This week, as we were still riding high from the World Series victory, came a report indicating St. Louis is the most dangerous city in the country. Everyone is up in arms saying it is not true and the report is complete BS. Sorry to break it to you St. Louis, but we may very well be the most dangerous city. But what does it mean to the be the most dangerous?
First, someone has to be first on the list. For years we’ve been in the top five bouncing around from spot to spot so landing at #1 should not really come as a shocker. Many white members of the board of aldermen have voted against establishing civilian oversight for the police department. Our police board is controlled by the state, not the citizens of St. Louis. The police don’t want to live in the city. And why don’t they? With a few exceptions, the public schools suck big time. Gee, this isn’t exactly a formula for creating the safest city in the country.
Throughout the 20th Century St. Louis’ leadership made one bad decision after another. In 1916 the citizens of St. Louis passed an ordinance requiring racial segregation of the city! Although struck down by the courts a year later, the racial divide has stuck with us. In the 1940’s federal housing/lending policies pretty much sealed the fate of cities across the country but starving them of much needed lending guarantees. The feds made sure it was easier & cheaper to buy a new house in the emerging suburbs than a renovate old older place in the central core. Huge sections of cities, including St. Louis, were pretty much written off as “obsolete” in part because the areas freely mixed housing, retails and workplaces. Living above a corner store was considered a bad thing, creating risky neighborhoods. Granted, much of this housing stock lacked modern plumbing and electrical service. Conditions in these buildings were indeed poor. But, Soulard stands as a testament as to how these so-called obsolete buildings can be renovated and make useful for new generations.
Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 got people excited about creating grand urban places, part of the City Beautiful Movement (see wiki). By the time we hosted the World’s Fair in 1904 the movement was going strong. This prompted leaders in St. Louis to contemplate clearing the riverfront for such a grand space. The area, the oldest in St. Louis, was now marked territory. Why bother keeping it up? It was 30 years later before the demolition crews got started razing 40 city blocks as part of a WPA project. The original city was being tossed aside. For decades the area remained parking and it was not until the late 60’s the Arch was topped out and the landscaping didn’t happen until the 1970’s. The arch is a stunning monument but if I could turn back time and prevent the demolition of the riverfront I’d do it in a heartbeat.
But the riverfront gave the city leaders their first taste of wholesale demolition, the false notion that problems can simply be wiped away with bulldozers. They were oh so wrong then and yet we continue to see this same logic applied to day in recent projects like clearing McRee Town. In the meantime we saw entire neighborhoods divided for highway construction and others erased from the maps for housing projects that turned out worse than the “slums” they replaced. Pruitt-Igoe, one of the most infamous housing projects in the world, was razed less than 20 years after completion! Note: be sure to attend the lecture thursday afternoon on Modernist public housing — see post. In all of this demolition people were displaced and relocated, some numerous times. Social networks, the foundation of our society, were destroyed along with the physical structures.
The impact of all these decisions and others are not isolated, they are quite cumulative. Our current issues were not created today, they are the legacy of numerous prior decisions. One mistake after another, often in the name of progress of correcting a social ill, added to the problems rather than solving them. Today’s bad decisions — demolition of historic Century building for parking garage, anti-urban Loughborough Commons and suburban Sullivan Place senior housing to name a few — will be issues for St. Louisans to deal with in 30 years or more, long after those responsible are forgotten.
St. Louis lost roughly 60% of its population in a mere five decades. As the population dropped leaders and planners kept coming up with new schemes to turn around the situation, or so they presumed. A 1970’s plan for the city called for the entire destruction of the area we now know as The Gate District bounded by I-44 on the south, Grand on the west, Chouteau on the north and Jefferson on the east. Today St. Louis University is doing their best to destroy the western edge of that area with parking garages, street closures and new construction that doesn’t recognize the street.
Throughout the decades of population loss we increasingly were left with the poorest in society. Cities will always have poor, I don’t see a way around that. But cities must have a middle-class and recent studies are showing the middle class in this country is eroding. We are separating into poor & rich, not a good trend. In cities this, as we are witnessing, can be devastating. Someone who is poor is no more inherently pre-disposed to crime than anyone else. However, poverty and the feeling of desperation that pervades in areas of concentrated poverty can drive good folks to do bad things. Someone who has lost hope in their own future is apt to look for the easy road to our society’s symbols of success, fancy clothes, a sharp ride and some flashy bling. Those who engage in such criminal activity see this as their only choice. This lack of hope and choice among young people is our failure as a society. We have created and allowed this to continue and to grow.
I could go on and on but I won’t belabor the point. The city has screwed up repeatedly and we’ve yet to learn from past mistakes. So when a study says we are the most dangerous in the country I am not at all surprised. Rather than denying reality we must examine the underlying reasons for why we got to our current situation. We cannot continue to sweep those things that we find depressing or embarrassing under the rug. We should feel embarrassed!
Mayor Slay has been in office since 2001 and continues to use Reagan’s trickle down economics in the city. In theory all the attention downtown will eventually make its way to others parts of the city. Sure, in 50-60 years if we are lucky? Washington Avenue, the Old Post Office, Ballpark Village, Convention Hotel, riverfront master plan, Chouteau’s Lake —- all downtown focused. I’m not saying these are not worthwhile efforts but the trickle isn’t happening. A suburban Walgreen’s store in a poor inner-city neighborhood isn’t going to cut it. That cannot be our only plan of action. We need large quantities of middle class people, and not those uptight provincial ones either. We need creative types that appreciate an urban city, not some suburban recreation in an urban area. We need to attract new people and new money from outside our region. New people and new money will help create the hope that doesn’t currently exist in much of our youth out on the streets committing crimes.
How do we get these new middle-class residents? Transit, I believe, is a big part of the answer. Good urban mass transit will attract development and population. But where is Slay or County Executive Dooley on more funding for transit? They are nowhere to be found but Slay is out front seeking for a billion dollar highway bridge to Illinois. East-West Gateway is studying options for transit through north & south St. Louis but these are planned as a future pass through to the county. As it stands, we are likely 15 years away from riding the first train along Natural Bridge or Jefferson. If we locally funded a modern streetcar, or guided tram as Milwaukee is considering, we could probably cut the cost and time in half. Milwaukee ruled out light rail in favor of a guided tram due to cost of construction, $45 million per mile vs “only” $21 million per mile, respectively. See the Milwaukee Connector site for more information.
Next week we vote on a sales tax increase to fund two new recreation centers, one north and one south, along with maintenance for the ones we’ve got. Will this attract new residents? Will it entertain the youth to the point they now have hope in their futures? Doubtful.
St. Louis may well be the most dangerous city in America. I can accept that and work to change the underlying causes. When you vote Tuesday keep that in mind, are you voting for more of the same? When filing opens at the end of this month for half the seats in the Board of Aldermen & two seats on the school board will you sit back and assume that others will solve these issues or will you step forward to chart a new course for the city? Our entrenched leadership has gotten us where we are today — the top of the most dangerous city list. It is now up to us to work to change that reality. If we do not, we cannot bitch about remaining on top in the years to come.
The Arch City Chronicle is reporting that Christian Saller is tossing his hat into the ring to become the next alderman for the 6th Ward. Kacie Starr Triplett and Patrick Cacchione have already made their intentions clear. Cacchione is having a kick-off party tonight. 
Constitutional Amendment No. 3 (Initiative Petition)