urbanSTL

Simply put, these are all very depressing numbers. 

How many posters here have kids? I have 4. My guess is not many of you have reproduced and helped the situation.

I have kids and we live in the city. 

whitherSTL wrote:How many posters here have kids? I have 4. My guess is not many of you have reproduced and helped the situation.

Sorry, gay.

That said, I think it would be a wise political move to make St. Louis the easiest place to start a family.

- Free childcare
- Better SLPS
- Tax credits on earnings tax
- Housing grants

STL is in a sad and depressing place. There’s a negative pall cast all over the region. No excitement, no love or value of life. We’ve lost our respect for others, for God, etc. Kids go away to college and don’t come back, exacerbating the brain-drain. Tough times.

I keep thinking we bottomed out, only way to go from here is up.

And we continue to lose more people than any other place in the country. Under 280K. Puts us with Chandler, AZ who is also only 65 sq mi. Yea, you’ve probably never heard of it, me either.

I just don’t get it. I love this place. Man, sad day

My initial guess is that it’s mostly driven by the North Side continuing to hollow out and push into the county. I can’t really see a solve for that until there’s basically no one left there.

The other issue is no one stays in the city limits when they start a family due to the poor quality of schools and available housing stock.

It’s just too much for the growth in the Central Corridor to make up for.

Debaliviere91 wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote:I keep thinking we bottomed out, only way to go from here is up.

And we continue to lose more people than any other place in the country. Under 280K. Puts us with Chandler, AZ who is also only 65 sq mi. Yea, you’ve probably never heard of it, me either.

I just don’t get it. I love this place. Man, sad day

Chandler is a suburb of Phoenix that’s growing incredibly fast. In the next 5 years or so that metro will include 5 cities larger than St Louis City.

Yea, that’s depressing. Non NYC/LA Suburbs that nobody has ever heard of are bigger than StL city

OK, I'll jump in at the risk of getting hit with the stats guy analyses. Was it Mark Twain who said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The statistics guys seem to be all over this forum these days ready to pounce on anyone sharing a lived experience. Anyhow, I have 3 kids who were raised in STL went to SLPS and are at SLU. They love it here. Their friends and former classmates and others in their age group love it here. I've seen young, college educated people all over in my part of the city in Fox Park. Some friends of theirs now have jobs and are renting in this part of the city. This city has its problems with horrible curb appeal and ridiculous city services and no police presence for speeding/reckless/illegal driving. We are as good a city as any like sized city (KC, Indy, Louisville, Memphis, etc.). The self loathing that the County/suburbanite people have as well as some STL people is stifling. I just think they don't enjoy their lives and would not be happy anywhere. What really concerns me is the aging out of North City and no new young people moving in to fill it up/change it over. Some use the term gentrification. That ain't gonna happen. I've gone from expecting to see N. City neighborhoods bounce back and get rehabbed and invested in, but I no longer think that'll happen in my lifetime (I'm in my mid 50s). STL has amazing housing stock. The architecture, food and grit/coolness exceeds that of Cleveland and other larger cities. You know what else you can do here in STL? Anything you damn well please. Want to protest a demo? The legit news will be there and talk to you, cover it and better yet...good people actually doing things will reach out to you and ask how they can help. Much easier to enact change here (aside from city govt) than what I'd imaging in Chicago, NYC, San Fran or the other big cities. St. Louis is great, I stand by it.

MarkGroth2020 wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

OK, I'll jump in at the risk of getting hit with the stats guy analyses. Was it Mark Twain who said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The statistics guys seem to be all over this forum these days ready to pounce on anyone sharing a lived experience. Anyhow, I have 3 kids who were raised in STL went to SLPS and are at SLU. They love it here. Their friends and former classmates and others in their age group love it here. I've seen young, college educated people all over in my part of the city in Fox Park. Some friends of theirs now have jobs and are renting in this part of the city. This city has its problems with horrible curb appeal and ridiculous city services and no police presence for speeding/reckless/illegal driving. We are as good a city as any like sized city (KC, Indy, Louisville, Memphis, etc.). The self loathing that the County/suburbanite people have as well as some STL people is stifling. I just think they don't enjoy their lives and would not be happy anywhere. What really concerns me is the aging out of North City and no new young people moving in to fill it up/change it over. Some use the term gentrification. That ain't gonna happen. I've gone from expecting to see N. City neighborhoods bounce back and get rehabbed and invested in, but I no longer think that'll happen in my lifetime (I'm in my mid 50s). STL has amazing housing stock. The architecture, food and grit/coolness exceeds that of Cleveland and other larger cities. You know what else you can do here in STL? Anything you damn well please. Want to protest a demo? The legit news will be there and talk to you, cover it and better yet...good people actually doing things will reach out to you and ask how they can help. Much easier to enact change here (aside from city govt) than what I'd imaging in Chicago, NYC, San Fran or the other big cities. St. Louis is great, I stand by it.

You hit points to why I love it so much as a person not originally from here.

Just wish more people within the region and outside of it would see it.

The region still won’t rally around downtown. Can’t finalize a merger. At what point do we make the big changes necessary to get more people to see it.

What were the county numbers? Maybe if they aren’t seeing what they want to see that gets everyone into a room to figure this thing out. Competition has to go,

Can we challenge the estimates like Detroit did?

whitherSTL wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

STL is in a sad and depressing place. There’s a negative pall cast all over the region. No excitement, no love or value of life. We’ve lost our respect for others, for God, etc. Kids go away to college and don’t come back, exacerbating the brain-drain.  Tough times.

...you have an invisible skydaddy advanced by a book written by the hand of man, who is leveraged to control the minds of heterosexuals and is weaponized by heterosexuals to subjugate minorities and other religions?

Quaint. 

At what population level (decline) (roughly) does it become impossible for the City to maintain basic services & maintenance of infrastructure? Just curious, as it seems at some point a merger is forced with STL County. Not saying that solves a damn thing, but the State & regional "leaders" have to be smart enough to know STL is the economic engine of the State. The fact that "leaders" have not made the population decline issue a focus is baffling. I get that tons of others things go into the equation, but "leaders" have failed us. 

We have a bad reputation, a population that continues to sh-t on the City & pounce on every headline "I told you how bad the City is, stay away". It almost seems like some want to see the City fail so they can tell you how nice it is in Chesterfield, Kirkwood, etc. The " we have a 'fill in the blank' out here, why do I need to go to the City" mentality reigns supreme. We the people of the region are also the issue. I am also very frustrated with the lack of solutions from regional government. 

In the end, we have no beaches, we have no mountains. We need JOBS, quality of life and cannot afford endless crime, lack of basic services, etc. We gain some jobs, we lose some. Seems like we are spinning our wheels at times. We have to get people here with our robust & diverse job offerings. We have to keep college kids here by offering them a career in our companies. They usually go where they find a job, marry a partner from college or a more desirable destination (beach or mountain). A dream job keeps them here. If college kids were leaving in the 90's, they must be leaving in droves now. 

In any event, the decline will continue until we FINALLY get visionary leaders in this region. Leaders that think outside the box, focus on the right things & understand our past failures. Otherwise, we'll continue to follow this decade after decade trend in the City. 

I would advise everyone on the forum to take the Census estimates with a grain of salt. They've been so, so, so, wrong before compared to the 10 year census count in both 2010 and 2020 in cities and states across the country. Like if these numbers are correct i'll feel sad in 2030 rather than 2025. Census estimates from 2020 undercounted 700,000 people compared to the official count of NYC, for example. Wasn't the census estimate for STL in 2019/20 like 289k?

^ Agreed. STL is making much better decisions in the last ten years. It’s going to take a long time to see impact. Let’s not let this one data point detract from the things going right.

MarkGroth2020 wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

OK, I'll jump in at the risk of getting hit with the stats guy analyses. Was it Mark Twain who said “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The statistics guys seem to be all over this forum these days ready to pounce on anyone sharing a lived experience. Anyhow, I have 3 kids who were raised in STL went to SLPS and are at SLU. They love it here. Their friends and former classmates and others in their age group love it here. I've seen young, college educated people all over in my part of the city in Fox Park. Some friends of theirs now have jobs and are renting in this part of the city. This city has its problems with horrible curb appeal and ridiculous city services and no police presence for speeding/reckless/illegal driving. We are as good a city as any like sized city (KC, Indy, Louisville, Memphis, etc.). The self loathing that the County/suburbanite people have as well as some STL people is stifling. I just think they don't enjoy their lives and would not be happy anywhere. What really concerns me is the aging out of North City and no new young people moving in to fill it up/change it over. Some use the term gentrification. That ain't gonna happen. I've gone from expecting to see N. City neighborhoods bounce back and get rehabbed and invested in, but I no longer think that'll happen in my lifetime (I'm in my mid 50s). STL has amazing housing stock. The architecture, food and grit/coolness exceeds that of Cleveland and other larger cities. You know what else you can do here in STL? Anything you damn well please. Want to protest a demo? The legit news will be there and talk to you, cover it and better yet...good people actually doing things will reach out to you and ask how they can help. Much easier to enact change here (aside from city govt) than what I'd imaging in Chicago, NYC, San Fran or the other big cities. St. Louis is great, I stand by it.

Lucky for you, the statistics don't support the idea that the city has lost over 7% of its population since 2020.

DogtownBnR wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

At what population level (decline) (roughly) does it become impossible for the City to maintain basic services & maintenance of infrastructure? Just curious, as it seems at some point a merger is forced with STL County. Not saying that solves a damn thing, but the State & regional "leaders" have to be smart enough to know STL is the economic engine of the State. The fact that "leaders" have not made the population decline issue a focus is baffling. I get that tons of others things go into the equation, but "leaders" have failed us. 

We have a bad reputation, a population that continues to sh-t on the City & pounce on every headline "I told you how bad the City is, stay away". It almost seems like some want to see the City fail so they can tell you how nice it is in Chesterfield, Kirkwood, etc. The " we have a 'fill in the blank' out here, why do I need to go to the City" mentality reigns supreme. We the people of the region are also the issue. I am also very frustrated with the lack of solutions from regional government. 

In the end, we have no beaches, we have no mountains. We need JOBS, quality of life and cannot afford endless crime, lack of basic services, etc. We gain some jobs, we lose some. Seems like we are spinning our wheels at times. We have to get people here with our robust & diverse job offerings. We have to keep college kids here by offering them a career in our companies. They usually go where they find a job, marry a partner from college or a more desirable destination (beach or mountain). A dream job keeps them here. If college kids were leaving in the 90's, they must be leaving in droves now. 

In any event, the decline will continue until we FINALLY get visionary leaders in this region. Leaders that think outside the box, focus on the right things & understand our past failures. Otherwise, we'll continue to follow this decade after decade trend in the City. 

City’s tax base keeps growing tho, here is the latest available IRS filings. This tread is still continuing. Poor people leaving and those better off moving in

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

I would advise everyone on the forum to take the Census estimates with a grain of salt. They've been so, so, so, wrong before compared to the 10 year census count in both 2010 and 2020 in cities and states across the country. Like if these numbers are correct i'll feel sad in 2030 rather than 2025. Census estimates from 2020 undercounted 700,000 people compared to the official count of NYC, for example. Wasn't the census estimate for STL in 2019/20 like 289k?

Census Bureau undercounted Erie County, NY (Buffalo) by 11.5k in 2009 and then 33.5k in 2019 and now say the county has lost 6.2k since then. So it's fair to say that the CB is wrong very often.

Auggie wrote:

DogtownBnR wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

At what population level (decline) (roughly) does it become impossible for the City to maintain basic services & maintenance of infrastructure? Just curious, as it seems at some point a merger is forced with STL County. Not saying that solves a damn thing, but the State & regional "leaders" have to be smart enough to know STL is the economic engine of the State. The fact that "leaders" have not made the population decline issue a focus is baffling. I get that tons of others things go into the equation, but "leaders" have failed us. 

We have a bad reputation, a population that continues to sh-t on the City & pounce on every headline "I told you how bad the City is, stay away". It almost seems like some want to see the City fail so they can tell you how nice it is in Chesterfield, Kirkwood, etc. The " we have a 'fill in the blank' out here, why do I need to go to the City" mentality reigns supreme. We the people of the region are also the issue. I am also very frustrated with the lack of solutions from regional government. 

In the end, we have no beaches, we have no mountains. We need JOBS, quality of life and cannot afford endless crime, lack of basic services, etc. We gain some jobs, we lose some. Seems like we are spinning our wheels at times. We have to get people here with our robust & diverse job offerings. We have to keep college kids here by offering them a career in our companies. They usually go where they find a job, marry a partner from college or a more desirable destination (beach or mountain). A dream job keeps them here. If college kids were leaving in the 90's, they must be leaving in droves now. 

In any event, the decline will continue until we FINALLY get visionary leaders in this region. Leaders that think outside the box, focus on the right things & understand our past failures. Otherwise, we'll continue to follow this decade after decade trend in the City. 

This isn't an issue the city is facing. First, fewer people means less demand for services. Trash trucks aren't picking up trash from vacant streets. Second, the city has been attracting and retaining higher income people while losing low income people in droves, meaning tax wise, the population loss doesn't have nearly the affect that it may have had in the 1960s or 1970s, when it was the opposite.

There are definitely some city services that feel the strain of reduced scale, trash probably isn’t one of them. The wealthier tax base does help offset it though.

We posted better job growth than many of these regions in the past year. Yet, we are so far surpassed by everyone else in raw number and percentage in this group in population growth. In top of negative region population last year.

I think it’s time for the alarm bells to go off for everyone - the city, county, surrounding counties, Missouri, Illinois.

Our trends since 2020 are about as bad as it gets. I think we have no choice but a complete overhaul of our regional governance.

Don't we have to remember there is a methodology issue that may be undercounting city numbers (and possibly to lesser extent some other locations). Mainly the demolition of vacant residences assumes a population loss of two regardless of occupation status beforehand?

Also, now and going forward there may be less reason to trust census numbers due to politics. Mainly sacking of federal employees and how the administration may be manipulating the numbers to undercount certain areas for political gain in both funding elements and in apportionment in state and federal legislatures.

imperialmog wrote: ↑

Mar 13, 2025

Don't we have to remember there is a methodology issue that may be undercounting city numbers (and possibly to lesser extent some other locations). Mainly the demolition of vacant residences assumes a population loss of two regardless of occupation status beforehand?

Also, now and going forward there may be less reason to trust census numbers due to politics. Mainly sacking of federal employees and how the administration may be manipulating the numbers to undercount certain areas for political gain in both funding elements and in apportionment in state and federal legislatures.

Yea what the CB says is almost definitely wrong. Like 95%+ chance to be wrong. But the trend isn't wrong. The city has still lost people since 2020 and the MSA has still grown slower than most.

My bet is that the city is actually around 288-289k and the MSA is 2.825-2.830M.