Readers See Our Walkable Origins, Building Stock & Compact Street Grid As Helpful To Future Growth

Not everyone got the poll question last week. The question, What do we have that will help the City of St. Louis to grow & prosper in the next 20-30 years is? (pick up to two), was about the attributes that we currently have — not those we need. The standard answers picked by readers were:

1. The walkable city origins with great building stock and a compact street grid 117 [37.26%]
2. Our cultural institutions 52 [16.56%]
3. Our urban parks & trails 33 [10.51%]
4. General demographic changes 32 [10.19%]
5. The people 24 [7.64%]
6. Other answer… 18 [5.73%]
7. Sports teams: Cardinals, Blues and Rams 13 [4.14%]
8. Nothing, the city isn’t going to grow & prosper 13 [4.14%]
9. The city isn’t within St. Louis County 7 [2.23%]
10. That we only elect Democrats to local office 3 [0.96%]
11. The weather 2 [0.64%]

Other answers is where it becomes clear some readers focused on what we need, rather than what we have:

1. Pride.
2. investment by the city to attract/retain businesses downtown, midtown
3. Vastly reduce the crime rate
4. merge city
5. public schools
6. The bones left over from previous prosperity (e.g. walkable, parks, culture).
7. nothing
8. Safe public schools
9. we have plenty of great things that we need to emphasize, like our LOCATION
10. This is a strange and badly worded poll question. I have no idea what to choose.
11. Relatively few “urbanists” with big ideas about my property / no $ of
12. Have you have businesses to bring people.
13. pretty limited on answers, how about increasing jobs
14. Steady supply of water
15. Restructure local government to give mayor more control
16. Great universities
17. Accessible, extensive public transit
18. Better schools and a better city crime image

Some good other answers include transit, water, and location. A future poll will deal with the “what we need” question.

– Steve Patterson