So, I've been hanging out in The Hague for the past week and inevitably comparing it to St. Louis and lamenting. The Hague is half the physical size of St. Louis with a population of ~550K and a very modest height of about 3 stories on average. It's bustling and a joy to walk and bike around. I know, I know... it's the national capital and the Netherlands is tiny and one of the densest nearly-contiguous urban landscapes on Earth etc etc. But wealth aside, and while things are closer together, the scale is not so different from STL.
Anyway, the general comparison isn't the point of this post. I got to comparing Google Maps of the 2 cities and was reminded of AT&T's 2 utility buildings at Grand & Shenandoah and at Delmar & Skinker. (Are there more that I'm forgetting?) Why is AT&T allowed to maintain moats around these buildings? It is absolutely egregious. Supposedly they claim "access and security reasons" but what is the actual security threat? A quick search suggests they only house equipment for localized landline and network services—I would guess such demand is greatly reduced these days. Access-wise, I've never seen a single vehicle parked at the Grand location, and there are only ever one or two vehicles parked in the fenced-off lots at the Delmar location. These things have been destroying the streetscape for decades (https://nextstl.com/2018/03/the-loss-of-an-urban-intersection-at-skinker-and-delmar-a-look-at-st-louis-in-the-1970s/). How do we get rid of them? If this is what data centers in the City are going to look like (see also the TierPoint data center in DT West) then the City is even more f*cked.
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Anyway, the general comparison isn't the point of this post. I got to comparing Google Maps of the 2 cities and was reminded of AT&T's 2 utility buildings at Grand & Shenandoah and at Delmar & Skinker. (Are there more that I'm forgetting?) Why is AT&T allowed to maintain moats around these buildings? It is absolutely egregious. Supposedly they claim "access and security reasons" but what is the actual security threat? A quick search suggests they only house equipment for localized landline and network services—I would guess such demand is greatly reduced these days. Access-wise, I've never seen a single vehicle parked at the Grand location, and there are only ever one or two vehicles parked in the fenced-off lots at the Delmar location. These things have been destroying the streetscape for decades (https://nextstl.com/2018/03/the-loss-of-an-urban-intersection-at-skinker-and-delmar-a-look-at-st-louis-in-the-1970s/). How do we get rid of them? If this is what data centers in the City are going to look like (see also the TierPoint data center in DT West) then the City is even more f*cked.
