St. Louis’ Neighborhood Boundaries Need to Be Examined
For those of you that don’t take well to change, I suggest you have a seat or maybe don’t even read this post. Why? I’ve got a real shocker for you: the boundaries for the city’s 79 neighborhoods need to be reexamined and, in many cases, be completely changed.
For centuries villages, towns and cities had their commercial districts as the heart of an area with residents walking to the center for goods, services and social interaction. This built strong neighborhoods. Following WWII, however, things changed with the car. We started seeing strip shopping centers and malls and the perception that it was best to separate uses — keeping single family houses away from multi-family housing and away from retail which was separate from office and industrial uses. The idea was we’d have all these separate uses and we’d easily whisk back and forth from one to the other in our individual cars. Time has taught us this vision didn’t turn out as imagined and it is really not the way to build strong communal ties. Having learned a hard lesson, we are back to mixing uses within a neighborhood.
During the Schoemehl administration the city was carved up into 79 entities and labeled as neighborhoods. I believe these neighborhood boundaries follow the old line of thinking — commercial districts belong at the edge rather than the center. But if we look back at history and how St. Louis developed we can reason that commercial streets, of which we have many, were the centerpiece of the neighborhood.
By placing our commercial district streets at the edges of neighborhoods rather than as their traditional center I believe that we’ve prevented these commercial districts from rebounding as they should. First, we need to look at Euclid in the West End. As always, it has served the surrounding area and is not a border between two neighborhoods with different leadership and interests. To contrast this we can look at MLK on the north side and Cherokee & Chippewa on the south side. All three streets, once quite vibrant and the center of commercial life in their respective areas, now act as edges. rather than unifying centers.
Cherokee (West of Jefferson) has Benton Park West on the north side of the street and Gravois Park on the South side of the street. A commercial district association adds yet another layer to the bureaucracy. The divisions for the various neighborhoods, created 25 years ago or so, was likely arbitrary or possibly political. Dividing Cherokee among two separate neighborhoods has not served the formerly thriving commercial district well. On a related note, Chippewa to the South is a dividing line between Gravois Park and Dutchtown. Again, this was a thriving commercial street at the center of its neighborhood. If I had to draw a line it would be down Miami street — halfway between Cherokee and Chippewa. North of Miami you’d be part of the neighborhood that contained the Cherokee commercial district and South of Miami you’d be part of the neighborhood containing the Chippewa commercial district. These neighborhoods could then focus their attention on building their neighborhoods around a strong commercial center, rather than ignoring the decaying street at the edge while assuming the neighborhood group on the other side will take care of things.
Along MLK on the north side we have a similar situation, magnified by the length of the street and the amount of physical decay. On the North side of MLK we have 8 mapped neighborhoods with another 9 on the South side of the street. In the 8 miles or so of this street only a few blocks are within a single neighborhood on both sides of the street (JeffVanderLou, east of Compton). Everywhere else MLK is seen as an edge and not as the formerly strong commercial center that it once was. Not that we want an 8-mile long neighborhood along MLK but you get the idea — the street needs to return as the centerpiece for commerce and jobs in the area and doing so is a challenge when it is used as a dividing line.
I believe we need to look at the center from the perspective of commercial districts and reposition neighborhood boundaries such that each neighborhood once again has a commercial heart. Yes, there will be instances where this is not possible or feasible but I believe it to be a worthwhile exercise to determine if we can achieve better outcomes along these commercial streets. It would also follow that major intersections, such as Cherokee and Jefferson or MLK and Goodfellow would be centers. The dividing lines should be at minor streets or along alleys. Let two neighborhood groups fight over the cleanup of an alley or problem properties on a minor road, not over the rebuilding and rejuvenation of a major commercial street.
Countless other examples of this division exist. South Grand comes to mind as does Delmar and Natural Bridge. On the positive side we do have examples of situations where the commercial district is already within a single neighborhood — such as Ivanhoe, Meramec & Virginia, parts of North Grand and 14th Street. Interstate highways, on the other hand, serve as solid edges that cannot be ignored.
I don’t know that we have the political will to change boundaries, no matter how logical it may be to do so. What I think we need is 5-6 planning districts, each comprising several neighborhoods. A planning district would work with a staff member of the Planning and Urban Design Agency to help with the bigger picture of visioning for their part of the city. This would hopefully move beyond ward or neighborhood boundaries and create some strong areas within the city, focusing on commercial streets as the centerpieces. It is time we examine how we look at our neighborhoods and see if changing some boundaries would potentially produce better results.
Steve,
This is a very interesting observation, but here is my concern: while commercial areas would be nice to have in the center of neighborhoods, commercial streets also make good ward boundaries. We have always done it this way.
Here’s some of our thinking: when we do redistricting, we want to give each ward some commercial. And ward boundaries which are easy to identify, like commercial streets, make it easier to communicate with my residents about who they should call for service, especially seniors. The conversation goes something like this…
“You live on the east side of “X”, you need to call Alderman “Y”. You get the idea.
One think that irks me is that highways are used as neighborhood boundaries in areas actually bisected by the highways, not defined by them. Case in point: residential blocks of Old North St. Louis and Hyde Park lie east of I-70. These two neighborhoods used to be independent cities that started at the river, and when the highway was built much of what people considered to be these neighborhoods was east of the new interstate highway. While the highway led to sharp decline in the sections between itself and the river, to this day pockets of great houses and commercial buildings remain but these sections are part of “North Riverfront,” a huge catch-all “neighborhood” extending from Downtown north to the city limits. The people who live in this area are politically separated from their proper neighborhoods, and the neighborhood groups officially don’t have to care about these orphan sections. Meanwhile, Hyde Park and Old North are losing buildings and residents across the highway, as well as the ability to influence the character and zoning of development in these sections, which could be better integrated. As displaced loft-dwellers look at living in buildings on North Broadway, they would be encouraged if they were moving into part of a real neighborhood instead of an amorphous, neglected industrial zone.
So, I would love to revisit the city’s official neighborhood boundaries.
Statistical neighborhoods are a legacy of the Great Society of the ’60’s and ’70’s – they were put in place to keep the federal government happy and to help track socio-economic issues to help justify government grants. Any relationshhip with how people actually perceive their ‘hood is purely coincidental (and that’s why they don’t overlap).
This sounds like an interesting academic exercise, but one that will have little impact in the real world. Most citzens have no clue which ward they live in (numerically), and are probably equally clueless as to which statistical neighborhood they live in. Most southsiders do know which parish they live in, and the reality remains that the real power remains with the Alderman (which most people do seem to know).
The other issue is that planning challenges and efforts rarely respect established boundaries. The planning issues associated with the Highway 40 project are different than Forest Park’s issues and different than BJC’s continued growth pressure on adjacent residential areas, yet all three are occuring in the same geographical area – where should we draw the boundaries?
People get invested in issues that are personal to them. Communication is critical, as is an open process. Neighborhood associations are but one tool for distributing information (and should continue to be respected and supported). But since the real power is apparently concentrated in the closely-held ward committees, isn’t the formal “neighborhood” structure merely just so much window dressing?
I tend to agree with UVA that ward boundaries should be easy to describe. I also have no problem with trying to put commercial areas in the center. What actually makes the most sense is for “neighborhoods” to define their own boundaries and to allow for a certain amount of overlap. Our interests don’t end at a curbline – they remain fluid.
Realistically, one small change would be to make sure that statistical “neighborhood” boundaries do not cross ward boundaries (and vice versa) – my neighborhood is in parts of 3 wards. Then again, having 3 aldermen broadens my horizons and makes me a better citizen . . .
wow, a lot of those “neighborhood” web site haven’t been updated since about 1999… and many not since 1996…
And you thought that the “Downtown now” site was bad, eh Steve!
Talk about being pointless. If these neighborhoods don’t even have something to add to a web page in the last 10 years, what use is there to have them at all?
Steve, census tract boundaries and St. Louis neighborhood boudaries do not sync up at all. See my maps from the retreat. Those show block groups (a subdivision of tracts) and St. Louis neighborhood boundaries. Our neighborhood boundaries are not used for statistics.
There are several neighborhoods in the City whose own residents are clueless as to their names and origins.
Princeton Heights? Kingsway East? Mark Twain/I-70 Industrial?
Not to mention the confusion over the West End and the Central West End. Some use the former to refer to the latter ignorant of the fact that they are “officially” two separate neighborhoods entirely. And the “official” West End includes only a small and north-centric portion of what the designation originally referred to.
The most famous falter of the city neighborhood designations is the Clayton-Tamm, Hi-Pointe, Franz Park, possibly also Cheltenham and Kings Oak debacle. It’s DOGTOWN. Some of those names are ridiculously bland and rightfully ignored. Where’s Laclede’s Landing on that official map? Where’s Chouteau’s Landing? Where’s Gaslight Square? Where’s Tower Grove Heights? Where’s Kingshighway Hills? Where’s Grand South Grand?
As far as Steve’s original post though, I think that St. Louis’s major roads truly do separate different neighborhoods in the same way that a busy interstate does. Kingshighway serves as a divider between almost every neighborhood that it is proximal to–save for Southwest Garden and Central West End. Interestingly, Southwest Garden used to be two separate neighborhoods named the “Southwest” neighborhood, sharing its identity with the Hill, and the “Garden” neighborhood, a satellite of Shaw. Central West End, then, is the only neighborhood that truly has always crossed Kingshighway in official designation. That’s probably because Kingshighway is fairly anti-pedestrian and carries a TON of traffic throughout. It’s not a good neighborhood centerpiece.
The point on smaller commercial streets, such as Cherokee and Chippewa, is well taken. And if urban density were restored to MLK, you’d be right on that one too. But as of now, it looks like a declined urban highway
And speaking of the CWE, that brings me to a question about neighborhoods…what size is too big or too small? The Central West End is huge, and the area of the CWE east of Boyle seems more like “SLU/Midtown” than the CWE proper. Also, Bevo, where I am from, is huge. Its northern end is much different than its southern, so much so that I wouldn’t truly call them connected in any significant way. Is it all history and politics in determining neighborhoods?
Anyhow, I could go on forever. But I’ll stop now. Very interesting thoughts. I’m a bit of a neighborhood fanatic…
A citizen assembly would be a great way to redraw neighborhood boundaries. This proposal has been offered as a way to redraw congressional districts (see http://bostonreview.net/BR31.5/gerken.html, proposal #2). A randomly selected group of city residents responsible for redrawing boundaries would better capture St. Louis Neighborhoods.
And to reiterate your point- Cherokee Street east of Jefferson is the dividing line of the Benton Park and Marine Villa neighborhoods. Which means half of Antique Row and nearly all of the Lemp Brewery is in the Marine Villa neighborhood, even though it is in the Benton Park historic district. And of course any article will refer to Lemp as being in the Benton Park neighborhood. When I tell people I live next to Antique Row in Marine Villa I’m usually met with a blank stare.
True, great challenge, and great comments but don’t get your hopes up. Constructive change requires leadership. Local elected leaders can’t even fix a broken school system. Imagine attempting to reorganize and define the meanings and purpose of neighborhoods.
The problem has been ongoing for so long that change from within appears impossible. About the only issue our local communities can agree on is the need to have a unified sewer district.
This criticism of the outdated and inappropriate of current boundaries may be similarly applied to the whole county. Any attempts to address micro-issues before the larger issues are addressed will only lead to frustration and disppointment.
This is an extremely important issue for the area and needs to be aired and debated. However, I doubt it will get any further than that.
Your logic can be extended in many ways. One of the most logical, but no so obvious, points i learned in grad school was that if you are laying out a redevelopment district, you should always include both sides of a street. Draw the line not in the middle of a street, but at the ally in the middle of the block. I know it is so logical… but how many redevelopment plans abandon half of a critical street edge.
One additional note,
While I agree that commerical streets should link to one another, not all streets are best defined as neighborhood commerical streets. An intersection like Kingshighway and Chippewa is more truly a multi-neighborhood or regional shopping/service destination. Your planning and government structure should recognize such differences in retail/office nodes.
In light of such a difference maybe you should consider a switch in logic. Make ward bounderies the same as neighborhood bounderies, thereby increasing aldermatic representation and reducing the number of neighborhoods. In such a scheem each neighborhood would have an aldermen. The Hill’s Aldermen, Soulard’s Aldermen, the Hill’s Aldermen, ONSTL’s Aldermen.
The second step would be the creation of 5-6 regional planning districts, of which a number of wards/neighborhoods (since they would be the same) are part of. Such a design would require aldermen to work together in the planning process for their neighborhoods and regions. Better yet, such a design would allow each aldermen to have a small neighborhood commerical area but require more groups to come together when thinking about the regional centers like Kingshighway and Chippewa, Delmar and Kingshighway, Grand and Gravois…
Maybe such a system would address the problems with the current aldermatic structure and representation?
^^ Jon, I agree with most of your thoughts, except for aligning Wards and Neighborhoods – makes sense in theory, but what do you do every 10 years when the Ward boundaries are redistricted? In order to be effective building blocks of community, neighborhoods need to be smaller than Wards, with stable borders over time.
Here’s how I think boundaries should be drawn:
Interesting topic for sure – but I guess I would question the need for changing neigborhood boundaries. Traditionally, a neighborhood is simply made up of people, business, etc that are close in proximity within a larger city. What difference does it make if the neigborhood line is drawn down the middle alley or the middle of the street – if I live one block on either side i still live in the neigborhood. This may sound simplistic, but having neighbors in different political subdivisions within the same neighborhood means that you have people in both areas pressuring their elected officials to do the same things (assuming all neighbors agree)and then you have hopefully two, three or even four elected officials supporting the same plan or idea as opposed to one. So I guess I refuse to beleive that the demise of certain commercial districts is due to an arbitrary neighborhood line – its probably more likely, in part, due to apathy on the part of the neighbors or the ineffectiveness of their elected officials, and a whole lot of other factors including economics, etc. – If your reasoning for changing the lines is with the hope of achieveing better outcomes along these commercial streets, I find it hard to beleive that drawing a line down the middle of say, Cherokee Street – will mean that one side of Cherokee Street will flourish and the other will not. Rather, the whole street will flourish or the whole street will fail.
I agree that it would be nice if neighborhoods were constant bounderies, but given the state of development throughout the city, I also think that the edges of neigborhoods do flucuate with population changes, particuarly in a neigborhood that is sucessful surrounded by an area that is failing. As the development expands so does the area assoicated with the growing neigborhood.
But I see your point. Still, the idea of wards roughly equaling neigborhoods in both numbers and size would be the best outcome, even if it meant those on the edges (for whom it is logical to think the link with any one neigborhood would be tenous)sometimes switched between neigborhoods.
I think you are underestimating the amount of cultural identity tied to physical location. Look at the Ville neighborhood. That neighborhood’s population has been drastically reduced, along with many of the historic Black institutions that grew and prospered in the ’50s and ’60s. However, ask almost anyone who grew up there and they will talk with pride about their neighborhood identity – the the culture of community only born through strong place-based identity.
It would be severely detrimental to the development of community if our neighborhoods had variable borders. Not only would it be a decennial headache as every neighborhood organization had to redefine its service area (and potentially kick off board members who get “redistricted out”) every 10 years, but would destroy the ability to maintain a stable place-based identity. In addition, subdividing the city into say 15 neighborhoods (the optimal number of aldermen is a topic for a different discussion) would lead to units much to large physically to form a cohesive community unit.
I agree that we need to reexamine our current neighborhood borders – once in a blue moon. There are many arbitrary lines that simply don’t make sense given the way people perceive their communities. I’m saying that a neighborhood is a completely different construct than a Ward and should be treated as such. However, they need to follow perceptual boundaries rather than political or population boundaries.
Hmm, I think you might have missed the flexablity I intended in my second answer to address your points. Either way, I think that even if you want to keep the neigborhood boundries fixed in the long term, the ward bounderies should roughly corespond in numbers and size to neigborhood boundries.
Steve
This is a good start on defining neighborhoods. My view is that the next step is to identify active neighborhood organizations that could make a difference. I see the city web site links to neighborhood organizations, but that does not really tell the story.
I am a board member of Union West Community Corporation in the 22nd ward in area 78 on the Community Information Network. (I live in the 15th ward)
We have recently had a break with the Alderman of the 22nd ward who, to make a long story short, wanted to control the organization for his own ends. The withdrawal of funding, while a problem is not the end of the world, we own some housing, and are building 9 for sale homes on Clara and Wells.
So the problem we are facing as board members is finding out if there any agencies that will advise or assist us in repositioning the organization. Does Slaco do that and are they effective? My impression is that they are pretty well a real estate organization.
So given the fact that we have to be precise I wonder what resources there really are for community organizations in general.
This is the crux of the problem in a way. Community organizations can circumvent the failures of ward politics. I realize there are a number of these organizations beholden to aldermen. But those that are independent represent the foundation of a new community. I know we have some hardworking, dedicated board members that live in the neighborhood, and with the right partnership the organization could become an effective grass roots contributor to the larger urban scene.
There is a whole world of exploration here. And I feel like it points to the need for an organization that is an active participant with all community organizations in the city. In a way it is more than just a question of boundaries, but rather a question of uniting the disparate human elements that exist within these boundaries. Those organizations then can and will create new boundaries.
To give an example what I mean, even though MLK is on the Northern boundary of Union West, a few years ago we were exploring connections with the MLK business association. It didnÂ’t go anywhere, but with additional outside input there could have been a partnership that might have flourished.
Finally I want to mention that I got a call from Jeremy Kohler from the Post-Dispatch today. I directed him to this website. Apparently the Post is going to do some kind of article about neighborhood organizations around the city. So your posting is timely.
Steve:
I couldn’t agree more that we need to align the information on the CIN with the actual neighborhood associations in existence, but I have a few questions about how we do this. First, are the neighborhood designations more official than being listed on the city’s website? That is to say, are they contained within an ordinance or some administrative edict? And, how do we go about aligning them, especially in some areas where there are no functional neighborhood associations?
Steve:
That would be not only a more extensive project, as you would need each association willing to change their own boundaries, since the boundaries are up to their members, but also very likely a futile waste of time, as neighborhood associations are typically the focus of home owners, not business owners. The purpose of the neighborhood associations tends to be to communicate issues in the neighborhood, like crime, trash, some development, and the like. But I agree that it is nice to have a commercial district in the “downtown” of a neighborhood, but I don’t think the NA’s will care much.
You might want to set your focus on the business associations, such as South Broadway, Downtown Dutchtown, Chippewa-Broadway, Chippewa Hampton, etc. They tend to focus on the business districts, and could use some realignment (mergers and divisions).
^I think you are missing the point. It makes no sense to think about a neigborhood without considering its comemrical/service core. Neigborhoods are really the same as villages, with a small defined core surrounded by a series of assoicated residential areas who identify the core as their center, usualy through the presnce of businesses, parks, churches, or other common spaces. By ignoring this critical component of what really makes a neigborhood/village, the city does more harm than good. The goal of rewriting the neigborhood boundries would be to recognise the connection between the business core and the surrounding residential areas. As you point out, the the city curently splits the business associations from the neigborhoods, something that makes no sense since the two are really inseperable. Why make any change if you are not going to address a fundamental flaw in the system?
Steve,
How do you deal with major streets like Kingshighway, Natural Bridge, S. Grand, and West Florissant?
Look at the areas around South Grand for example.
Meramec and Virginia makes a nice internal commercial center, while Grand is a major divider between say TGE and TGH.
If Grand becomes the center of neighborhoods, what happens to places like Tower Grove Heights versus Tower Grove East?
Granted, Dutchtown does extend west of Grand, but it doesn’t feel like the same neighborhood once you cross Grand.
One could argue that Dutchtown is too large of a neighborhood.
I agree revisiting the neighborhood boundaries is certainly an idea worth pursuing. Be careful what you wish for though. How much input did the citizens have the last time the 79 city neighborhood boundaries were updated/renamed? My guess would be not much given the fact that some of the names these neighborhoods are officially called were not based in daily reality and have never entered the vernacular of residents to this day.
I can only imagine the political jujitsu that would be wielded in various back rooms throughout the city government to carve up pieces of the city into new smaller entities or in the alternative, the attempts to add on to an existing successful neighborhood on the official city map which might create more problems than it solves. I can foresee the areas north of Delmar petitioning to be added to the CWE as a possibility if we are not using the major thoroughfares as neighborhood dividing lines anymore creating yet an even larger CWE neighborhood. Rather than helping stabilize commercial areas the successful residential areas may try and abandon the commercial districts all together leading to neighborhoods that are “balkanized” from commercial centers similar to congressional districts with obtuse tentacles stretching in strange directions which will create some politicians or urban planners version of a neighborhood. Or you could find a 5 mile long stretch of a commercial street like MLK itself listed as a separate and distinct “neighborhood” detached from the residential streets which it surrounds or corporate developers who try and create a “neighborhood” out of their latest acquisition target(s).
Even if the boundaries issue is not addressed my suggestion would be to begin a comprehensive city wide neighborhood program of putting up neighborhood signs on every public street corner where a neighborhood boundary ends throughout all the current various neighborhoods similar to what I observed in some of the historic districts including Heritage Hills and Mesta Park in your home town Steve–Oklahoma City. Doing so would alert people that they are entering Marine Villa or Gravois Park which are neighborhoods I know mostly in name only since few, if any, businesses share the neighborhood moniker to my knowledge. I normally pass through them both oblivious to their location and boundaries as I suspect most people who are not living there do. As a result, no matter which street you took, each time you entered a new neighborhood, if you were paying attention, you would notice the local neighborhood identifying sign and know which neighborhood you were in.
The only St. Louis neighborhood that I can think of that comes close to comprehensive signs alerting people which neighborhood they are in is the Hill–often considered one of the most stable and desirable places to live in the city even though it was divided by the construction of Highway 44 on the north side. Why not replicate that sense of people knowing the size and shape of their physical neighborhood boundaries throughout all the 78 other city neighborhoods?
Benton Park West would really benefit from such a program since it does lack a central commercial district not to mention north side neighborhoods like the Ville and Jeff Vanderlou that are struggling with maintaining their sense of community. If each neighborhood were represented with signs of their neighborhood along their sections of major thoroughfares I believe that would create a little incentive and competition among the neighborhood residents to bring whatever tools are legally at their disposal to improve their side of these commercial streets.
I understand the idea that multiple neighborhoods which share a commercial street can point fingers at each other while the problems languish but I worry the solution may lead to unintended negative consequences. Remember, the 14th street mall was firmly entrenched in only one neighborhood, ONSL, and that did not prevent it from disintegrating to the point of obsolescence. Also, has the area of MLK in JeffVanderlou containing both sides of the street east of Compton fared any better than the rest of the street divided between 16 other neighborhoods? Like it or not, many of the major thoroughfares are neighborhood dividing lines for the simple reason that physically they act as natural buffers and also people are more likely to know those streets (Jefferson, Kingshighway etc.) well even if they are not city residents.
Of course, if neighborhood signs start going up in well established non-controversial neighborhood boundary type areas first, it may persuade residents to want to change the names of their neighborhoods from the official listings so that Dogtown signs appear rather than the official Cheltenham/Kings Oak etc signs. and this may get the ball rolling on a discussion of the nature, size, and names of various city neighborhoods.
I look forward to your follow up post in marketing these neighborhoods which I think this suggestion will help tremendously. By the way, I chose an apartment in the Mesta Park neighborhood in Oklahoma City for grad school in part for the sense of community which was created by the signs–it was the cheapest distinct neighborhood I could afford at the time not knowing anyone in town. The signs made it appear like a real neighborhood as opposed to most of the other places I looked during my single day of apartment hunting. In terms of marketing our 79 STL neighborhoods, I can think of no single better project than being able to create a physical boundary of each distinct neighborhood for residents as well as visitors to see.