STL Develops

After my last post, I feel I was a bit harsh on my home town. I only get angry because I care, and public transportation is an extremely important issue for the future of our region. That being said, we have some tremendous initiatives in our region as evidenced by our designation as an All American City by the National Civic League in 2008. Initiatives that prove St. Louisans have demonstrated the ability to work together for super ordinate goals. The National Civic League cited the Great Rivers Greenway District, Downtown Now, and The Boomerang Press as examples of exceptional regional collaboration. These examples are all large-scale initiatives that involve government collaboration, along with private assistance, and volunteer work. I think it is important to note that these initiatives involve cooperation and various stakeholders working together for something greater than the some of its parts. These types of projects make our region attractive, but they cannot be realized by individual municipalities or as for profit initiatives. They must be a regional collaboration. This means that some areas will benefit first and maybe more than others. For example, new “Greenways” cannot be created in all areas at once, even though everyone is paying for them. All too often, stakeholders including taxpayers, politicians, and business people will support projects only when they see an immediate benefit for their lifestyle, town, or company respectively. The author of the editorial page in the 6/11/08 Post Dispatch summed up regionalism and this award well:

“The big challenge for St. Louis remains taking regionalism far beyond bike trails and arts projects. In some minds, “regionalism” is code for “city-county merger.” That’s politically unlikely here, though it should be noted that Louisville, Ky., Nashville, Tenn., and Indianapolis all have adopted some form of metropolitan-wide government.

All of them are competitors for jobs and industry with St. Louis, and all have seen improvements in government efficiencies and economies because they took regionalism to scale.

However unlikely metro-wide government might be in St. Louis, there still are efficiencies the region could take short of merger — collaborative efforts on transportation, transit, economic development, tax incentives, police and fire protection and airport governance to name but a few. The entire metro region should celebrate its All-America recognition and strive to act more regionally more often.”
We have a city with tremendous assets and talented people. These existing assets and the demonstrated ability to work together to create very positive progressive initiatives is what makes it so frustrating when we miss out on opportunities to really propel ourselves forward. Although, we missed the opportunity to fund Metrolink expansion at a crucial time, hopefully the next opportunity we have to further a major regional plan or service will be seized.

Today’s  New York Times article has brought to the forefront of my mind the repeated backwards thinking of our city. Our decision to not fund public transportation as ridership increases and the national trend away from sprawling development towards urban development begins to take hold, is truly mind blowing. 

Its embarrassing to be a poster child, once again, for failure. As if Pruitt-Igoe being the international symbol of the fall of modernism, our decision to forego railroad development in favor of the steamship, our alderwoman urinating in a trash can during a meeting, or our perennial status as one of most crime ridden cities in the country weren’t enough.  The problem here is the collective us, the citizens of St. Louis.  It’s easy to point the finger at government, but the problem here is not enough people are interested in the big picture.  How can we build a great progressive city? This is the question citizens need to ask themselves. I think too often people look at a narrow view of the issue. ”I don’t take the bus, they had cost overruns, so I’ll vote no.”  Even citing mismanagement of the Metrolink expansion, doesn’t justify what is going to happen when the services get cut.  Not to mention, you can make a strong case that the mismanagement was due to powerful citizens influence on the process.  First of all, we used a local contractor who had never built an extension like the one we were building.   Then, they decided to bury part of the track near Wash U to make the wealthy neighbors next door happy.  Well, that added tremendous costs. Plus our state is a joke when it comes to transit. Check out this quote from the business journal:

“The state of Illinois gives St. Clair County, population 200,000, about $20 million a year in transit funding. By comparison, the state of Missouri allocates $1.4 million in transit funding for the 1.3 million people in the St. Louis city and county region. That funding could be cut further to $1.15 million amid the state budget crunch, according to Dianne Williams, a spokeswoman for Metro.”

Its so frustrating that we have many elements of a great city, but all too often they are separate initiatives that are not part of an overarching goal.  We consistently make bad decisions as a region and state.  We have a lot of very positive aspects of this region, but until we can work together towards a regional vision, we will continue to fall behind the rest of the country.

St. Louis

I recently had a friend of my cousin’s move to St. Louis.  As I took him around town, helping him find his new home, we were talking about how he got here.  He mentioned that he had an opportunity to move to Minneapolis or St. Louis and chose the job here in St. Louis.  He said “Your cousin Lauren said that she would move to Minneapolis, but not St. Louis.”  This got me thinking, why would someone want to move to St. Louis?

The reasons that I hear most people say is, the cost of living is great, it’s a good place to raise a family, and its easy to get around.  These reasons are reasonable and make sense, although they are not the most exciting.  In response to why not move to St. Louis many point to the negatives of St. Louis such as, no airport hub, loss large company headquarters, high crime rates, and racism.  There is certainly some truth to these criticisms, although there is room to debate all of them. My opinion is, St. Louisans tend to view St. Louis through one of two extreme lenses. We are over critical or feel like St. Louis is great and can do no wrong. 

We need to work towards balance. I think we need to look at our short comings honestly and openly.  Then create a vision for the future and work towards this goal.  We need a succinct community vision to rally around.  No matter what your politics, we can all agree that Obama’s slogans of “Yes we Can” and “Change we can believe in” were extremely effective.  In St. Louis our last rallying slogan was “St. Louis is perfectly centered and remarkably connected.”  The slogan has some truth to it, but it is basically promoting where we are.  In order to really get people enthused about St. Louis, our slogan needs to have an element of vision, where we are going.  Young people in the community and those outside, like my cousin, can get excited about a place like St. Louis if they see it is going in a positive direction.  St. Louis does have a tremendous amount of positive momentum, with the bio-tech industry, great rivers greenway, historic rehabilitation, and we still are number 6 in the United States for fortune 500 company head quarters.  We just need to come up with an honest and visionary plan that the whole community can rally around.  What are our shortcomings? What would an ideal St. Louis look and feel like?

I recently attended the holiday luncheon for the St. Louis Section of the American Planning Association (APA). In the beginning of the luncheon, Dr. Mark Abbott of Harris Stowe and the current President of the APA St. Louis chapter mentioned that he thought St. Louis was the most important city in the United States for planners for a variety of reasons. I didn’t write down his exact quote, but I think I’ve accurately written his point. Since he mentioned this, I’ve been wondering, why would St. Louis be the most important city for Urban Planners? I came to the conclusion that if St. Louis becomes a great city once again many extremely important and difficult problems will have been solved.

First, Industrial cities in the Midwest and Northeast continue to struggle. How to replace the jobs and economic power of heavy industry, as well as make use of the land that was formerly occupied by these uses, is a major problem for cities. If St. Louis succeeds, there will need to be a replacement for these industries.

Secondly, St. Louis is racially polarized, and has historically been a city with harsh racial oppression and segregation. I’m convinced if St. Louis is to succeed there will need to be a unified city and not two separate and distinct communities, largely divided by North and St. Louis. This is a problem not unique to St. Louis, but in many ways heightened. There are no other large minority communities, so it is largely a black and white issue. Also, the city is one of the most segregated in the country. If black and white St. Louis were able to largely work together for the region it would be an enormous accomplishment as well as an extremely powerful national force.

The third reason St. Louis could be the most important American city for planners is the fact that it has fallen so far. It is the poster child for urban decline. While other cities may be in worse shape, none were ever as prominent and successful as St. Louis once was. Detroit is the only other city in St. Louis’s league in terms of the amount of decline an American city has endured. If St. Louis successfully turned around it would be a shining example and undoubtedly have tremendous influence on the success of other industrial American cities.