Exactly What Does New Orleans Have that St. Louis Does Not?

Exactly What Does New Orleans Have that St. Louis Does Not?

Visiting New Orleans was a great experience, but to be honest, the visit left me wondering why St. Louis isn't as celebrated as NOLA. 

Manchester Avenue in The Grove Gets a Road Diet and More

Manchester Avenue in The Grove Gets a Road Diet and More

While South Grand has received a lot of attention, Manchester has quietly begun to be transformed. 

Full Review: Weiss-Manfredi Arch Grounds Competition Design

Full Review: Weiss-Manfredi Arch Grounds Competition Design

No other team offers an indoor view across the river while inviting a freight train to join you at your table.

Full Review: SOM-Hargreaves-BIG Arch Grounds Competition Design

Full Review: SOM-Hargreaves-BIG Arch Grounds Competition Design

"100% Park and 100% Village." It's an awful PR line, but at the same time a perfectly apt description of SOM's vision for the South end.

Full Review: Behnisch Team Arch Grounds Competition Design

Full Review: Behnisch Team Arch Grounds Competition Design

"No longer will we allow high-speed through traffic imperiling people walking and their quality of life. Our plan sees Downtown as a destination, not a way-station."

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St. Louis County has a pretty rudimentary government.  No knock on the county; this is likely a result of prosperous times in the past that haven't required as much sophistication about how it conducted business.  For the most part, this had been left to address by the 91 municipalities and nine unincorporated locales that comprise county government.  How effectively this has been addressed to date is in fact up for debate. However, in facing greater economic challenges, St. Louis County understood that it needed to make some changes to retain the confidence of its residents.   
 
This last week marked an important change in the way St. Louis County does business. County Executive Charlie Dooley announced some pretty sweeping changes to the government's ethics policies.
 
Most dramatically, every county employee -- civil servant, police officer, appointment -- will have to attend an annual ethics seminar as a condition of employment. The new policy also establishes some whistleblower protections and hotlines, prohibits the receipt of all gifts by all employees, codifies the notion of conflict of interest, and begins a process for reforming procurement and purchasing. 
 
How is this of relevance to the local urbanist or that of any citizen in the St. Louis Metro Area?  Strengthening the policies of the county's historically informal government makes it more likely to be able to administer the greatest incorporation it is history: the readmission of the City into St. Louis County.
 
This link will take you to the St. Louis County Ethics Guidelines.  Wondering about similar policy in St. Louis City?  Check out ordinances 64102, 64103, and 68409.  As always, feel free to share your thoughts below.
Well, this means next to nothing, but if those who spend their time on urbanSTL had their say, SOM-Hargreaves-BIG would be the winning Arch grounds design team. With 1,000 votes registered, the team almost doubled the votes of second place Wiess-Manfredi, 51.3% to 28.8%. Behnisch was the choice of 13.1% while PWP and MVVA garnered a little less enthusiasm. In three weeks we'll know if this gauge of opinion mirrors that of the jury or misses entirely.

(Click here to see full reviews, design team narratives, and presentation boards)




For five days in May, I found myself in New Orleans. I'd been there once before, in 1993 to see the Final Four in the Louisiana Superdome. I was 16 and to be honest, don't remember much outside the 15 hour drive to get there, an eye-opening midday walk down Bourbon Street and the basketball games. I'm now 33, have a deeper appreciation for architecture, culture and food - all of which play a big role in what makes a city. Obviously I'm not the only one who's changed in the past 17 years, New Orleans has changed and changed again since then.

I was determined to see New Orleans with eyes wide open. Fearing I might miss the essence of NOLA if I were to grab a random guidebook, I enlisted the help of Matt Mourning (Dotage St. Louis), a one-time NOLA resident and a guy with more love and knowledge of the city than anyone I know. Matt's excellent NOLA guide can be found below. To get the most out of the experience, my wife and I were determined to walk much of the city and eat at least four meals a day. It was a great experience, but to be honest, the visit left me wondering why St. Louis isn't as celebrated as NOLA.


The project to rebuild the Manchester Avenue streetscape has been in the works for nearly two years. In March 2009 it was announced that East-West Gateway had awarded $1.45M for lighting enhancements along the corridor and other funds had been allocated to create a better streetscape. The neighborhood and commercial strip have made remarkable strides over the past decade, but Manchester Avenue remained marked by broken sidewalks, poor lighting and signage, and accessibility issues.

While South Grand has received a lot of attention with its sewer pot experiment and the winning-over of the City streets department and local aldermen, Manchester has quietly begun to be transformed. Construction started several weeks ago and is quickly moving from east to west. Similar to South Grand, the project will reduce traffic lanes from four to two between Taylor and Sarah Avenues. For those of you into construction drawings, particulars of pedestrian lighting, street furniture, bike racks and more, check out the documents below (recently posted by the excellent Park Central Development/17th Ward blog).

{Saarinen, left and Kiley, right as depicted in a mural at the Arch grounds}

My assumption looking at the high-powered design teams vying to introduce the next century to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was that each of the five finalists had followed the same formula, successfully recruiting the necessary components, accumulating the required artistry and expertise to make the final cut. There are historians-cultural and built, landscape architects, freshwater hydrologists, engineers-transportation and civil, and more.

Glancing at the previous projects of each reveals the shear capability of the remaining teams: Chrissy Field, Millennium Park, Ground Zero Memorial, Olympic Park and many other challenging and amazing projects. All in their own style, each team is something of a dream team looking to forever join their name with Saarinen and Kiley. However, one team, and one person specifically, is on a mission unlike the others.

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