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Cities: Louisiana Culture: Louisiana Education: Tie. Louisiana has well known LSU and Tulane. I know SC has Clemson. I imagine public schools are better in SC. Economy: SC it appears is growing fast and Louisiana stagnant. Everywhere took a hit in 2020. I want to see how states rebound. Louisiana needs to become independent of the oil industry which has not been doing well. It’s a shame because Louisiana should be doing much better but the state politics hold it back. I think SC being in between Georgia and North Carolina helps it more than it hurts it. Recreation: Tie Politics: Both republican states but apparently the republicans in SC are less corrupt and know how to run a state. Infrastructure: Tie Amenities: Louisiana. New Orleans has more and I think Baton Rouge can rival most SC cities besides the beaches in Charleston and Myrtle Beach.
Overall I think SC is doing better with its economy but other than that I don’t think either state blows the other out of the water.
Keep in mind there are two other airports just outside of the state's boundaries that nevertheless still serve SC: CLT and SAV. Lots of leisure visitors to SC fly into Charlotte and Savannah-Hilton Head, and business travelers, especially from overseas (SC has one of the highest foreign direct investment rates in the country on a per capita basis) utilize CLT quite a bit also. So statistics for the airports located within SC alone can be a bit misleading when viewed in isolation. No doubt people from neighboring states constitute a likely majority of visitors to SC, but there's more to that story.
Quite a bit of leisure visitors to SC--as well as new residents for that matter--are also from inland states like WV, OH, IN, etc. Also seasonal flights offered at the coastal airports give a good sense of where visitors are coming from. When I was living in NJ for most of 2015, I utilized Atlantic City's airport once (and, ironically, my final destination was the New Orleans area for that trip) that summer and was amused to see conveyor belts full of golf bags belonging to travelers headed down to Myrtle Beach to get some rounds in.
Many north Louisiana residents fly out of DFW as well as SW Louisiana residents flying out of Houston. Louisiana also experiences alot of visitors from inland areas, from all over the country. The casinos draw a ton of Texas visitors to Lake Charles and Shreveport.
Many southern Mississippi residents fly out of New Orleans as well.
I wouldn't be surprised to see people from New Jersey flying into Myrtle Beach, I'm sure there are alot from the northeast that fly down.
Cities: South Carolina, but not by much. Depending on what you like Charleston and NOLA have their advantages, but Shreveport and Lake Charles leave something to be desired. I'm a fan of Baton Rouge though. Spartanburg area and Myrtle Beach are really neat.
Culture: Louisiana, to me at least. SC has neat stuff too, but pretty tough to beat the different cultures in LA.
Education: Tie? K-12 is a wash, maybe SC has a better K-12 system. Higher ed, Louisiana- there's nowhere like Tulane in SC.
Economy: Historically, LA; I think SC will pass it though.
Recreation: Depends on what you like? For me, SC.
Politics: Idk. They both have their goods and bads. Historically, LA is more corrupt, so I'll give it to SC.
infrastructure: SC. Maybe I'm bias, but I feel like LA has terrible infrastructure.
amenities: Depends on what we mean by amenities, but I think LA wins this one.
Many north Louisiana residents fly out of DFW as well as SW Louisiana residents flying out of Houston. Louisiana also experiences alot of visitors from inland areas, from all over the country. The casinos draw a ton of Texas visitors to Lake Charles and Shreveport.
Many southern Mississippi residents fly out of New Orleans as well.
I figured as much and SC residents fly out of Charlotte all the time. But CLT and SAV are also inbound airports for a lot of tourists also which is why I mentioned them specifically. On a related note, while looking up flights for my 2015 trip to Louisiana (which was more last minute as I tend to do), I realized just how isolated New Orleans is from other major cities. Roundtrip nonstop flights in and out of MSY (and BTR too if I recall correctly) were too expensive for me so I was checking out JAN, BHM, IAH, HOU, MEM, etc. That's when I realized all of the nearest 1M+ metros were 5-5.5 hrs away. That was farther than I wanted to drive anyway after flying (JAN was doable) and ticket prices wouldn't have saved me anything. I wound up flying into ATL and taking the bus from there. It wasn't the worst ride but let's just say that I learned that waiting until the last minute doesn't always result in deals on flights like I've found in the past to other destinations.
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I wouldn't be surprised to see people from New Jersey flying into Myrtle Beach, I'm sure there are alot from the northeast that fly down.
Yeah, Northeasterners were the original regular tourists, and transplants, from outside the region. But with I-77 getting extended southward from Charlotte to Columbia in the mid-90's, the Midwesterners and West Virginians have been having a field day along the coast and trying to take over since the turn of the century. Sometimes you just wanna tell them, "Calm down, it's just the Atlantic Ocean."
Cities: South Carolina, but not by much. Depending on what you like Charleston and NOLA have their advantages, but Shreveport and Lake Charles leave something to be desired. I'm a fan of Baton Rouge though. Spartanburg area and Myrtle Beach are really neat.
Culture: Louisiana, to me at least. SC has neat stuff too, but pretty tough to beat the different cultures in LA.
Education: Tie? K-12 is a wash, maybe SC has a better K-12 system. Higher ed, Louisiana- there's nowhere like Tulane in SC.
Economy: Historically, LA; I think SC will pass it though.
Recreation: Depends on what you like? For me, SC.
Politics: Idk. They both have their goods and bads. Historically, LA is more corrupt, so I'll give it to SC.
infrastructure: SC. Maybe I'm bias, but I feel like LA has terrible infrastructure.
amenities: Depends on what we mean by amenities, but I think LA wins this one.
I can agree with this for the most part. The one category I probably have the least argument with is higher education which I give to Louisiana. I know USNWR isn't the end-all, be-all, but while Clemson and USC rank higher than LSU and UL-Lafayette, I had no idea until looking up information for both states that Louisiana has three university system, including its preeminent HBCU. That's pretty impressive to me. Also Louisiana has a greater diversity of institutions and has a better HBCU profile overall which is where SC has a weaker showing than one would expect given its history and the size of its Black population historically. The fact that Charleston has zero HBCUs and has never had one is something that doesn't sit all that well with me. There's only one public four-year HBCU in the state (SC State in my hometown) and only one private one of note (Claflin, also in my hometown). None exist in the Upstate either which is the "King Cotton" part of the state that became the center of agriculture after the invention of the cotton gin made long-staple cotton a lucrative crop. Because of this, the Upstate spawned a wealthy planter class rivaling the Upstate by the dawn of the Civil War and to this day it is the most politically powerful part of the state and among the most conservative metropolitan areas in the entire country. That comes with some rather dubious distinctions as well, so who knows...
But with respect to the HBCUs, it's Claflin over Dillard but we'd kill to have Southern for the band alone...and the higher enrollment compared to SC State. Grambling is bigger than State too but they probably rank similarly. And while most give Louisiana the nod for Tulane, and rightfully so (and SC lacks a private research university along the lines of Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, Tulane, Rice, etc.), it also gets the nod for Xavier--the only Catholic HBCU in the country with a distinguished pre-med program and is a top feeder institution of Black students for medical schools nationwide. And Southern has a separate law school in Baton Rouge which is good. SC State had one for Black law students specifically but it closed after enrollment dropped when USC integrated its law school. But Baton Rouge duplicates for law (LSU and Southern) and lacks a medical school whereas USC has a law school and a school of medicine.
Comparing cities, New Orleans wins. New Orleans has that "bigger city" vibe that no cities in South Carolina really have.
However, South Carolina does have 3 growing and relatively economically robust regions with Greeneville/Spartanburg, Columbia, and Charleston. Add in Myrtle Beach for retirement and tourism, and the state is on a roll economically and growth-wise.
Louisiana is more slow growth-oriented and their cities are not strong economically, as South Carolina's.
South Carolina's geography is much nicer too, in my opinion, with the northwestern "upstate" region having beautiful mountain ranges.
Louisiana's coast is scenic, but "swamp and marshland meets coastline oriented," and the state on the whole is pretty flat, with its highest point at just 535 feet. Compare that with roughly 3,500 feet in South Carolina.
Charleston, of course, is no stranger to this. But I don't recall ever having visited a plantation, nor did/do I feel as though I'm missing something by not having done so (although I probably will eventually). I grew up in rural Orangeburg County, SC...plenty of cotton fields, family cemeteries in the upper reaches of the Lowcountry where ancestors that lived during Reconstruction are buried, visits to my great-grandparents' wooden shack with no electricity or indoor plumbing as a child, stories of how we're distantly related to the White family that runs the famous regional BBQ chain (my favorite kind of BBQ in the whole world), knowing that my last name would be different had my paternal grandfather took his father's surname instead of his mother's, having a set of cousins with my same last name that I'm related to on both sides, etc. I'm quite in touch with my roots, no plantation needed LOL.
Lol, that is all interesting. I don't know much of my family's history.
I don't go visiting all this old places for the history tho.
I go for the architecture, the atmosphere and for the ghosts stories. I'm a suckered for a well integrated story.
And yes, I know Charleston stands up well in the history department like NOLA, I was offering them as something non-NOLA related.
Again it is all about personal interests. Some will like skiing, some will like laying on the beach, I like eating and getting my imagination worked up
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