Whom Do We Wish To Attract To St. Louis?
I had great conversation today with some interesting people, all part of making St. Louis the cool place that it is. The question arose about the people that are clueless to the urban life that is emerging in our neighborhood. These are namely people around us in the city that don’t get urbanity (note: many have offices at City Hall); people in our own suburbs and finally those from other cities.
I think the least likely group to get it are the suburbanites. I said I didn’t care if the suburbanites ever got it. Others disagreed. So here are my thoughts.
You will always have the East and West coast snobs that will ignore everything in the middle of the country with the possible exception of Chicago. We could have the most urban life here in St. Louis and they’ve never give us the time of day. But, I think we have a lot to offer urbanites of all ages that are more open minded. The big question is how to we get the word out to urbanites in other cities looking for a great combination of architecture and urbanity that we can offer?
I think many people in the city still think the dream is in suburbia. This is why they are so supportive about tearing down our urban neighborhoods and building strip centers and front facing garage houses. When so much of that is already available I don’t know why we need to create it here. I’m not sure if they can be reached. I can only hope that those that can’t be reached will at least be priced out of the city so they can have garage and strip mall.
But I don’t want everyone priced out of the city. I want all urbanites to be able to stay, regardless of income. Sure we need a good tax base but that will come with an increased population. I want to make sure we don’t become too focused on upper income people. The low income person that rides a bike or takes mass transit to work is making a positive contribution to our street life.
This brings me to the suburbanites that frankly don’t get the concept of street life. The idea of an active street is totally foreign to them. You see a few making their way to the city not for a ballgame other “big” events but just to check out urban life. You can see the fear in their eyes. Young and old, black and white, gay and straight all sharing the same sidewalk. Urbanity is about diversity. Suburbia is about segregating uses and incomes — the complete opposite of urbanity. Suburbanites fear life. Their environment is totally lacking of life and that gives them a sense of security. Dinner at P.F. Chang’s isn’t living.
Again, a few venture out of their safe world of equally priced atrium ranches. For some the light clicks on and they get that an alternative exists. I think people that are in their 40s or 50s that always lived in suburbia are lost. That is all they’ve known and they are now too old to change. Others in that age group that grew up in more urban environments might be able to break away from the pack. Adults in their 60s or older didn’t grow up in suburbia because it didn’t exist. We are seeing a good many of them leaving suburbia and returning to city life. Suburbanites in their 30s and younger are ripe for city life. Most are open to new and different experiences.
St. Louis needs to attract people from all ages and incomes from other cities. If that is you please come visit St. Louis and consider staying. If you live in our sprawling suburbs get in the minivan and come into the city. Bring your bike along and walking shoes and really experience the city. I think you’ll like it if you turn off those little voices in your head about the city. And to people already in the city just wake up and enjoy the energy we’ve got. Don’t fight the changes and increased urbanity.
– Steve
If St. Louis is able to develop an economically diverse, vibrant urban environment, then we will be unique among the much-touted urban success story places like Denver, New York, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco.
In all of those places, low to middle income people are being priced out.
RB
Hi;
I like your site- I find many of the US’s passed-over cities quite intriguing- what are you all doing down there? Where do you all work? How can there be so many cities? As a Canadian, I live in a world where most of our cities are pretty well-defined and simple- the reasons for their existence are fairly clear, there’s a small number of employment activities that most people do, etc… Not to say there’s no mystery whatsoever, but not to the degree I find in the US. (perhaps this is just unfamiliarity).
To comment on this posting, (again from a Canadian perspective) I don’t think it’s so much fear of diversity that prevents people from lving urbanity, but a fear of challenge and tricky thinking. Cities are complex- lots of signs to read, strange shops that sell bizarre combinations of things, buildings that may not be totally logical, many ways to get to many places, and many places to go for many activities. It’s tricky, choosing where to go to fulfill need X, and how to get there, and what to combine it with. What the suburbs offer is not so much freedom from diversity (most of them are remarkably diverse places themselves- the strip malls in northeastern Calgary routinely juxtapose multiple ethnicities- imagine a Newfoundland-expat bar next to a Jamaican grocery), but freedom from urban trickiness and complexity. The reason for this is simple- one environment is designed to be processed at 5-10kph, wheras the burbs are designed to be processed at 50-70kph. Big signs, plentiful parking, street hierarchies that generally offer a limited range of route choices, few hard-to-process mixes of uses and activities. All these make going about your daily activities pretty simple (if you don’t mind stewing in traffic) compared with the jumble of buildings and activities that characterise urban centres. So I don’t think most suburbanites fear the mix of old and young, gay and straight, black and white so much as they fear being bewildered by trying to process a very rich and complex environment at 50kph (which is close to impossible).
I like your review though- I’m currently reading a Jonathan Franzen book, the 27th city (?), and learning a bit more about Saint-Louis. From photos etc.. it strikes me as having much character.
We are moving to STL this week from Toronto Canada and are terrified. Toronto is as hip and urban as San Francisco, NYC etc.. it’s a city of neighbourhoods and walking and great mass transit… Here, we live downtown in an area that is gentrifying and love living here amongst the grit and character. Toronto has been named the most multicultural city in the world, and that’s part of what makes it so great – there is SO much to offer. Anyhow, our dilemna is this: Canada has so much less crime, public schools rock, there are massive grocery stores, cafes, clubs etc. right in the CBD, beside the condo buildings and century-old homes… there are over a hundred and fifty cranes building highrises in toronto proper now… – downtown has TONS of amenities… it’s a liveable city. We’ve been to STL and seen it, and to be honest, we are afraid to live in STL city, we feel forced to live in STL County b/c of the social and economic problems in the US cities… To be honest, we’re afraid of the crime and the black/white issues in the US – there aren’t any boarded up homes here, even in our worst areas – what we saw when we drove down Delmar from the Loop to the CWE scared us… Please help – advice needed. Do we live in U City, Clayton, Webster, Kirkwood etc., or should we live in teh city?
would love to hear how your situation panned out in STL. We are also looking to move from Toronto to STL on an expat are very concerned
any help insight or warning you could provide would be very beneficial
signed
a confused canadian
Well, we moved here in August 2005. We did not end up buying a home in St Louis City, because of the lack of support services & amenities – grocery stores, dry cleaners, coffee shops, cool cafes etc. around. We are used to a different model, I suppose, and we found the city of STL a bit too barren and void of character, charm or a compelling reason to choose it over the county. We ended up in University City, which is not bad. Walking distance to parks, shops, Starbucks, Tivoli movie theatre etc., but as a Canadian friend recently said “We ain’t in Kansas anymore”. We looked at homes in many areas of St Louis city – the CWE, Tower Grover Park, Lafayette Square, South City, Soulard – pretty much anywhere there was a pocket of gentrification – and like i said above, the lack of things like grocery stores, coffee shops etc., and the fact that the pockets are so small and isolated, and if you look one street in any direction you’re looking at boarded up homes – drove us to look elsewhere. I’ve only been into the city proper a handful of times – which is disappointing (there’s not a ton of reasons to head down there) – we checked out the Soulard Market (not to be confused with Toronto’s St Lawrence Market – similar, but on a much smaller and more humble scale), a couple of hockey games, the U2 show (where a VERY strange reality occured to me – it was a VERY white crowd of 18,000), various restaurants etc.. Anyhow, STL is ok. It’s a bit backward, in that the grocery stores seeem to be from the 1970s, segregation seems somewhat still of a reality, even if only in people’s minds … a lot of room for improvement.
Good things about St Louis: cheap compared to Toronto, Forest Park is great, the winter is a lot milder, people are generally nice (although if I were to make a generalization, not overly worldly), not as much traffic, work ethic a lot more sane (less hours to the work week compared to toronto).
All in all, we are getting used to life here.