The French Quarter is both one of the world’s most iconic neighborhoods and a major economic engine for the City of New Orleans and the state in general. For centuries, it has attracted a wide swath of humanity—artists and dreamers, the devout and the hedonistic, the destitute and the obscenely wealthy. The Vieux Carré has hosted them all. Many would argue that is part of its appeal. Others, angling to exclude people and activities they don’t like, see this as an impediment to achieving even greater economic benefit.
While of course everyone has the right to live, work, or visit the French Quarter, at times, conflicting interests, lack of coordination, and delayed investment make it feel like a neighborhood that is mismanaged and in distress. Take, for example, our efforts to get the Royal Street Pedestrian Mall re-instated several years ago. Despite the fact that a City ordinance mandated Royal Street be closed to traffic certain hours each day, for months the street remained open to traffic 24/7, putting street musicians at risk. The reason? No agency would agree to take responsibility for moving the protective barricades into place. A 10-minute, twice-a-day duty was made to feel like an impossible task and, until the issue was finally resolved by assigning the job to the Grounds Patrol (a division of the New Orleans Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security), street musicians and their audiences remained at risk of being struck by a vehicle.
But government dysfunction isn’t the only disruptive factor the Quarter has faced in recent years. COVID-19 and the ensuing restrictions, though necessary for public health, not only created challenges for many businesses, they also created a vacuum that impacted the pre-existing street culture and informal economy. With many businesses still closed but people starting to re-emerge, Bourbon Street and the surrounding areas saw an influx of new vendors and performers, some driven by opportunity, others by necessity. Not privy to the pre-existing social contract and, for a time, seeing little institutional pushback, some of these activities grew to a point where they started to create what could sometimes be described as a “Wild West” atmosphere, where it felt like anything goes.
In response to neighbor and business complaints and, perhaps most notably, an upcoming Super Bowl, in October 2023 a conglomeration of City and State agencies began hosting “sweeps” of Bourbon Street and the surrounding area, cracking down on unlicensed vending, illegal alcohol sales, parking violations, and enforcing the 8 p.m. Bourbon Street “street entertainer” curfew consistently for the first time in many years. Available data shows a notable uptick in citations issued between those first sweeps and roughly September 2024, and on a recent walkthrough of Bourbon and Canal streets, unlicensed vending had all but disappeared and street performers were off Bourbon before 8. In that sense, the sweeps seem to have achieved their goal.
Yet, while the City touts—and doubles down on—its enforcement success, what continues to be missing is the ongoing stewardship of the French Quarter, particularly its public spaces. Rather than continue the cycle of periods of institutional non-action followed by bouts of heavy-handed enforcement, the City should invest in consistent outreach, assistance, and conflict resolution. The approach should always be engagement before enforcement. The goal should be compliance, not citations. This means that, for example, the Office of Safety and Permits should not suddenly force small businesses to remove their outside tables and chairs during one of the most economically challenging summers in recent memory, but rather work with business owners to find a way to bring them into compliance. Or, if that’s not possible, create a grace period to mitigate some of the financial challenges. The lack of coordination on major construction projects on St. Peter and Decatur streets has been a clear disaster to even the most casual observer and has created significant—sometimes catastrophic—challenges to businesses, residents, and performers. Pre-planning and a more active, ongoing stewardship model could have prevented many of these issues.
A stewardship approach also means shifting away from a reliance on law enforcement agencies to enforce “quality of life” issues, and in particular not outsourcing these types of activities to outside agencies like the Louisiana State Police, which was found to have used excessive force and escalated minor incidents (particularly those involving Black people or people of color) in a Department of Justice civil rights investigation that was instigated, in part, by the killing of Ronald Greene. Rather, use the resources that would have been allotted to hire outside law enforcement to instead provide greater access to opportunity, create proactive connections with support services, and develop non-carceral solutions to common minor issues, like obstruction of the public right of way. Small business owners, street performers, vendors, and unhoused folks are not the enemy. Many are actually city residents and constituents and all deserve to be given the same level of respect and opportunity as the well-connected.
Since the founding of New Orleans in 1718, the area currently known as the French Quarter has endured a myriad of challenges, large and small—fires, plagues, economic downturns, over-tourism, COVID-19. Each has left its mark, but the Quarter has persevered. It will continue to persevere. But without a more thoughtful, less-carceral approach, many of the people and institutions that make it special could be pushed out entirely. That may be a victory for a few—but a loss for the city, its visitors, and the world.
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