Ald. Jennifer Florida First St. Louis Alderman to Begin Blogging

It seems Ald. Jennifer Florida has become the first Alderman in the City of St. Louis to start a blog as part of her means of communications with constituents and other interested parties such as myself. This is an about face for Florida with respect to blogs, in June she called this site a “stupid blog.” It would appear that Florida has seen the effectiveness of the web as a means of communication and wants to take more control over the message in the 15th Ward. My reaction? Great, what took so long and when are the rest going to follow suit?

When I was running for the St. Louis Board of Aldermen in early 2005 one of the very first things I did was work on a communications strategy. On 1/22/05 my campaign blog went live. From that first post :

I’m pleased to announce that the latest news for my campaign will be presented in a blog format. I will keep voters, volunteers, contributers and the public informed of happenings and appearances via this space. I will also be discussing various issues in greater detail here as well. I will demonstrate to the voters that I am a thinking candidate – I will bring up issues and offer solutions. The comments section will be an opportunity for the public to tell me if I am on tract or not. Public feedback to aldermen is a key component that is missing from our current system. Part of the reason I decided on 25thward.com as my website address is because I think this will serve me well once elected to office. Through this website address I will be able to keep the residents of the 25th Ward informed of hot issues, public meetings, request feedback on upcoming decisions. Making use of current technology will just be one way of being an effective alderman

I touched on this issue a week later on 2/1/05:

So many people say we are not Chicago. True, we are not. We don’t have the population density, the vibrant streets, the thousands of bike racks or Aldermen using the internet to communicate the relevant (albeit mundane) information to ward constituents. Chicago’s aldermen are taking that extra step to use the internet to keep their constituents informed of issues and meetings.

St. Louis’ current system of keeping constituents informed is for aldermen to attend the various neighborhood meetings and give a city hall update to the few people present. Little information is actually communicated – no visuals, no maps, no links to other resources. If you didn’t make it to the meeting you are out of luck. You might get some of the information in a neighborhood newsletter a month or two later – if you are on their mailing list.

My campaign is about bringing fresh thinking to the 25th ward and entire City of St. Louis. Moving the level of communications between city hall and constituents into the 21st century is just one example.

In numerous posts since then, and by way of example, I have shown that complex issues can be effectively communicated and debated. Not everyone will agree on issues. That is the purpose of public discourse, to share perspectives. It is imperative for our elected representatives to hear all sides of issues and from as many people as feasible. With the internet that is unlimited. It is also important to get feedback from all city residents as development projects, by default must take place within a ward, they can have an impact on the entire city.

I applaud Jennifer Florida for being the first St. Louis alderman to make that leap into the 21st Century with modern communications technology. For those aldermen reading this on their old Gateway computer with Windows 95 let me help clarify for you what we are talking about. A “blog” is a form of website. In the old days of the internet, websites were complicated and often costly to set up. No so these days, the blog technology behind the scenes make the setup and posting amazingly simple. The underlying software that runs a blog is referred to these days as “content management” software. So a teenagers blog on myspace.com might well be about what she did today but in the political world a blog can be a means of managing content — notices about upcoming meetings, links to legislation, open discussion on topics under consideration for legislation and of course community visioning. The RSS feed provided via content management software lets more savvy users know when new posts are available for viewing. This information comes to those who want it. The resident who can’t make that 6pm community meeting because they don’t get off work until 10pm can read the site at any time it suits them. The more content the more informed they will be.

I think Jennifer Florida will quickly realize how effective this tool can be, hopefully sharing her experience with her colleagues. One Alderman recently told me he was in Chicago and met someone at an event with the alderman saying he was from St. Louis and the guy asked, “Oh, do you know Steve Patterson’s blog?” Needless to say, this alderman couldn’t believe that he met some random person at a Chicago function and the guy mentions me. It was beyond his comprehension that people in Chicago would be reading about issues in St. Louis. I explained to him, as I have above, how blogs work. He has yet to take my advice. I think many still believe they need thousands of dollars, many computer wizards and hours upon hours of time to have a website. This view is as outdated as our zoning.

So, I’m going to make the members of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen an offer in the interest of better communications. I’m willing to give them a presentation on how to set up and maintain a blog. All I ask is that they have at least 4 aldermen present, I can’t take the time one on one unless I’m getting paid. And I am willing to do that — if you want me to help get you started I can do that on the clock as they say. Only conditions here is that I will disclose that I have done so and that my helping in that regard does not constitute any form of endorsement. My goal is to get all 28 aldermen blogging about community meetings, issues, proposed development and such. I might even be able to talk my friend Antonio French of PubDef into co-presenting to them on blogging. And what about those elected aldermen and city council folks in the balance of the region? Sure, I want to see communications increase throughout the region so I can be persuaded to come talk to you as well.

Visit Alderwoman Jennifer Florida’s 15th Ward Blog and also take a look at a review of Florida’s blog by 15th Ward resident Steve Wilke-Shapiro.

St. Louis Cardinals Unveil [Model] Ballpark Village

Today the St. Louis Cardinals, The Cordish Company (developer) and the City of St. Louis announced an “agreement in principal” on the much debated Ballpark Village project. The Ballpark Village site is to be located where the old Busch Stadium was located from 1966-2005, currently the mud hole you see at right. To be fair, the new stadium just opened this year with the north facade facing us in this view just getting finished very recently. Clearly, considerable attention and work has gone into the future of the now vacant site. OK, we’ve established they have not been sitting around. What have they been up to?

First, lets get oriented. The view at right is taken from the posh branch office of The Cordish Company located on the 17th floor of the Bank of America tower at the NW corner of 8th & Walnut. The street in the left of the image is Walnut and 8th street is in the right. Clark Street now runs along the north side of the new stadium (Note: I am not sure if this is a “public” street or privately controlled street). At the far side of the image is Broadway in front of the horrible parking garage structure. In the bottom of the image is the roof of the Bowling Hall of Fame. Curving in front of the hall of fame is 7th street with one-way traffic heading north. It should be noted, all the streets mentioned are one-way with the sole exception of Clark.

… Continue Reading

Cardinals to hold Press Conference on Ballpark Village

The press released handed to Antonio French, sitting at my right at the Board of Aldermen meeting, says:

The City of St. Louis, The St. Louis Cardinals, and the Cordish Company cordially invite you to a special announcement this afternoon (Friday, October 27) at 1:00pm at The Cordish Company’s Ballpark Village office located in the Bank of America at 800 Market Street, 17th Floor, Suite 1750.

Any guesses on how much the Cardinals are going to ask from the tax payers?

How Does St. Louis Stack Up To Detroit

I’ve only been to Detroit once, this past July. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I’ve been through Detroit. I was returning to St. Louis from Toronto via Greyhound and had a brief pitstop in the U.S. Customs check point as well as the bus terminal. Neither, as you might expect, were impressive.

As the bus returned to the surface after going through the tunnel under the canal connecting two great lakes: St. Clair & Erie, I managed to snap the shot you see at right. The tall towers are Renaissance Place, home to General Motors and one of Detroit’s costly “urban renewal” attempts. The towers looked much better when viewed from across the canal from Windsor, Ontario.

Detroit has many things in common with St. Louis, besides being in the 2006 World Series. For starters, we both have a Fox Theatre. In fact, our Fox and their Fox are twins. The attractive similarities end there. Tragic similarities include massive highway projects that divided both cities, large scale urban renewal projects designed from an anti-city perspective and massive population losses. St. Louis has Delmar as a racial dividing line while Detroit has 8-Mile as the separator between city and county.

Detroit, at its peak in the 1950s, had around 1,850,000 in population for a density of 13,309 people per square mile. St. Louis, also peaking in the 1950s, had roughly 850,000 in our smaller 62 square miles for a population density of 13,709. Today, however, detroit is more densely populated than St. Louis. Per MayorSlay.com, Detroit has “approximately 950,000 residents” and is “approximately 139 square miles in area.” To refresh your memory, St. Louis has roughly 350,000 residents within 62 square miles. That works out to a density of 6,834 people per square mile in Detroit and only 5,645 people per square in St. Louis. To look at this another way, to equal Detroit’s recent population density we’d need a total of 423,708 residents — an increase of 73,708 people! That represents more than a 20% increase over our current population numbers, and that is just to get to their low number with respect to density. I want to see St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay bet Detroit’s mayor not on the outcome of the World Series but that we’ll match their population density in say 10 years.

I’ve posted a few more pictures, including a couple of Detroit as seen from Windsor, Ontario, on my Flickr account in group on Detroit. Not that Wiki is perfect but here are links to St. Louis and Detroit.

Well, time to stop writing and start rooting. It is top of the 7th in Game 4 of the World Series and we are down a run to Detroit.

French & Patterson on Public Radio Program: ‘Open Source with Christopher Lydon’

Yesterday the national radio program, Open Source with Christopher Lydon, focused on the Missouri Senate race. My friend and fellow blogger Antonio French of PubDef was among the guests during the hour-long program.

Open Source interviewed me in advance for a short edited bit on St. Louis. My piece, which closed out the show, is just over two minutes and starts at the 49 minute mark. Click here for the program’s website with a link to the MP3 file for your listening pleasure. Open Source airs Monday-Thursday on over 30 public radio stations across the country (including WGBH in Boston) and on XM Satellite.