St. Louis Population May Drop Below 300K In 2020 Census
We’re still seven years away from the 2020 census but it’s already on my mind. Last month I attended at I attended a lunch where the two speakers talked about Detroit and St. Louis. From the invite:
Detroit’s New Plan for Urban Regeneration and What It Means for St. Louis
Speakers:
Alan Mallach, senior fellow of the National Housing Institute, is the author of many works on housing and planning, including Bringing Buildings Back and Building a Better Urban Future: New Directions for Housing Policies in Weak Market Cities. He served as director of housing and economic development for Trenton, N.J. from 1990 to 1999. He is also a fellow at the Center for Community Progress and the Brookings Institution.
John Gallagher is a veteran journalist and author whose latest book, Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City, was named by The Huffington Post as among the best social and political books of 2010. He joined the Detroit Free Press in 1987 to cover urban and economic redevelopment efforts in Detroit and Michigan, a post which he still holds. His other books include Great Architecture of Michigan and, as co-author, AIA Detroit: The American Institute of Architects Guide to Detroit Architecture.
One of the two said Detroit has accepted that it has shrunk and it is likely to shrink more in the 2020 census, that St. Louis is also likely to lose population again — possibly falling below 300,000. The fact is this may well happen.
Still, others love to dump on St. Louis. For example, a recent opinion piece in the Kansas City Star titled Kansas City is rising as St. Louis keeps falling:
• In 1950, St. Louis was the eighth largest U.S. city, with 857,000 people. But by 2010, St. Louis had lost a stunning 538,000 people and plummeted to the 58th largest city, with only 319,000 residents.
• In 1980, St. Louis was still Missouri’s largest city, barely ahead of Kansas City. But by 2010, Kansas City’s population of 460,000 was 44 percent larger than St. Louis’.
In response friend Matthew Mourning posted on Facebook:
The 1940 city limits of KC were a 58 square mile box of the Missouri River (N), State Line Rd. (W), Blue River (E), and 79th Street (S). (St. Louis is, and has been since the 1876 divorce, 62 square miles, while present day Kansas City tops out at 315 sq. mi. after a series of annexations).
Those 1940 KC city limits had a population of 400,178. In 2010, the population of the same approximate area was *184,803*. That’s a drop of ~215,000, or nearly 55%. St. Louis’s core loss was around 62% since 1940. – Matthew Mourning via Facebook
The point is to look at what’s happening in the core, not including ring after ring of low-density sprawl. Our fixed city limits is the regional core whereas cities like Kansas City and Oklahoma City were able to annex as population fled their core.
Kansas City is denser than Oklahoma City, but that’s not saying much. St. Louis, Detroit, & Cleveland being denser than the acclaimed Portland OR is huge. But numbers themselves can be deceiving, Portland has very dense central neighborhoods. It’s very walkable & cyclist friendly.
In the 2010 census our tracks that had investment in becoming more urban (downtown, near north & south) saw increases in population, while north & south St. Louis continued to lose population. Wake up St. Louis, we need to make the entire City of St. Louis urban/walkable/bikeable. Not in a half-ass way either, the whole deal with transit, strong pedestrian plan, modern zoning.
Auto-centric monstrosities like Loughborough Commons can’t keep happening if we expect to stop the loss of population. But I don’t see any willingness or leadership to prioritize urbanizing more than a few pieces here and there, fragmented in true St. Louis fashion.
If we stay on our current course I wouldn’t be surprised if we drop below 300,000 when the 2020 census comes out in 2021.
“In the 2010 census our tracks that had investment in becoming more urban
(downtown, near north & south) saw increases in population, while
north & south St. Louis continued to lose population. Wake up St.
Louis, we need to make the entire City of St. Louis
urban/walkable/bikeable. Not in a half-ass way either, the whole deal
with transit, strong pedestrian plan, modern zoning.”
Well said.
STL’s biggest difference from its suburbs is how urban it is. Also, good historical architectural stock, which, lucky for us was largely just abandoned instead of being “urban renewed”. The city needs to play up its urbanism and history. Accentuate the thing it has that folks want: a dynamic urban core. The more it tries to suburbanize itself, the more it will fail. I think the past few decades have shown this.
Much of far north and far south St. Louis suffer from what Jane Jacobs called “great blight of dullness”. They have little of the benefits of the city (walkabiilty, density, excitement) while lacking the large houses, yards, low crime, & good schools of the suburbs. South St. Louis is obviously doing better than North St. Louis but I think both will continue to stagnate while the urban core and its offshoots thrive. You see the same thing in Detroit but more extreme.
A focus should be on creating vibrant-mini-urban centers in the far north and south. Identify areas that once had thriving business strips and focus there. Also, failed strip-mall and supermarket developments are good opportunities for infill.
All this said, the city will never truly succeed–no matter how urban and dynamic it becomes–unless it fixes the crime and schools. There’s only so far it can go with those anchors dragging around its neck.
Yeah, I’m sure job cuts by most major employers and an unaccredited school district have NOTHING to do with populations losses. It must be suburban-styled economic development.
Once again, past viable posts are negated by one nonsensical post each month. Congratulations to those of you who picked March 11.
And how do you retain & attract employers? You make sure young workers want to live in your city/region. The area of the city that saw growth in population did so because it attracted young professionals that companies want to hire. Congrats for once again for failing to see the forest.
This isn’t why major corporations in this town are laying off employees, and you know it. Fewer jobs are crummy schools are why people are leaving.
I know that Boomers not in touch with reality place too much importance on schools. Have you noticed birth rates are dropping? Gen Y are waiting to have kids, if at all. It’s 2013, not 1993!
Your perspectives are skewed by the fact that you claim to be gay. Gay people tend to hold different values than straight ones. Gay people appear to be absorbed more in themselves–in efforts to promote their own agenda, their own lifestyle, their own preservation. They typically have no one to nurture other than themselves and, perhaps, their partner, in some cases. If all I had to worry about is ME, my perspectives about education, transportation needs, and social issues might be different.
Really? Lame attempt at turning it back on me. Generational differences do exist, they’re well documented.
’nuff said. Look and listen. There you will find reality.
With schools go the neighborhood. I thought you were in real estate, you should know that. As I said, I’m sure that Citi and MC moved to St. Peters because all those boomers were there first! Blah blah blah…. Oh and by the way….most of the fortune 500 CEOs are baby boomers. THEY decide where the company goes.
CitiMortgage moved to O’Fallon in October 2003 — nearly a decade ago. A lot can happen in a decade. Gen Y is no longer in school, they are the young workforce and the Baby Boomers that run the company are empty nesters & nearing retirement, Gen Xers are are moving up the corporate ladder.
Moving up is not at the top. It is the top that decides. And how nice of you to dismiss facts when they don’t suit your needs. FACT: Citi and MC moved out to farm fields, the workers followed. And the average age of their workers is not 90 or even 50. Much younger.
Fact, those are two specific examples that don’t necessarily reflect a overall demographics a decade later.
“Gen Y is no longer in school, they are the young workforce”
Ha! They are no longer in school, but they aren’t the young workforce. A high proportion of them, particularly the ones with the lifestyle you describe, are unemployed or underemployed and have been for years.
“Research suggests that Gen Yers have very specific workplace demands, and they’re turned off by today’s school environments, which include few rewards, minimal opportunities to collaborate with other teachers, and little-to-no feedback from administrators. As a result, Gen Y teachers are expressing their dissatisfaction with their feet—and, consequently, reinforcing certain generational stereotypes.
So if Gen Yers won’t tolerate these school environments, why should administrators cater to their needs? Because what Gen Yers want from a workplace may, according to scientists, actually create thriving schools—a win-win situation for everyone in the end.
To help administrators better understand their Gen Y teachers, here are four suggestions for how to engage and retain these teachers—suggestions that should also go a long way toward building a positive school culture.” http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_gen_y_fix_our_schools
Last time I checked, employees & employers leave cities that are commonly viewed as dying, conversely they move to cities that are perceived as cool places to live.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s why MasterCard and CitiMortage moved out to St. Peters.
Most people move for the job / job opportunities. A cool place to live is definitely a bonus, but a paycheck is almost always more important (which is why North Dakota’s unemployment rate is currently the lowest in the nation). Businesses are most interested in good access to / for their clients and business opportunities, followed by access to transportation, distribution and a favorable tax environment. Sure if you’re in a completely virtual business, it doesn’t really matter where you operate, but for any business dealing with something tangible, location is and will remain important – you won’t see GM opening an assembly line in Hawaii, no matter how “nice” the environment may be . . . .
Your genetation (baby boomers) moved for work. You started at a company and hoped to retire there decades later. My generation (Gen X) did this to a lesser degree. Gen Y doesn’t think that way at all. Applying the values of a generation that’s started collecting social security to 20-somethings is a common mistake.
Many members of Gen Y are still living at home with Mom and Dad. It’s easy to be idealistic, just like us of the hippie generation were, when you don’t have any real bills to pay. Once you start being responsible for yourself, that paycheck starts to look a lot more important!
Gen Y grew up in boring homogenous suburbia, that’s not where they want to live. Not all live with mom & dad, those that have a choice pick interesting urban neighborhoods.
Really oh great one??? Then please explain the rise of such ‘urban’ neighborhoods such as Las Vegas, Round Rock, and Phoenix? And before you do, take out the fact that the market crashed. If not for and actually before that…areas such as that (and there are plenty around the country) had the greatest growth in that suburban spawl. Yes, must be interesting living behind walled in subdivisions.
Those are municipalities, not neighborhoods.
Those living in those municipalities would beg to differ with you.
The KIng of Sweeping Generalizations strikes again!!!
I do read you know…
“Where in the country can workers who are members of Generation Y, or Millennials, aged 20-30, find rewarding work, at a time when the national unemployment rate is 13.5% among people aged 20-24 and 9.3% for those 25 to 29?” http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/08/21/the-best-cities-for-gen-y-jobs/ Hint, St. Louis isn’t on the list. To get the jobs we must attract Gen Y.
“We’re finding that millennials look at buying homes differently than baby boomers do,” Move’s Julie Reynolds says. “Where baby boomers look at homes more as investments, millennials see housing as more of a lifestyle option. More millennials are living closer to where they work, closer to the central part of towns and focus on cultural activities and other things to do other than just work.” http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/07/13/5-great-cities-for-gen-yers/
I think that population losses in the city mean different things in different neighborhoods. Areas like Lafayette Square, Benton Park, and Soulard have greatly reduced population compared to 1970 census figures, but those same neighborhoods have seen untold millions of dollars in private investment since then. Large homes and multi-family dwellings that once housed dozens of people or families, including people flopping on cots on the basement floor, now house small families, couples, or a single individual.
My uncle bought and renovated a former flop house on Laclede in the CWE in the early ’70’s. When he bought the house, it had 13 filthy kitchens and dozens of occupants. After an extensive rehab, he moved in with his wife. So, that single rehab represented a substantial population loss and huge improvement. The rest of the block went the same way, resulting in expanded population loss and expanded improvement of the whole area.
The point is not that population loss is good or not a problem, but that sometimes what it reflects is a change in demographic composition and simultaneously, investment and progress. There are other parts of the city where population loss is specifically related to abandonment, i.e., a whole block once occupied is now boarded up. In 1990 in Benton Park, there were many dozens of boarded, LRA properties; now there are a handful, yet the population is decreased from the era when there were more dilapidated structures and abandonment.
Looking at that line graph, it’s no surprise that Detroit’d population increased dramatically in the 40’s and 50’s, right when the new “American Dream” pitch was in full effect and personal transportation was basically given carte blanche over development/construction/infrastructure efforts in the United States.
Likewise, St. Louis began its dip right when Detroit reached its apex. Meaning, of course, that as Detroit successfully built the country personal vehicles, and public transportation went by the wayside here, citizens now were able to flee the central city to grab their half acre and attached garage.
Very interesting correlation. I suspect that’ll prove similar for other second-tier cities too?
I think a lot of the population gain during that time period was from the “second great migration” of blacks from the south moving north for good jobs in factories. Jobs which disappeared shortly thereafter leaving the same population stranded.
As you know, looking at densities for individual cities can be very misleading, just like with crime. That’s why the Census Bureau recently released figures for metropolitan weighted density, i.e. NY is shown as significantly more dense than LA instead of the other way around.
In 2000, amongst metro areas larger than 500,000 people, St. Louis was the #58 densest per weighted density figures at 3,015/sq mi. In 2010, St. Louis fell to #61, 2,742.5/sq mi. since loss of population in the city has a huge effect on the weighted density of the metro region.
2010 Weighted Density Figures
Long before then, in 2 years if the current level of crime persists. The County is heading down to 900,000. If St. Louis and St. Louis County make it to 2020, we lose another congressional district as if that would matter. St. Louis refused to participate in the urban recoveries of the late 80s and early 90s. A bit late-now.
From what I see, the trend line for St. Louis is moving towards stabilization. I wonder if the dramatic rise, and then fall, of Detroit is what presents to us, in stark relief, an illustration of a failed industrial policy and the profound shortcomings of disparate wage rates and working conditions within the US and abroad. It would seem that Detroit suffers so as a result of massive (from ca. 450,000 to nearly 1.6 million in just less than the span of two decades) gain and loss. So much was built up to support this rise, but as redundant stock, it almost immediately began to decay. And then the monster began feeding on itself.
The 1.6 million residents of Detroit didn’t vanish into thin air. They just moved a few miles out to the suburbs, and mostly didn’t even switch jobs at the time.
To be sure, yes, they moved. But, as you note, to the suburbs. But it is a certainty that many of them simply moved out of the area. And in many instances, they moved because their employer moved–out of the City. Take, for instance, my uncle (mom’s side) Mark. He was a GM engineer (retooling, I believe). GM moved him from (suburban; one of those nice nabes with tall Southern pine trees and well-manicured lawns) ATL, to Detroit, where they took up residence in Bloomfield Hills, in a development just across a privacy fence “hiding” a huge parking lot, and its mall. If I’m not mistaken, GM has an engineering and design center in suburban Detroit. As the kids got older, most dispersed to places other than Detroit. Or Michigan, for that matter.
My point about the shock of such a population loss is predicated upon the idea that no plans were made to mitigate for the vast numbers of citizens and businesses which left, which lead to lower tax rolls, higher crime (exacerbated by fewer taxes), decay of housing and industrial stock, worsening corruption, and the lot that goes with that. A loss of population so profound is rather unprecedented in human history, and the City of Detroit was left to fend for itself, which is a component of my comment that national industrial policy is a joke. This was all the more wrenching to the middle class blue collar workers who had no education outside of K-12, if that. But the demographic which has suffered most in the loss of manufacturing in this country is urban black populations, and to a lesser extent rural white populations. Mobility for urban blacks in the sixties and seventies was almost impossible, so they suffered not only the loss of jobs, but of community.
Though it must be said that geographical and demographically-based mobility for many Americans these days is simply a pipe dream.
For every person moving out of Metro Detroit, another has moved in. The Detroit area’s population grew explosively until about 1970, and since then has stayed quite stable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Detroit
A couple of additional thoughts – one, “if we drop below 300,000 when the 2020 census comes out”, it will be because members of every generation, not just Gen Y, choose to live elsewhere. Two, generalizing about the “desires” of any generation isn’t too useful. Yes, there are members of the Gen Y creative class that have the ability to choose to live in cool, hip, urban neighborhoods (and do). You also have members of Gen Y willingly serving in the military, living in rural areas (working in agriculture), living in St. Charles County (working in retail and raising a family) and (not so willingly) incarcerated or homeless.
As for designing and legislating our way out of this dynamic, you know how I feel – “it’s the economy, stupid”. We get sprawl because driving and parking is easy and using transit is hard. We need to change the negative perceptions about Metro, especially buses, and we need to do a better job of serving every employment center, not just the central business districts. The easiest way to increase transit use is to capture that daily trip to work or school – it’s repeatable, it’s predictable and it generates the most congestion (and the “need” for more and wider highways). Instead of making “the entire City of St. Louis urban/walkable/bikeable”, how about we start on focusing on making more of our employment centers dense and walkable? Many of our neighborhoods, even those that you deride on the north and south side, ARE walkable, there’s just no reason to use the sidewalks for transportation – transit comes so infrequently, and most employment centers on the other end aren’t walkable, so driving (and housing/parking the car[s]) becomes the most viable/only option. And once transit works for commuting, demand (and support) for more transit in residential areas will feed on itself, reducing the need for SOV’s and creating demand for denser living options (with inherently shorter walks to transit).