Jim Zavist says:

“I love the countryside and rural America and I want it to stay that way.” I do too. “‘Urbanization’ will shift from being the consumption of farm land to the conversion of non-walkable areas into denser walkable areas.” How do you know? What proof do you have? I would hope that that’s true, but I have yet to see little evidence of this happening anywhere in the country, much less around here.
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I do believe that the city and the inner-ring suburban cities will see reinvestment and hopefully some densification – hopefully our population loss has bottomed out. But I also fully expect us to continue to convert farmland to subdivisions on both sides of the river. We all know the “reasons” why, whether they’re valid or not – crime, schools, racism, earnings tax and the desire to have “my own yard”. Plus, that’s where the majority of the new jobs are locating, whether it’s that new retail complex, Mastercard, Monsanto, GM or even some of A-B’s operations.
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To make our core area more urban requires making the core area the place to be, for both jobs and a place to live. Having and visiting relatives in Chicago for all of my 55 years, I’ve watched the renaissance of their core – it’s been something I never really expected and it’s a model of what could and should happen here. I don’t know all the why’s of how it’s happened, but I do know that good transit and a vibrant economic scene both help, along with multiple reasons for out-of-town people to visit, including probably too many from St. Louis.
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Yes, St. Louis has a huge amount of potential to do things right. What we don’t have is strong, cooperating leadership, in both the public and private sectors. We face continued erosion of our employment base and we offer only limited, and no real new, reasons to come here for the weekend. Taste of Chicago, IKEA, Wrigleyville and O’Hare simply have no local equivalent.
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The number of government entities is a symptom, but it’s not the core problem – greater Chicago probably has nearly as many on a per capita basis. Our fundamental problem remains a myopic focus on local taxes. Metro’s in the fix its in BECAUSE it doesn’t have a consistent and equitable tax base – it’s a regional utility and it should be funded regionally. Too many municipalities are trying to steal businesses from their neighbors (for the siren call of higher sales taxes) and the developers have become extremely adept at playing the tax incentive game. If consolidation would solve that problem, fine. But politically, it may be easier to outlaw new improvement districts and to funnel all sales taxes through the county and get us off of the never-ending, zero-sum arms race of bulldozing existing residential neighborhoods to build new shopping centers!

Rob says:

Keep in mind that Leinberger also says that preferences for suburban or urban split about 50-50 in the US. Suburbs will never go away, we’ll just see those 50 percent of us that were never really given the viable option of walkable urbanism but wanted it are going to start having their demand met. As that other 50% continues to prefer living in suburbs, they’re going to want the local control that resulted in many tiny governments in the first round of suburbanization. Perhaps we’ll see some fiscally stressed municipalities merge (many already have begun sharing in things like police and fire protection). But the market for suburban housing is likely to become more specialized as people are finally given choice and tiny municipalities can market local control to those who hold it as a key concern.
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In terms of the future of the City, think of it this way – considering that 50-50 preference split and low population growth, the St. Louis region has an over-supply of suburban housing and an enormous under-supply of viable walkable urban neighborhoods. Instead of pushing consolidation, we need to focus on making the City the kind of place that those 50% who prefer walkable urbanism will want to be (before New Towns and Brentwood Boulevards get to them). If we’re successful in this, a likely problem in 50 years is what to do with abandoned suburban neighborhoods. As the housing market meets demand for walkable urbanism, the maintenance of dead post-war and McMansion suburbs would end up being a liability to the City in a consolidated City-County.

kael anderson says:

A reduction in the number of municipalities is an important long-term goal. However it’s very challenging. There has been very little municipal consolidation throughout the US’ history — even though most studies point to substanial benefits. The Louisville-Jefferson County, KY merger is the only substatial municipal merger the US has seen in decades. Locally, the stagnant Richmond Heights-Clayton merger provides another example of the steep challenges of such a combination.

Promoting informal municipal collaboration can be a very effective short- and long-term tool. Such collaboration can achieve many of the objectives of a merger without the exorbitant political and financial costs of a merger. Encouraging dialogue, bringing municipal leaders to the same table, and educating the public can be very effective strategies. Even if the focus of a given meeting is on a small item like coordinating a regional marketing program, the face-to-face collaboration is valuable for building shared interests and trust — that ultimately can pave the way for greater collaboration, including wholesale municipal merger. It’s my impression that the BeyondHousing effort was/is a successful example of informal collaboration.

john says:

Leinberger is right in many respects but behind the times. The change began in many urban communities over 25 years ago, not in just the last 15. StL is one of the best examples of where these trends are not happening and it is primarily due to its divisive, low value added and small town perspectives that dominate regional leadership debates.
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In prosperous and booming Chicago, the trend to move back to the city from the burbs began in the early 80s. The changes have been quite dramatic as the value of real estate skyrocketed and many new condo high rises were built. The city supported community efforts to make neighborhoods more attractive. Daley learned valuable lesson from his European experiences. Major boulevards were made more pedestrian friendly, bike lanes were added and so was beautiful landscaping. These major advances have propelled the Windy City to be ranked #4 by SustainLane US City Rankings. The city has made it clear that people, not cars, will be favored, the opposite of the Lou.
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You’re definitely right though that our fragmentation is a serious roadblock and I don’t see any reason for this to change until the area hits bottom. That decline has been exacerbated by the major spending decisions that have been ill conceived, poorly designed and mismanaged. The obvious and recent ones are the Page Extension, Lambert Extension, Metro Extension and the New 64. We are stuck with a small town perspective as long as the area remains divided by design.

kael anderson says:

Maybe i’m a suburban apologist, but I think it’s important to appreciate the steps the more suburban areas of the region have taken to urbanize. Even though “new town” / “new urbanist” developments don’t meet our ideals of development, they’re still better than sprawling single family developments that might otherwise occur. As has been noted before, the desire for suburbia will inevitably persist.
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I too take Leinberger with a grain of salt. While I wasn’t in a position to hear this Leinberger talk, it sounds like vintage Leinberger – using his interim brookings title to ride on the coattails of a dead horse.

Dave says:

I couldn’t agree more with many of the comments in this post. The best solution for the city is to provide amenities that the suburbs could never offer. This starts with a mayor who makes people the priority over the car. We need to find a way to provide better public transportation within the city limits, be it streetcar or new metrolink lines. Our zoning codes need to be set so that developments are people-centric (washington ave. redevelopment) as opposed to auto-centric (Loughborrow commons). We need to support and encourage diversity within the city (thankfully, we already are doing this). We need to preserve our existing architecture instead of bulldozing it for new development or proposed development that never happens. We need to find a better way to integrate our riverfront with the city.

Let’s make the city by far the leader in green developments by continuing to re-use existing structures and demand green-development standards that surpass those of the suburbs. Let’s provide tax breaks for those companies that build or expand within the city using green development. Let’s aggresively market sites within the city to retail companies not already located in the metro-area to encourage suburban families to shop or dine within the city.

Our city has made great strides but IMO it hasn’t differentiated itself far enough from the suburbs. If you look at a city like Chicago, it’s clear that the city is far different than the suburbs.

John Daly says:

Great points Dave. When I think out outstanding leadership traits, I’m afraid our current administration leaves much to be desired. I once listened to a speech prior to a road race and almost dozed off at the starting line.

Mark, I’ve never lived in the City but did a fair amount of research so I could try and make the sell to my wife. We looked at some homes and decided that Tower Grove Christian was going to be our school, until I saw the price for four kids! Maybe we could have made it work, maybe not. Although the house we’re now in fell out of nowhere and it’s within budget and has land and really is an answer to prayer.

One last comment about leadership. Maybe this is being done now but if I were mayor I would be spending a lot of time with our first responders. This would mean doing ride-a-longs with police, eating meals at the fire houses, etc. Going to the schools pretty much on a daily basis, doing whatever it took to give folks confidence that they have chosen to live in a great place.

b says:

Rob,

“If we’re successful in this, a likely problem in 50 years is what to do with abandoned suburban neighborhoods.”

You’re correct except for the time frame.

Entire North County neighborhoods will be wiped out in the next 2-3 years. The process is well on its way and is extremely under reported.

As far as the city goes, you can plan, theorize and discuss all you want. Safety is probably the main reason people don’t move to the city.

I lived in Dutchtown not too far from Steve for 10 years and for about 7 of them things were ok. The last three were a nightmare as I found out as I viewed a police report listing 90% of the residents of McRee Town were relocated to Dutchtown areas. Literally overnight petty car break ins turned into weekly shootings.

My gutted 2400sq ft rehab lost tremendous value immediately.

Still, I liked the city vibe and looked downtown. I just couldn’t get past the safety issue and wondering if I was trading one set of problems for another. Ultimately I couldn’t pull the trigger and moved to Wentzville.

Pretty boring out here, I’ll have to add but I still get my city fix about once a week. Probably be a city rat for life.

I’ve still given some thought to moving downtown once in a while but can’t get past the safety issue. I am well aware that for every killing on the streets there are at least 20 or 30 shootings that don’t even make the news. Probably more. I am also cognizant of the fact that a couple of random acts of violence can quickly turn a once safe street into one that’s questionable.

That being said, I don’t believe we have reached the point where any further out is just too far.

America is just too fat and lazy to abandon their car and start walking-even if everything were within walking distance. Huge strides are being made with electric vehicles and in 50 years will probably be the norm.

Anyway, downtown has a lot of potential but the antiquated structure of the city government doesn’t lend to any real reform or progress being made.

Tim E says:

I think St. Louis County is starting to realize that it is not a city/county split but actually an urban and non-urban split in the county. So what would I propose from here.

For the city, it is simpler in some respects. First, start reconnecting neighborhoods/street through infrastructure and greenway development. Rebuilding Memorial Shore as an at grade blvd in place of the I-70 trench is a great example of what needs to be done. Rebuild bridges over I-64 to better connect CWE with FPSE is another. Second, rebuild schools. Something that will improve education that all politicians can agree upon. All these have a much better chance of happening if they city is prepared for what Obama is promising. That might mean a propert tax increase for schools to match local funding. However, I think the challenge again is with taxes. The city needs to reform and at least reduce its citys earnings tax!! period if it wants to compete for business.

The County is a little tougher. It is recognition that the county has to get communities within the I-270 belt to consiladate more. If anything, try to get communities at the table together for planning zoning together. Brentwood, Clayton, Maplewood, Richmond Heights and even Shrewsbury have a great opportunity to rebuild density around a light rail corridor while having two major arterials in Brentwood and Hanley Ave connected to I-64. They have the best and newest infrastructure around. Unfortunately, Richmond Heights is leading the Hadley township down to ruin for the sake of promised sales tax revenue.

Another major problem is recognizing that Missouri flood plain developement is not the saviour for all. Unfortunately, you are not going to reverse what Chesterfield has done. However, the county might have a chance to convince Maryland Heights to redevelop West Port plaza by trying again with the Daniel Boone Metrolink expansion. Of course, it would also take land purchases from the truck farmer in the Howard Bend plain and turning a blind eye away from sales tax.

Jim Zavist says:

I attended the Metro meeting yesterday where their cuts in transit service were described. And while I was very impressed with how well their staff had listened to and responded to public comments on their original proposals last summer, resulting in as good a plan as possible given the need to cut service by 25%-30%, one disturbing urban design component surfaced. More than a dozen major senior communities and four hospital campuses in St. Louis County are going to lose all public transit service as a result of these cutbacks, impacting their ability to hire service workers and limiting access for patients without their own vehicles. This is, unfornately, a direct result of planning decisions made to build these new hospitals and senior housing facilities on suburban campuses, when nothing else around them supports public transit, making them difficult to serve in good times, and vulnerable to cutbacks like the ones that need to be made now!

Bryan says:

This was a great discussion to read! I think everyone here had something valuable to add to the discussion….something I am not use to see in on “the net”.

I am a graduate student, who is interested in putting together a report on the fragmentation of St. Louis and the problems it has caused. I am not sure if it is too late to get a response here, but I would like to know what problems have occurred, because of so many municipalities. If anyone cares to elaborate on previous statements or give new ones, I would much appreciate it.

St. Louis is a wonderful city and I wish the best for everyone there, but I worry there is too much competition within the metro area, rather than the region or nation. St. Louis is struggling to compete against other cities as a result, as seen with the corporations that set off for new cities. I think this problem needs to be made more apparent to the elected officials. Municipalities need to collaborate more effectively and push for better regional growth.

Bryan says:

Thanks Jimmy Z! You brought up some great points, which I hope to explore in my research.

St. Louis County has its fair share of “negatives” as well. However, I do understand your point and it is a good one you are making.

“People only care about themselves” seems to be an underlying theme in your response. Although, with the current presidential election results, it seems people are thinking about more than themselves, which is very promising! Please do not confuse my happiness as candidate favoritism. It seems the young adults, as well as other age groups, are looking for major reforms, particularly social ones. Could these desires help pave the way to better inter-municipal collaboration? I guess we shall see.

Jimmy Z says:

I’m going to/probably already sound like an old fart, but I was young and more idealistic once, too. Having been in involved in community activism and politics for 20 years now, I’ve come to realize (and accept?) certain truisms. One, 90%, or more ,of the people out there really don’t care, since they don’t see a connection between government’s actions and their daily lives, and if they do, they don’t feel like they have any input or can make an impact and/or they’re simply too busy with earning a living, paying the bills and raising their kids that they simply “don’t have the time” to be(come) involved. This only changes when NIMBY becomes a reality, and a new highway, shopping center or whatever jolts them out of their complacency.
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Two, every piece of legislation is the result of a special interest pushing their agenda. While most laws/government actions have good intentions, every new one adds complexity and the potential for conflicts with other laws, the “law of unintended consequences”. The most prevalent, simple, local examples are 4-way stops and speed limits. People want their neighborhoods to be “safe”, and assume that slowing down traffic is the only real solution. Two ways politicians respond to these concerns are lowering the speed limits to artificially low levels and adding 4-way stops. Both “solutions” usually lack any empirical engineering rationale, and both actually have negative unintended consequences. The reality is that, when enforcement does occur, most people ticketed are local residents, and the intersections actually become less safe since everyone assumes the other driver will actually stop, a.k.a., the rolling stop, since enforcement rarely occurs.
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Three, there’s an incredible amount of inertia in any government – change is rarely easy, since it’s easier to keep doing things the old way since it’s always worked – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Combine that with the reality that making things more efficient will likely require fewer workers and there’s little incentive to elinimate one’s own job or that of a co-worker.
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Four, the less than 10% of the constituents that are actively involved fall into two camps, those inside the system and those outside. Around St. Louis city, the power of the Democratic party, in combination with the unions, creates a core group of insiders that apparently has the ability to influence most city decisions. That leaves the “activists”, people like me, who think they have good/better ideas (and probably do), that either haven’t figured out how, or don’t have the patience to “wait our turn”, to become an “insider”. This was big change for me, coming from Denver, where Registered Neighborhood Organizations (RNO’s) are recognized in legislation and government agencies are required to solicit their input. By giving them power, their City Council has evolved to expecting their feedback, and it has proven to be a fertile ground for growing future leaders, in combination with non-partisan elections for city council. Compare that to here, where, in my ward, we have an “open” seat, yet out of 7 candidates running in the Democratic primary, one had received the endorsement of the Mayor and a couple dozen unions before the field had been finalized! I don’t expect to be told who to vote for – I expect to familiarize myself with all seven before I endorse one.
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Five, and finally, the bigger question of sprawl. We continue to see population growth in both the nation and the state – we’re increasing our population by 33% every 30 to 40 years. In a perfect world, we’d be getting denser, not sprawling. In the city, we’d be repopulating areas that were once much more-densely populated. But the reality we face has two big drivers (pardon the pun), most of us would rather have our own vehicle over any other choice and simple economics. During the last half of the 20th Century, it was cheaper to build (and to buy) low-density sprawl than to build more traditional urban densities, especially when one, then two, then three car garages were added to the equation. Places like Portland and Boulder created urban growth boundaries; places like Seattle and Vancouver have physical boundaries. All four have seen significant increases in housing prices, driven by simple limited supply, forcing many workers to look for affordable housing elsewhere, as in “drive until you can afford to buy”.
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Around here, our only real physical constraints are the rivers, so we build bridges. Our farmland is relatively inexpensive (since it’s not as productive as in some of the parts of the country, combined with an increasingly global supply chain), and it’s relatively flat. Most adjacent counties continue to embrace growth as an economic generator, and water supply is essentially unlimited (unlike many parts of the west). It’s almost always easier to do a greenfield development than a brownfield one, and we all know about the (negative perceptions of) crime and schools in the city. We also have yet, as a region, to fully embrace (as in fund) the concept of a comprehensive public transit system. When it comes to new light rail systems, places like Dallas, Houston, Portland, Salt Lake City and Denver started after St. Louis and have far surpassed us. Combine that with our existing, highly-dispersed, autocentric commercial development patterns (and plans), and sprawl will be with us for the forseeable future here.
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Will there be a minority that embraces public transit, scooters and bicycles for their daily commutes? Sure, but it will likely remain a small minority. Locally, we face the perception that public transit, especially public buses, are only for “those” people – the poor and, unfortunately, the black. We face a driving public that varies from increasingly distracted to increasingly beligerent. We have few dedicated facilities for cyclists and we have weather that’s not conducive on many days to arriving to work or school “freash and clean”. For these reasons, along with higher speeds and more (perceived?) convenience, for the majority of our residents (and for the vast majority of the voters), the single-occupant vehicle will remain the transportation mode of choice for the forseeable future. It’ll become more fuel-efficient and create a smaller carbon footprint. It’s likely consume fuels other than gasoline, but it’ll need to be parked and driven on an expanding network of streets and highways, so both our government and the private development community will meet these demands. And because we’ll be adding 10% more every decade, we’re going to continue to sprawl. Heck, even that poster child of “good” planning, New Town St. Charles, is contributing.
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It’s going to take a fundamental change in many established mindsets to change the direction of this “ship”. For way too many people, the current systems, with all their flaws, work better for them than any of the alternatives they can envision. It’s going to take a lot of small successes of “better” alternatives before half the poulation even starts to get a clue. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. But it does mean that it’s going to takes decades, not years, to see any significant changes. (Yeah, I know its sounds like a burned-out old fart, but it’s what I see.)