bad or worse and have been for 100 years. It was not corrupt politics that did NOLA in.
Between 1830 and 1840, NOLA was the 3rd largest city in the US, only NYC and Baltimore had more people. By 1960 is was still the 15th largest city. Now the large cities are magnets for people on government subsidies. NOLA has a chance to change things and make itself desirable as these large cities get worse.