Why isn’t New Orleans a significant city in modern day America similar to the likes of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta?

25 comments

  2. *Puts on Falcons hat*

    Yes, please elaborate on why Atlanta is better than New Orleans.

  3. Geography. They were built in a swamp which makes it hard to expand. Also, hurricane Katrina happened which to an extent is also an issue with its geography.

  4. Love it when OP declares something, asks a question about it but doesn’t explain anything about their confusion.

  6. That’s a loaded question. New Orleans is totally a significant American city. Very popular tourist destination and thriving culture (hell, among the most unique to be found anywhere in the States). Can’t speak to industry, though. Even has two major sports franchises, which is eerily a great barometer for how “significant” a city is in America.

    Significance, however, is relative; and this may be driving your question. Significant compared to what? Worcester, Massachusetts, say? Yes, New Orleans is very “significant”. New York City (arguably the most important city on Earth)? No, New Orleans pales in “significance”.

  7. New Orleans has one of the largest and highly important port systems in the nation. Everything that comes down the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers that leaves the country goes through New Orleans and vice versa.

    During much of the 1800s, it was one of the biggest cities in the country and largest in the south.

    Other cities have eclipsed it over time but it’s not an insignificant city.

  8. New Orleans used to be a huge city and the commecial capital of the South, but Houston built a bigger and more modern port in the 50’s right around the beggining of modern containerization and globalization, becoming the new port of the South. They basically beat New Orleans at what they had specialized in for centuries. I haven’t done any research on this, so I might be wrong, but I would imagine that due to NO’s high black population, there was probably a large amount of white flight and redlining that hurt the city as well, meaning they didn’t shift to anything new.

    Chicago actually has a somewhat similar story as NO. It is not a significant city like the others you mentioned. In the past, it was solidly our number two city right up until the 50s, with a clear lead over every other city except NYC. The main difference is that it really just had more momentum than NO. It has not grown nearly as quickly as SF or Atlanta or even NYC in the years since ww2. From the 70’s to the early 00’s, it was in relative decline compared to the high growth parts of the country. It went from being our number two city to being a second tier city, closer to Boston, Philly, or Miami, albeit a relatively large second tier city. Now it is doing well as its years of stagnation have meant that housing is relatively cheap there compared to other tier two cities like Denver.

    Atlanta has been one of the fastest growing regions of the country, going from basically a poor and unimportant small city in Georgia in the 70’s to being probably the fourth or fifth biggest metropolitan area in the country today, being the center of a huge industrial and technological research that covers a large chunk of the deep south. NYC was in decline in many ways, but it has always managed to maintain a large financial and information services lead ahead of most other cities and has been doing pretty well since about 2000. San Francisco is the center of the computer revolution and has had the biggest GDP growth in any area in history.

  9. New Orleans is a significant city and culturally unique, but its economy is largely based on its geographic position as a port city. It doesn’t have other large drivers of its economy. Its unhealthy and restricted location, historical racism and political corruption, and occasional natural disasters, probably account for that.

  10. Its in a swamp that floods regularly. The Mississippi as a shipping lane is less important. It doesn’t get as much modern investment as it did in the steam age because of that. That would be my guess as to why it isn’t a modern powerhouse.

  11. I would say growing up in the 70s and 80s in New England, I heard more about New Orleans than some other large cities, I loved history growing up, so that may have something to do with it, I learned historical songs so I knew about the Battle of New Orleans.

    Even today I live in a suburb of Atlanta, but I know more about New Orleans current news and culture than I do Atlanta. Probably because I lived in a West Bank Parish in Louisiana in the early 90s.

    New Orleans is definitely a significant city in the US, I consider it just as significant, if not more so than OP’s list but I’m willing to say that that’s because I have a deep connection to the Delta region of Louisiana and New Orleans dominates that area in many ways. So when others say that NYC or Atlanta, or even San Francisco are just as or more significant it’s possible that it’s because they have a connection with those places like I have a connection to New Orleans. With that said, I think OP’s question one could swap most of those cities with New Orleans and ask the same thing about them.

  13. New Orleans today is a lot smaller than those other cities. The metro population is barely 1 million and it’s been generally declining for the last few decades, with the devastation of Katrina making things even worse. It’s influence is actually pretty outsized compared to its population thanks to its historical importance. Oklahoma City is larger and when’s the last time you heard anyone talk about that?

  14. You could sort of ask similar questions about a lot of cities. There are always a bunch of historical, geographic, and cultural reasons. The list of America’s biggest, most significant cities used to include Buffalo and St. Louis and Baltimore and Pittsburgh, but not anymore!

    New Orleans certainly is not helped by being located in a really backwards state with horrendous governance. It’s very physically hemmed in by its surroundings and has experienced numerous natural disasters, although those same issues obviously didn’t stop SF from becoming a major city.

    While New Orleans is not in the top tier of “significant” cities population or industry wise, the same way NYC or LA are, it holds a lot of cultural currency the way SF, Boston, Miami, and Seattle do.

  15. New Orleans never modernized to accept rail as the future of american trade and didnt do enough to bring mass manufacturing to the city.

    Now New Orleans isn’t a big city because they are plagued with crime and have a very limited land area to expand. It doesn’t help that Louisiana has a very corrupt state government that cant fix roads very well or encourage business to the state.

  16. I have to echo those in saying significant how? Because it’s got a huge tourism and historical significance. There are no Disney Princesses in any of those cities but New Orleans has one.

  17. Culturally it certainly is a powerhouse. But economically it lacks the same industry or corporations I assume. Why is that? I don’t know. Seems to be a problem in most of the South. Even Atlanta, which I sort of feel is the economic powerhouse of the South, seems to be populated by a huge amount of Yankees.

    This is a long way of saying I have no idea.

    After visiting I considered moving there because I just really liked the soul of the place but jobs for a middle manager in IT were really not so available down there.

  18. It is top 5 significance in culture and top 3 in food. Mardi Gras is the largest annual party in the US.

    ​

    Population, New Orleans is smaller than most cities but it punches way above its weight.

  19. I think people are backlashing because New Orleans is still *culturally* significant and Americans often point to it as one of our cultural jewels.

    But, there is some truth in what he’s asking. In 1860, New Orleans was the fifth largest city in the US. Now it’s like, the 51st. For most of the 20th century, it’s growth rate lagged behind many other major cities including other Southern and Sun Belt cities.

    New Orleans will never be “insignificant” in the American conscious, and I definitely think people think it’s unfair to compare it to NYC, LA, Chicago, etc. but if you look at it’s history, it *might’ve* been a peer city.

    The answer is a combination of factors. Part of it is Jim Crow policies pushing out black talent (while Northern cities like Chicago accepted them), part of it is highway systems moving US trade away from the river system (which contributed to the decline of other Mississippi River cities like New Orleans, Memphis, etc).

    There’s definitely more to it and I’m not extremely qualified to talk at length about it, but there’s more to it than just “New Orleans is great.”

  21. Hurricanes and crime. That’s about it. It used to be one of the most major cities but has gone through waves of stagnation/decline since the early 20th century.

  24. New Orleans is very significantly culturally and geographically.
    It isn’t spoken of much as it’s a very static city, not much room for growth in terms of large companies moving to or from.

    Changing or repealing the Jones Act would have major ramifications for the city, but because our politicians seem to want us to fail economically, the Act remains on the book thanks to mobsters running the Merchant Marine.

  25. “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
    Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

    ― Tennessee Williams

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