Regional goals/strategies for 2010

Many of us use this time of year develop goals/strategies for ourselves, personally & professionally. I have a number for myself as well as this site.  But I think this would also be good practice for cities & regions.  The following are suggestions I have for the City of St. Louis and the St. Louis region to adopt for this year:

Region as a whole, including all counties & municipalities:

• Rethink land development practices.  Concentrate not on assembling land, but on infilling existing areas at higher densities and at a finer grain & highly connected.
• Rethink funding mechanisms for infrastructure and projects.  Find ways to decrease one municipality trying to steal sales tax dollars or employers from another.
• Work on ways to reduce the total number of units of government including, but not limited to, municipalities, school districts, fire protection districts, etc…
• Create a cooperative agreement among municipalities in the region’s core  (both sides of the river) to work on big picture planning for the older center.  Shared issues such as aging infrastructure, population loss, urban infill, and public transit can bring these cities together to share ideas and to leverage their collective strength.
• Understand that by creating a great region in which to live more people will visit and stay.

St. Louis County:

• Pass the dedicated transit tax in St. Louis County on April 6, 2010. See Greater St. Louis Transit Alliance for more information.

City of St. Louis:

• Establish a forum for citizens to explore changes to the city’s charter. Many ideas exist about the problems and solutions – these need to be discussed.
• Along the same lines work to shift control of the police force from Missouri to our local leaders.
• Drop the idea of rejoining St. Louis County.
• Set up group to begin looking into the long process of changing our outdated zoning code.

There are probably many more items for these lists but the above is a starting point.  Happy New Year!

– Steve Patterson

Closing out 2009

A year ago I said good riddance to 2008 – a horrible year for me personally. I ended the post with this:

Going into 2009 I’m optimistic about my own future and that of our city, state, country and world.  I’m in a better mindset than I was a year ago.

2009 was a rough year for many, worse than I would have projected a year ago.  Still, I remain optimistic about the future and look forward to 2010.

Throughout 2009 I continued to my recovery from my February 2008 stroke.  In June I completed the coursework for my Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Real Estate Development (UPRED) degree at Saint Louis University.  I participated in the December graduation ceremony but I’m still wrapping up my capstone (thesis) on pedestrian malls. It will be complete within a month.  In October I decided to leave the Real Estate profession as I won’t have time for that as I build a client base for my urban planning services.   Big change.

I’m encouraged by the reluctance of the public to go crazy with poor fuel economy vehicles despite low gas prices.  The gas price spikes of 2008 appear to have changed the attitudes of many.  More automakers are planning fuel efficient internal combustion vehicles and mainstream plug-in hybrids will arrive on the market late in 2010. “Green” is being embraced by more and more people.

I see more considering urban living (vs. suburban).  The decline of inner cities didn’t happen overnight.  Making urban living the norm for most Americans will take just as long, perhaps longer.  Generations younger than mine (I’m 42) will lead the masses back to the older core of regions. But generations older than me are also realizing once their kids are gone they are free to leave suburbia behind and enjoy the urban lifestyle they gave up decades earlier.   Those with kids in school may continue living in the suburbs but their expectations are different than their parents.  They want connectivity rather than isolation.  They want walkability rather than strictly driveability.  They may not know the words but they reject the strict separation of uses that has been the foundation of suburbia.

Diverse & walkable neighborhoods may not become the norm in my lifetime but I sense that with each passing year we will move in that direction.

Have a safe & happy New Years Eve!

– Steve Patterson

Readers: consolidate local school districts

The poll last week was about schools.  Most of the 89 that responded felt more school districts in our region should be consolidated.

Wellston schools are merging with Normandy schools, should more school districts in the region merge?

Yes: 60 (67%)
No: 16 (18%)
Unsure/no opinion: 13 (15%)

The following is a map of the public school districts in two of the region’s 16 counties: St. Louis City & St. Louis County.

Image Source

The map only tells park of the picture.  For more we need to look at enrollment.

Wellston, that is being consolidated with Normandy, is the smallest district on the list.  The troubled St. Louis district, on the other hand, is the largest.  But we can’t conclude that small or large is uniformly bad.  Other factors, such as the overall economic demographic of the geographic area, are just as important in determining the overall success of a school district.  Districts in economically poor areas, in my view, are certain to perform below expectations regardless of the amount of money expensed per student.

The best solution may be consolidation of some and splitting up of others – with an eye toward diverse economics and neither too small or too big with respect to the total enrollment.

– Steve Patterson

Great buildings have been built in the worst of economic times

Last week AIA St. Louis noted Radio City Music Hall opened this week during the Great Depression (Dec. 27, 1932). Like our current situation with the stalled Ballpark Village project, plans for the site were stalled due to the economic conditions.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. held a $91 million, 24-year lease on a piece of midtown Manhattan property properly known as “the speakeasy belt.” Plans to gentrify the neighborhood by building a new Metropolitan Opera House on the site were dashed by the failing economy and the business outlook was dim. Nevertheless, Rockefeller made a bold decision that would leave a lasting impact on the city’s architectural and cultural landscape. He decided to build an entire complex of buildings on the property-buildings so superior that they would attract commercial tenants even in a depressed city flooded with vacant rental space. The project would express the highest ideals of architecture and design and stand as a symbol of optimism and hope. (Source: Radio City Music Hall)

Rockefeller saw the need to react and devised a new development strategy.

St. Louis is lacking leaders with the courage to change direction in the face of adversity.   We need people to build lasting quality.  If the St. Louis Cardinals had political & financial pressure on them the Ballpark Village site would be platted for others to begin developing it piece by piece.

I’ve seen one show inside Radio City, the interior is stunning.

I simply don’t buy the argument Ballpark Village isn’t happening because of the 2009 economy.  The massive project was announced in the Fall of 2006.

12/1/2008: The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy.  (source; CNN Money)

The Cardinals & Cordish had a year before the downturn started to get the project off the ground.  It didn’t happen because the entertainment district concept is not a sound investment.  The economy is an excuse to cover for a failed development concept.

– Steve Patterson

Growth of auto related structures

In the earlier days of motoring cities had a good balance of transportation options with most living within walking distance of goods, services and mass transit.  Gas stations, auto dealers and service shops sprang up but they did so in a more restrained way then. Early service stations used massing, design and materials to be compatible with residential neighbors.

The above service station at Bates & Morganford (map), once sold gas in addition to servicing vehicles.

840,000 people in St. Louis owned 165,000 automobiles and trucks in 1946. By 1970 it is estimated that there will be about 230,000 automobiles and trucks. This figure does not include streetcars and busses or the many thousands of new cars and trucks in suburban areas, all of which are potential users of city streets. The annual traffic in St. Louis will be increased from 1,531,000,000 to 2,403,000,000 vehicle miles by 1960 (Estimate by Missouri State Highway Department, Highway Planning Survey.). This is a lot of traffic. It cannot be accommodated on our present street system. It will require new and enlarged adequate flow channels as well as a high degree of regulation and control.(source: 1947 Comprehensive Plan for St. Louis)

So the city continued widening streets and requiring more and more parking. We know today the more you accommodate cars the more you will have to accommodate.  From a 2004 St. Louis Federal Reserve report, “The total number of registered vehicles in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Clair County (the most populated areas of the St. Louis metro area) is about 1.4 million.” So clearly the number of registered vehicles has increased dramatically. St. Louis was not alone in this unattainable goal of accommodating the automobile, take Hartford CT as an example:

For the past half-century, city leaders in Hartford have worked hard to satisfy what they deemed to be a critical need – the need for more parking, so that downtown Hartford could compete with suburban office parks and shopping centers.

This summer the Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of Connecticut conducted a detailed study of the cumulative effect on the city of 50 years of providing parking. What we found was startling: Since 1960, the number of parking spaces in downtown Hartford increased by more that 300 percent – from 15,000 to 46,000 spaces. This change has had a profound and devastating effect on the structure and function of the city as one historic building after another was demolished.

And what did the city gain from this assiduous drive to provide sufficient parking? Was it able to grow more prosperous by providing more jobs and housing for more people? If this was the desired outcome, we can consider the past 50 years to have been an abysmal failure. Over the period that parking was being increased by more than 300 percent, downtown was losing more than 60 percent of its residential population, and the city as a whole lost 40,000 people and 7,000 jobs.

Yet the perception of Hartford as a city perennially short of parking and in need of more parking has never slackened. How could this be?

Well, the simple answer is that parking and transportation policy in Hartford has had the perverse effect of inducing an unending cycle of more demand for parking. Like a dog chasing its tail, the city is constantly playing catch-up – the more parking provided, the more parking is needed.  (full story: Hartford: It’s A Parking Place)

I believe cities could have achieved a better balance by accepting the car as a given but not go hog wild to make driving so easy to drive everywhere. A look at architecture from the early 20th century gives us a guide for achieving this balance in the 21st century.

The first step is to build quality buildings that outlive their original use. Even auto dealerships need not be acres and acres of cars.

The above is about 6-8 blocks West of the Packard dealership.   This was St. Louis’ auto row back in the day.  The building on the left is now the popular restaurant The Fountain on Locust:

Our building was constructed in 1916 as the showroom for the Stutz Blackhawk and the Stutz Bearcat, both considered top of the line, high performance sports sedans of the time.

In later decades auto row moved to South Kingshighway. The scale was different than on Locust but the automobile didn’t overpower the people.

Above this service center, likely an early dealership, is adjacent to an apartment building with street-level retail.  Balance.

Further down the street we see (below) an auto service building nestled between a single family house (left) and a two-family (right).

Is it ideal? Far from it but I bet most that drive by don’t notice it.

Auto dealerships weren’t confined to Locust and Kingshighway.  Other major thoroughfares such as Natural Bridge and Gravois also had dealerships:

The buff brick building with the street trees in front was an auto dealership for decades.  The late Dave Mungenast got his start working at a motorcycle dealer on Locust while he was a student at Saint Louis University.  He operated a Toyota dealership in this building from 1966-1975.    Today it houses the Dave Mungenast’s Classic Motorcycles Museum.

Mini of St. Louis (above) at Maryland & Gay (map) in Clayton is the only current example I can think of where the dealership doesn’t overpower the neighbors.

The once charming service station has grown over the decades to become the now ubiquitous gas station that is seen everywhere:

Of course along with the above we have an increasing string of former gas stations that have little use beyond used car dealership.

So much in our cities has grown bigger but not better.  The old buildings and sites are disposable.

– Steve Patterson