As a city planner, a Baton Rouge native, and a parent, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of this place that I love. My goal is to build a safe, healthy community where all residents can thrive and newcomers can find plentiful opportunities. I want my kids and future grandkids to enjoy a vibrant, productive life in a strong and resilient city. I know that others share this vision, and if we are to achieve this future for the Baton Rouge region, we have to choose right now to work together to seize some big, exciting opportunities.
Building the future we envision means understanding how we arrived at the current state of our city. Over the past 40 years, Baton Rouge has grown into a bustling, culturally rich, mid-sized Gulf Coast city–and our challenges around flood risk, poverty, congestion, water resources, and infrastructure maintenance have grown as well. These challenges are all largely a result of past planning and development patterns that are not going to serve our future well.
Right now, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a city that is resilient, safe, and inclusive with walkable, bikeable neighborhoods characterized by a special sense of place and a diverse, thriving economy. Achieving this vision will require us to address the risks we face as a community on the front lines of climate change – and the ways that past decades of development have exacerbated that risk.
MORE THAN 50 YEARS OF CAR-DRIVEN INVESTMENT IN BATON ROUGE
During the 50s and 60s, government investments overwhelmingly backed the expansion of our highway infrastructure, which effectively drove and subsidized sprawl. The consequences of this pattern of development have been well-documented – we now have cities that are struggling with long commutes, outsized congestion, degraded air quality, health issues associated with sedentary lifestyles, and unmanageable infrastructure expenses. This pattern also accelerated racial and economic disparities along neighborhood borders.
Instead of investing in central, connected neighborhoods and commercial corridors seen in older parts of the city, like the Garden District, Mid City, and Beauregard Town, we have expanded Baton Rouge’s periphery and built subdivisions that are disconnected from one another and from daily destinations like work, school, and shopping. Baton Rouge drivers lose 62 hours every year to traffic, and one ranking puts us fourth in the nation for traffic congestion, just behind New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. According to data from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation’s 2021 CityStats, a majority of residents support the development of bicycle, pedestrian, and transit networks – but only 44% support changing zoning “to encourage building denser communities to reduce vehicle trips.” Density is vital for preserving greenspace and facilitating the travel options that people want. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to live in a high-rise – there are many ways to achieve the benefits of density while still offering a wide range of housing choices.
This tells me that we have to be bold in educating the public and pursuing a new way of doing things. The data calls for urgency: the International Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment Report finds that over the next 10-30 years Baton Rouge will experience almost three times as many extreme heat events, increases in flash flooding, and eight times as many extreme rain events annually. Car-centric development, highway expansion, and suburban sprawl are not sustainable under current conditions – let alone in this projected future. We have to shift our approach to land use, transportation, water management, housing, and economic development investments, using the best available climate data and science. With historic levels of funding available from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the time is now to seize new opportunities to redirect our development priorities and set a more sustainable course.
Let’s talk about a few of the key actions we need to take to ensure that Baton Rouge can successfully adapt, evolve, and progress as a leading Gulf Coast city. What follows is by no means an exhaustive list, but would be important steps in the right direction.
Update our land use and mobility practices for a greener, more sustainable future.
Past decades of development have given us a highway system that is forever in need of expansion and expensive maintenance. To correct this course for our future, a key strategy for Baton Rouge would include retrofitting existing suburban areas to create 20-minute neighborhoods where daily needs and destinations can be reached by walking, biking, or public transit in 20 minutes or less. This type of investment has the additional benefit of limiting the proliferation of impervious surfaces, enabling us to reserve natural areas for managing stormwater – instead of paving them over for new developments. By incentivizing growth towards existing infrastructure and ensuring that all public investments deliver multiple benefits for our climate, city, and people, we can accomplish so much for the future of Baton Rouge, including curbing sprawl, reducing flood risk, decreasing vehicle travel (and associated emissions), lowering infrastructure costs, and improving our health and quality of life.
Diversify our economy to create high-quality opportunities for all.
As we look ahead to the next 40 years, we already know that our city will be transformed by climate change, economic shifts, and population movement. It’s no secret that Baton Rouge-area businesses struggle to attract new hires, and natives are encouraging their kids to build their futures elsewhere. Young people are looking for places to live and raise their families that offer both economic opportunity and safe communities that don’t put their lives and their assets at risk. We must ensure that Baton Rouge’s transformation brings new economic opportunities and greater security for everyone in our shared future.
As the state capital, Baton Rouge has been at the center of decades of economic policies that have supported high-carbon industries. Oil and gas have been pillars of our economy and created pathways to opportunity for many people in our region. Globally, those industries are now taking big steps to transition to what they know is the future: cleaner energy sources and renewables such as wind, solar, and hydro. Locally, we can work with oil and gas industry stakeholders to ensure that the Baton Rouge region is well-positioned to lead this transition and capitalize on the new opportunities it will yield. Given our wealth of natural resources, skilled workforce, and existing industrial infrastructure, we have the capacity right here to provide clean energy to residents and businesses, provide jobs for the energy workers we have today, and expand opportunities for the many people in Baton Rouge who need entry into the workforce. As energy markets shift, we must also open the door for new innovators and investors. Going forward, it will be essential to further diversify our economy, cultivating new industries beyond the energy sector to reduce our vulnerability to volatile markets and increase our overall economic resilience.
Modernize and future-proof our energy grid.
Our energy grid is fundamental to community resilience. Over 100 years ago, we built this vital infrastructure to distribute power to neighborhoods so that our citizens could enjoy a higher quality of life and more comfortable, healthier home environments. Today, that infrastructure is antiquated and vulnerable to increasingly severe weather events. It’s past time for another transformational investment in our energy infrastructure. We can improve the ability of our existing grid to withstand extreme heat events and storms while providing affordable energy to households experiencing increased demands. Strategic infrastructure upgrades can also support the development of renewable energy like wind and solar, along with policies that facilitate private investment and empower our residents and businesses to share equitably in the benefits. As Louisiana currently stands to receive billions of dollars of federal funds, the time is now to pursue these essential investments. We can’t let this moment pass us by.
Foster bold leadership and effective governance to address our greatest challenges and opportunities.
Without strong leaders and good governance, the transformational changes we need will not happen. We must recalibrate our governance structures to match the scale, scope, and complexity of our challenges and opportunities – especially around climate change. One way to achieve this is by designing adaptive systems that facilitate data-informed, collaborative, and transparent decision making. Incorporating projections of future environmental, social, and economic conditions into decision making processes will help Baton Rouge prepare for the chronic stressors of climate change and leverage individual investments toward a clear vision for the future. Additionally, our processes for designing infrastructure must prioritize cross-sector collaboration on the development of multi-benefit projects that result in a higher quality of life.
I’m ready to double down on my commitment to Louisiana and hope to do so hand in hand with leaders old and new, from all sectors, who are willing to step forward and help build a bright future. We must be courageous, innovative, compassionate, and unafraid to disrupt the status quo in service of the greater good. Many of these leaders are already among us, working day in and day out to cultivate an equitable and resilient region. Some of these leaders will probably come from other places, bringing fresh perspectives and new ideas – we should be ready to welcome and support them.
INVESTING IN OUR FUTURE
Our city-parish government is faced with tough choices every single day. In order to make the best use of our limited resources, every public dollar invested should deliver multiple benefits to our communities – for example, parks that provide healthy recreation and are also designed for flood mitigation during heavy rain events. In order to synchronize and expand the efforts that are already underway, we need a robust resilience planning effort that will engage our community in a discussion about our values, priorities, and future goals. A comprehensive approach is critical–siloed efforts to address narrowly defined problems can only get us so far. In order to move the needle in a meaningful way on the issues that are standing between the Baton Rouge of today and the Baton Rouge we envision, our challenges must be addressed in concert by a diverse, committed group of multi-sector stakeholders.
In many ways, the path has already been laid for us. In 1998, Plan Baton Rouge was launched to revitalize our downtown. City leaders and diverse stakeholders came together, strategic partnerships were developed, and private resources were deployed to leverage public investment in smart growth. Today, downtown Baton Rouge is a major employment center that is home to thriving businesses and restaurants, hotels, residential property, public art and cultural events, parks, and beautiful, flood-mitigating green space.
Another important step forward that we can build upon is Louisiana’s Climate Action Plan–the Gulf South’s first plan to address our climate challenges, with action steps for reducing greenhouse gasses and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. With these efforts already underway, Louisiana and Baton Rouge are well-positioned to lead through this challenging time of change and opportunity.
Climate change is transforming communities everywhere and forcing people to make decisions differently. In so many places, families that have invested in their communities for generations are pulling up stakes and leaving to find opportunities elsewhere. Climate-driven migration, much of it coming into Baton Rouge, is only going to increase in the coming years. We have the choice to make the most of this reality by making sure our city stands tall as a safe, resilient place where new and old residents thrive together.
Baton Rouge is home to a lot of wonderful people, rich culture and history, and a wealth of natural assets. Despite its challenges, I feel privileged to be working and raising my family in such a special place. In order to preserve the things we all love about our city, we have to be willing to do things differently, seize new opportunities, and address our challenges with the urgency they call for. Let’s kick off Baton Rouge’s next 40 years with optimism, hope, and bold vision. Future generations will thank us.
*This is a shortened version of the essay, Taking the Risk on a Sustainable Future, featured in the September 2022 - 40th Anniversary issue of the Baton Rouge Business Report*