^ regional leadership has been sleep at the wheel for decades. The city losing more than half of it's population the last 60 years should have been hands on deck, but regional fragmentation made surrounding municipalities think that you could have a successful metropolitan area with delining urban core. Now that the suburban counties are feeling the pinch, people are scrambling, but it's very hard to change demographic momentum.
Fragmentation, highway building, and spreading out aren't working, shocking.
Stl County munis have been losing popularity for a while. I tried to sound the alarm
https://nextstl.com/2022/03/failure-of- ... tion-loss/
https://nextstl.com/2016/01/failure-of- ... tion-loss/
Stl County munis have been losing popularity for a while. I tried to sound the alarm
https://nextstl.com/2022/03/failure-of- ... tion-loss/
https://nextstl.com/2016/01/failure-of- ... tion-loss/
It's bad. I wonder if we'll not listen to this prof like we didn't listen to the one warning about development in floodplains.
Stl PR - Demographer warns St. Louis could face early consequences of America’s falling birth rate
https://www.stlpr.org/show/st-louis-on- ... en-housing
Stl PR - Demographer warns St. Louis could face early consequences of America’s falling birth rate
https://www.stlpr.org/show/st-louis-on- ... en-housing
Part of the reason I can't care about what the professor has to say is that he doesn't mention at all that the loss of children is directly related to the perception that SLPS is a terrible school district, and SLPS looks terrible because it is hampered with a student body that is 80% impoverished and 20% homeless. No school district with demographics like that is going to do well. There is very little the city can actually do about any of that. It would be on the state to provide more social welfare and infrastructure development funding to help lift people out of poverty, break the cycle, and create an area worthy of private investment. But the state actively does not do that, for many reasons, and I'm sure that one of them is that a healthy St. Louis (and Kansas City) is bad for them politically.
These professors are all really good at pointing out the obvious in your face problem, but fail at ever talking about the underlying issues that cause the in your face reality and they certainly never actually offer any solutions.
These professors are all really good at pointing out the obvious in your face problem, but fail at ever talking about the underlying issues that cause the in your face reality and they certainly never actually offer any solutions.
Personally I'm really not a fan of Dr. Sandoval. I think his work on actual demographics is fine but I disagree with a lot of his opinion on why we're facing the problems we are facing. And he tends to always present his opinion as fact.
I really liked his opinion and still appreciate that he seems committed to pushing St. Louis. Nothing he says is wrong. I've become jaded to those who use LinkedIn to push their St. Louis TED talks. I feel the same way about those venture capitalists who live in West County and write pages about failed leadership, taxes, development, etc. Although those have suddenly become fewer now that a black woman isn't mayor... Odd.
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Still waiting on that Bob Clark led consortium “major investment” downtown if Jones lost…all I see is an empty bottle district, McKees crumbling properties north of downtown and an awesome riverfront warehouse district with potential to be one of the coolest neighborhoods in the country lose building after building and begin to look like Chernobyladdxb2 wrote: ↑Aug 13, 2025I really liked his opinion and still appreciate that he seems committed to pushing St. Louis. Nothing he says is wrong. I've become jaded to those who use LinkedIn to push their St. Louis TED talks. I feel the same way about those venture capitalists who live in West County and write pages about failed leadership, taxes, development, etc. Although those have suddenly become fewer now that a black woman isn't mayor... Odd.
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“all I see is an empty bottle district, McKees crumbling properties north of downtown and an awesome riverfront warehouse district with potential to be one of the coolest neighborhoods in the country lose building after building and begin to look like Chernobyl“
How’d Jones do with those areas? Didn’t she have 4 years and no tornado?
How’d Jones do with those areas? Didn’t she have 4 years and no tornado?
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/bus ... 7e8e9.html
Stuff like this is so frustrating because to anyone with a brain, the problems are obvious.
The chronic disinvestment from the historic urban core by the region's business sector. I know you all know this, but companies like Edward Jones, RGA, World Wide Technology, and Bunge should be headquartered in beautiful office towers downtown- or AT LEAST in Clayton.
Any "plan" to reverse population loss should require these major companies to move employees downtown. This would not only boost the city's tax revenue, giving it more money to improve itself, it would also make downtown immediately better by populating its streets with more people. Additionally, it would inevitably improve downtown's reputation because many of these workers will see that downtown is not a 3rd world war zone like they have been told.
This needs to be step 1 of any population decline reversal plan and it needed to start 20 years ago.
Stuff like this is so frustrating because to anyone with a brain, the problems are obvious.
The chronic disinvestment from the historic urban core by the region's business sector. I know you all know this, but companies like Edward Jones, RGA, World Wide Technology, and Bunge should be headquartered in beautiful office towers downtown- or AT LEAST in Clayton.
Any "plan" to reverse population loss should require these major companies to move employees downtown. This would not only boost the city's tax revenue, giving it more money to improve itself, it would also make downtown immediately better by populating its streets with more people. Additionally, it would inevitably improve downtown's reputation because many of these workers will see that downtown is not a 3rd world war zone like they have been told.
This needs to be step 1 of any population decline reversal plan and it needed to start 20 years ago.
We know what's not working - fragmentation, segregation, concentrated poverty, redlining, spreading out the region, burdening ourselves with more infrastructure, subsidizing low productivity auto-oriented development patterns with wealth from high productivity places, highway building, coercing more and more driving, undermining local small business with subsidies for non-local big box retailers, floodplain development, build-abandon-build-abandon, an antagonistic state government, silver bullets etc
Can we summon the will to do different?
Can we summon the will to do different?
Just what we need. Another “plan”. If we don’t lead the country in studies and plans that take too long and never get acted on, I’d be surprised.Auggie wrote: ↑Aug 30, 2025https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/bus ... 7e8e9.html
Stuff like this is so frustrating because to anyone with a brain, the problems are obvious.
The chronic disinvestment from the historic urban core by the region's business sector. I know you all know this, but companies like Edward Jones, RGA, World Wide Technology, and Bunge should be headquartered in beautiful office towers downtown- or AT LEAST in Clayton.
Any "plan" to reverse population loss should require these major companies to move employees downtown. This would not only boost the city's tax revenue, giving it more money to improve itself, it would also make downtown immediately better by populating its streets with more people. Additionally, it would inevitably improve downtown's reputation because many of these workers will see that downtown is not a 3rd world war zone like they have been told.
This needs to be step 1 of any population decline reversal plan and it needed to start 20 years ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/s/3YsKC2ggHF
Reddit posts like this just drain any hope I have for a better St. Louis. Just the utter lack of intelligent discussion happening here blows my mind.
Not a single comment cites chronic poverty and only a handful of comments cite the fragmentation and separation of the city and county. Just really shows how far we are as a region from even having broad agreement on the root causes, much less enacting any policy changes to actually start fixing the causes. Most the comments just do the basic low IQ "crime and schools".
I looked into Columbus' school situation, since they have a booming population and a large school district that covers most of the population of the city- only to find out that the district peaked in 1971 and has lost 63,000 students since then despite drastically growing in population. What happened after 1971? Desegregation. As normal, racism remains a major issue even if we try really hard to act like it isn't.
And it needs to be reiterated, the reason urban public schools everywhere are generally "bad" is because they are filtered to handle the most impoverished, hardest to properly educate students. No school district will have good scores when their student body is 80% impoverished and 20% homeless. Of course, many black people in urban areas are impoverished in large part due to historical racism. There is no way to solve this without reducing homelessness and poverty. But like I said, no one sees poverty as a major enabler of many of our issues for some reason.
Reddit posts like this just drain any hope I have for a better St. Louis. Just the utter lack of intelligent discussion happening here blows my mind.
Not a single comment cites chronic poverty and only a handful of comments cite the fragmentation and separation of the city and county. Just really shows how far we are as a region from even having broad agreement on the root causes, much less enacting any policy changes to actually start fixing the causes. Most the comments just do the basic low IQ "crime and schools".
I looked into Columbus' school situation, since they have a booming population and a large school district that covers most of the population of the city- only to find out that the district peaked in 1971 and has lost 63,000 students since then despite drastically growing in population. What happened after 1971? Desegregation. As normal, racism remains a major issue even if we try really hard to act like it isn't.
And it needs to be reiterated, the reason urban public schools everywhere are generally "bad" is because they are filtered to handle the most impoverished, hardest to properly educate students. No school district will have good scores when their student body is 80% impoverished and 20% homeless. Of course, many black people in urban areas are impoverished in large part due to historical racism. There is no way to solve this without reducing homelessness and poverty. But like I said, no one sees poverty as a major enabler of many of our issues for some reason.
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Probably because the county methodically keeps under counting the city, probably by 10,000 since 2020.
Go ahead and update it then?whitherSTL wrote: ↑1:10 AM - Mar 27Kind of interesting the census topic hasn’t been updated.
Also local media has been framing STL as the "worst" growth.....except STL is nowhere near the worst overall as we actually grew while multiple major MSAs lost population.
I still don't believe STL is at 278k. My guess is more like 285-290k and that even feels a little conservative. Come the 2030s ill be very interested to see how the central corridor's population has changed since 2020.
I did like the bit in the BJ article where Steve Elhman mentions how "no one has asked us how we grow our population" as if St. Charles' population growth is not 100% people moving from STL with the entire county's development being subsidized by the state, who gets an outsized share of its tax revenue from St. Louis. The reason no one has asked you is because you're a leech with no answers.
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I still don't believe STL is at 278k. My guess is more like 285-290k and that even feels a little conservative. Come the 2030s ill be very interested to see how the central corridor's population has changed since 2020.
I did like the bit in the BJ article where Steve Elhman mentions how "no one has asked us how we grow our population" as if St. Charles' population growth is not 100% people moving from STL with the entire county's development being subsidized by the state, who gets an outsized share of its tax revenue from St. Louis. The reason no one has asked you is because you're a leech with no answers.
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I've always been somewhat skeptical of the official numbers describing our population drops, but the past few years have not been kind to STL.
Residential construction has slowed to a drip. The last time it's been this slow we were still pulling ourselves out of the recession. I could probably count the number of new construction multi-family projects (10 units+) on one hand. Seems like there is a ton in the pipeline, but economic conditions aren't likely to improve in the short or even medium term.
SLPS enrollment has been declining by 4-5% a year which indicates families leaving the city.
The tornado caused god knows how many people to leave the city. Even the more affluent neighborhoods like DeBaliviere Place and SkinkyD are full of vacant buildings that used to be occupied last year. Many of them don't show any signs of work starting even after all this time. North City is even more stark.
Residential construction has slowed to a drip. The last time it's been this slow we were still pulling ourselves out of the recession. I could probably count the number of new construction multi-family projects (10 units+) on one hand. Seems like there is a ton in the pipeline, but economic conditions aren't likely to improve in the short or even medium term.
SLPS enrollment has been declining by 4-5% a year which indicates families leaving the city.
The tornado caused god knows how many people to leave the city. Even the more affluent neighborhoods like DeBaliviere Place and SkinkyD are full of vacant buildings that used to be occupied last year. Many of them don't show any signs of work starting even after all this time. North City is even more stark.
The Elhman types really have been holding the region back for decades. When their sun sets it will be a great day for the region.StlAlex wrote: ↑3:56 AM - Mar 27Also local media has been framing STL as the "worst" growth.....except STL is nowhere near the worst overall as we actually grew while multiple major MSAs lost population.
I still don't believe STL is at 278k. My guess is more like 285-290k and that even feels a little conservative. Come the 2030s ill be very interested to see how the central corridor's population has changed since 2020.
I did like the bit in the BJ article where Steve Elhman mentions how "no one has asked us how we grow our population" as if St. Charles' population growth is not 100% people moving from STL with the entire county's development being subsidized by the state, who gets an outsized share of its tax revenue from St. Louis. The reason no one has asked you is because you're a leech with no answers.
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The Tornando response will likely make Cara Spencer a one term lame duck mayor. St. Louis really needs a dynamic mayor and Spencer is anything but that.GoHarvOrGoHome wrote: ↑2:36 PM - Mar 27I've always been somewhat skeptical of the official numbers describing our population drops, but the past few years have not been kind to STL.
Residential construction has slowed to a drip. The last time it's been this slow we were still pulling ourselves out of the recession. I could probably count the number of new construction multi-family projects (10 units+) on one hand. Seems like there is a ton in the pipeline, but economic conditions aren't likely to improve in the short or even medium term.
SLPS enrollment has been declining by 4-5% a year which indicates families leaving the city.
The tornado caused god knows how many people to leave the city. Even the more affluent neighborhoods like DeBaliviere Place and SkinkyD are full of vacant buildings that used to be occupied last year. Many of them don't show any signs of work starting even after all this time. North City is even more stark.
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I think the unexpected tornado was the start of her fall & she really accelerated that by killing the green line though it doesn’t help when you have a bozo for a president either however there’s still 3 years to go so we’ll see but I agree with you St.Louis needs a dynamic mayor one that isn’t afraid to move things forward & get things done…
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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Yea this certainly hasn’t been bold leadership
We need somebody willing to push the boundaries. There could be a long list of things a Mayor of StL should be doing in month one
Instead, the only action has been stopping progress on anything that we did have trying to move forward
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We need somebody willing to push the boundaries. There could be a long list of things a Mayor of StL should be doing in month one
Instead, the only action has been stopping progress on anything that we did have trying to move forward
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What are some of the things you all would (realistically) like to see the mayor do within their power/resources? I'm not caping for Cara. Just interested in the particulars -- and saying holding off on the Green Line until 2029 doesn't count, that's low hanging fruit 
Except when the Elhman types finally die, they're getting replaced with Eigel types who are somehow worse.goat314 wrote:The Elhman types really have been holding the region back for decades. When their sun sets it will be a great day for the region.StlAlex wrote: ↑3:56 AM - Mar 27Also local media has been framing STL as the "worst" growth.....except STL is nowhere near the worst overall as we actually grew while multiple major MSAs lost population.
I still don't believe STL is at 278k. My guess is more like 285-290k and that even feels a little conservative. Come the 2030s ill be very interested to see how the central corridor's population has changed since 2020.
I did like the bit in the BJ article where Steve Elhman mentions how "no one has asked us how we grow our population" as if St. Charles' population growth is not 100% people moving from STL with the entire county's development being subsidized by the state, who gets an outsized share of its tax revenue from St. Louis. The reason no one has asked you is because you're a leech with no answers.
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Improve hiring and employee retention. Restart alley recycling. Enforce repairs on absentee landlords. Preserve our housing stock and architectural heritage. Mostly what Jones was doing.jtlq53 wrote: ↑7:08 PM - Mar 27What are some of the things you all would (realistically) like to see the mayor do within their power/resources? I'm not caping for Cara. Just interested in the particulars -- and saying holding off on the Green Line until 2029 doesn't count, that's low hanging fruit