Poll: Reaction to the 2010 Census showing a loss of 29k residents?
The realization that St. Louis continued to lose population between 2000-2010 is on everyone’s mind. Â What better topic for a weekly poll? Â The poll is in the upper right corner of the site.
Here is some info you may or may not have seen:
Only four of the 28 wards showed an increase in residents: 5,6,7, 19.
How did these four wards, all grouped in the center, manage to increase population? Â Could be this is where the Slay administration focused their attention? Â Maybe the core offers the most urban lifestyle? Â Or both?
If we look at population changes on a neighborhood basis (3-page PDF) we see the numbers are all over the place. Downtown had a 359% increase, going from 806 to 3701. Â Downtown West, where I live, only had a 79% increase, going from 2,204 to 3,940 residents. Yes, Downtown West (West of 14th St?) has more residents than Downtown proper. Â McRee Town, on the other hand, had a 43% decline.
I’ll have my thoughts tomorrow. Â In the meantime the poll is in the upper right.
– Steve Patterson
Fill vacant builds with new residents and you get more people. The city can do that. Move people into new houses built on vacant land and you get more people. That's what St. Charles County has been doing, and the city can do that too.
That should say, “Fill vacant buildings with new residents…”.
Mixed feelings, because both raw numbers and percentages can be manipulated and parsed many ways. Adding 2000 people downtown is nice, but where did they come from? Elsewhere in the city? From the County? Out of state? Plus there's quality versus quantity – has the city “lost” when a 4-plex is converted to a duplex and renovated, and its population drops from 14-18 residents to 4-8, aka gentrification? At their core, census numbers are mostly about ego, votes/representation and federal funding. Personally, I'm more concerned about quality more than quantity, and I'm more interested in the other demographic data (income, diversity, ages) than I am with just the number of bodies.
An interesting poll would be how many of the new downtown residents came from other areas of the city. Is the growth from new residents or just a re-shuffling of current residents?
One other observation – losing 29,000 people means that each ward will have to lose 1,000+ people, reducing the average from 12,500 residents per alderman to 11,500. At this rate, by 2100, each alderman will have, what, 37 constituents?! What better argument for cutting the number of aldermen in half or by two thirds?
Truly depressing. It really rained on my day when I read about this in the Post-Dispatch. Truly a shame to see a once thriving city waste away while the suburbs continue to grow rapidly despite their demerits.
Slay now has a PDF showing neighborhood changes. Peabody Darst Webbe was a big gainer, and that's because the Darst Webbes are now gone. Perhaps it's time for a name change? But the replacement of the DWs with the King Louis Square development has helped that neighborhood out immensely.
I'm not in favor of handing out free transit passes to downtown residents or anyone without finanical need. However, I would be in favor of giving family discounts. It is true that taking a family of four on the bus really adds up. The public benefits for every trip that does not use a private vehicle. So, I think a family discount makes sense. I almost never see children over the age of the free ride on the bus or train.I hate to see people have to buy a car when they have children.
Actually, using any vehicle at or near capacity is more efficient than running it empty – buses don't get great mileage. The bane of our existence is not the soccer mom with the minivan with 3 kids, it's the single-occupant vehicle that represents probably 80%+ of all of our trips, and when it comes to wrangling 3 kids, a stroller and a week's worth of groceries, any extra spent on the minivan is more than made up for by avoiding the hassles associated with using transit . . .
I'm a current loft owner and think the city needs to have a few incentives for downtown owners.
Parking is a huge issue unless you have a garage. I think a parking sticker(color coded) for your block would be nice for owners. I have a flex work schedule and have to feed the meter non stop and still end up with multiple tickets a week.
A free trolley ticket for owners of downtown. I have a family of four and the trolley, metro etc. adds up quick.
Just some ideas.
Um, you bought a loft without parking. Why is it now the city's / other taxpayers' responsibility to fix the “problem”? There are plenty of lots and garages, both public and private, that offer monthly parking rates. And just why should just downtown dwellers get free transit service?
The key word was “incentives” to maybe bring more people downtown, not to run them out. Example, CWE has streets with either monthly tags and signs stating only for monthly payers or streets with no meters(alley streets would be nice for this downtown). It's the little everyday things that make it frustrating downtown. And why shouldn't I be able to buy a loft without parking? See, this attitude is the problem. I'm not asking for everything to be free, but would rather hear ideas instead of blame.
The two big differences downtown are that loft conversions are new construction and there are more conflicting demands for on-street parking, both from multiple floors of residents and street-level retail (seeking customers) than in the CWE and other, less-dense parts of the city.
I never questioned your choice of buying a loft without parking. Many people do so, choosing to go car free or car lite (using rentals or garaging their vehicles most of the week). My response was aimed more at your thought that loft dwellers should receive designated or preferential on-street parking. While having housing downtown is certainly an amenity, I see a greater need to support office and retail uses, which means maximizing transient parking for customers, clients and guests, not residents and full-time employees.
It appears that the real discussion involves what you, I and everyone else want downtown to be. Is it a denser version of the CWE, with limited office functions? Or is it a true employment center, that has distinctly-different infrastructure needs? And when it comes to the census, is it more important to grow the residential population of the CBD? Or is it better to focus on economic growth instead of residential? Both answers have positives and negatives, but from the perspective of the larger city, I believe that the CBD needs to focus, long-term, on economic growth, even if it limits the number of full-time residents.
Downtown has plenty of places to park if you don't mind walking.
I absolutely agree. Our downtown has more parking overall than any other downtown I have ever seen anywhere. It's saturated.
It has been my experience that most downtown residents came from the suburbs and other metro areas.
So if no wards move, those Aldermen with the greatest losses (3, 4) will be rewarded by expanding their representation over areas that actually saw gains (5, 6, 7, 19). More than ever, Downtown has earned its own ward. And objectively, based on population change, it's Ward 3, which should be moved to Downtown. Of course, re-districting would also be a good time to actually reduce the size of the Board of Aldermen.
While interning for Shrewsbury when he was still an alderman, I drew a map that moved Ward 20 (Jim wasn't a fan of Sharon Tyus) to The Hill (Ward 10 would later become needed). Then, while going to grad school, I drew smooth boundaries, but created a new mid-county district, with Census 2000 complete count data in a SLU GIS lab for a Judge deciding the County Council districts. So unlike a decade ago, I won't have any influence this time on re-districting in either the City or County.
In a perfect world, wards would be (re)drawn to be compact, equal in population, and encompassing existing neighborhood boundaries and common interests. In reality, they will be (re)drawn to protect 2 or more incumbents' residences from ending up in the same ward, to maintain arbitrary racial quotas and to try to hold onto historic geographic boundaries. It's less about fairness and more about political gamesmanship.
While I understand the old-timers' attachment to a specific ward (and high school), it's still just a number. Right now, I live in the 23rd, not very far from the 16th. I could care less if I stay in 23 or end up in 1, 10 or 20; I DO care about who is/will actually be representing me.
The tricky part about population-based districts or wards is that population is not the only determinant or issue driving government decisions. Anything that attracts large numbers of non-residents – downtown, parks, sports venues, manufacturing facilities, universities, medical complexes, etc. – likely deserves dedicated, involved representation, as well.
It's official, Charlotte now has over 700,000 residents, and as a result, more than 100,000 people for each City Council District. It's also official that Charlotte is now a majority-minority city. However, there is no proposal to add more districts. Additionally, there is no outcry that minority representation needs to increase, except maybe among Latinos, which have doubled in population since 2000. Indeed, African-Americans were influential two decades ago in switching Charlotte's City Council from a fully at-large body to a compromise of 7 district and 4 at-large seats.
Meanwhile, St. Louis marches closer to roughly 10,000 people per Ward. In terms of voting population, it easily less than 10,000.
Clearly, if Charlotte can elect multiple African-American mayors (including current officeholder) and half of its councilmembers, St. Louis should not worry much about loss of minority empowerment, when thinking about reducing its Board of Aldermen. And considering the DNC pick, a smaller City Council hasn't even hurt partisan politics either in Charlotte. But somehow, I suspect the two most common myths that others claim as reasons not to reduce the BOA are the suspected impacts to minorities and the Party.
The only other common criticism is access to one's alderman. But having lived in both cities, I can tell you I find my district councilmember who represents about 100,000 people just as responsive, if not more, than when I lived in the City of St. Louis. And I believe the “more responsive” quality may have to do with the fact that a seat representing so many people can't be taken for granted when it comes time to re-elect someone.
The common misconception here is that the alderman is or should be the go-to person for solving any problem, city-related. In most “normal” cities, day-to-day problems (potholes, trash, street lights, etc.) are the responsibility of paid city staff – you call the streets department to get a pothole fixed, not your elected representative. Your e. r. deals with three things, setting policy, approving the budget and working to solve unique, complex problems. City staff are empowered to do their jobs and are expected to do them well, with minimal intervention from e. r's.
two comments: when I was attorney for a downtown developer, the city would not let us convert a building to condominiums because it did not have its own parking–even though there were hundreds of spaces within two blocks I grew up in the city and am also nostalgtic for the old dense neighborhoods, but people should realize that they were dense because many families lived in crowded 3 or 4 room apartments with no yard. The city baically lost people because many can now afford laarger houses with yards.