urbanSTL

^ Good Point.
Obviously New York, San Francisco, and Boston have had expensive cores for years, but coastal politics and development is just different. Chicago is a city that was in sever decline until about 20 years ago, now its booming with redevelopment and gentrification (some say Philadelphia was similar). Let's not forget that many speculate that the next ghetto will actually be in the inner rings suburbs of gentrified cities. When I was in San Francisco a couple years back, I couldnt believe the stark difference between the "ghetto" East Bay (Oakland, Richmond, Vallejo) and the posh, cosmopolitan, almost museum like feel of San Francisco. Same with New York. Although the ultra rich are really just concentrated on Manhattan island in New York. The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens are rapidly getting gentrified and its really squeezing the poor and even many middle class people to places like New Jersey, lower class areas of Long Island, and even out of state.
My point is that St. Louis may very well be the next hang out for the regions elite. The young professionals of generation x and y desire urban living. St. Louis County has been thumbing their nose at Mayor Slay about the idea of a merger, but that is a great mistake in my opinion. People may think of St. Louis City's population gain, St. Louis County's population loss, St. Charles County's slowed population growth as a fluke, but the truth is that this is a sampling of future trends. St. Louis City may have gained only 10,000 new residents between 2000-2010, but this is just the beginning of a trend that will gain momentum and likely have an exponential effect. Who knows St. Louis may have 400,000 residents in 20 years and St. Louis county could be sitting around 800,000.

iceburg wrote:Fragmented by Design in certainly a thought-provoking look at the idea of merging the City and the County, although many people on this forum would likely object Professor Jones' conclusions. Basically, Jones argues that St. Louis is politically fragmented because St. Louisans like it that way. He uses a Tiebout-esque argument maintaining that there is a municipality for everyone in St. Louis County, and that the multiplicity of governments here allows residents to determine their optimal level of services and taxes. Thus, residents of the area are very able to "vote with their feet."

There are big problems with what he suggests. One, you have to have money to vote with your feet. Those that don't have it suffer. Second,I highly question the "optimum level of taxes". Who is to say that because a municipality that has higher taxes isn't wasting more because they have more and a municipality with less isn't making more out of less. Services are far from optimal where they are needed.
Plus there are a plethora of other reasons why fragmentation has such an adverse presence on the region as a whole. Hell we can't even have metropolitan scale planning, which is one reason metro has so many hurdles with future expansions (one example) and a reason we have so much sprawl.

P.S. that was not directed at you, but rather Jones.

I take issue with the word Merger. Simple put, what Slay is proposing is realistically obtainable on the political front. However, Merger does not accurately define what he is proposing and gives credence to every imaginable misconcpetion, like crime statistics, that goes along with a line drawn in the sand.

I feel that the group that got Prop A pushed through should embrace and advocate the proposal that the city should go back to being a muncipality in the county. For once you will have some education of the voting block as well as some state representative. Otherwise, people are going to continue to make their decisions based on PD blog post.

Right - any "merger" is much, much more likely among municipalities within the County.

Finally I can put a face to reddragon!

well?

Town Hall Meeting Discusses Future Of St. Louis Region

By Jeff Bernthal FOX2now.com

9:52 PM CDT, May 10, 2010

DELMAR LOOP (KTVI-FOX2now.com) - There was frank talk from local leaders during St. Louis 2010, a town hall meeting held Monday night at the Moonrise Hotel in the Delmar Loop. The meeting, hosted by FOX 2 and KPLR 11, featured a panel of experts included civic and elected leaders.

http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-town-h ... 7406.story

hate to break it to you Alex, but if all the metro areas in the U.S. combined their respective city and counties, we'd still only be in 18th place in terms of size:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_U ... reas#Table

ah, please forgive my ignorance! you see, i'm just an 18 year old kid startin out, still got a lotta learnin to do.

anyway, we'd still be in 10th at 1.2 million, but you're darn right: we need to get ourselves on that map...

You know, the city county merger initiative should be folded into a larger "municipal consolidation" initiative and sold to St. Louisans a' la City to River.org. You would at least have the ability to garner support from a wider population basis. Does anyone know of any such endeavor?

High level, I think you could appeal to many people by touting:

a) a major reduction in municipal/county overhead by consolidating as many municipal agencies as possible.
b) becoming the dominant Missouri city, if not the dominant city in the Lower Mid-west.
c) reduce the zero-sum infighting that currently exists between municipalities.
d) focusing a dedicated tax revenue base that would link the entire "city" with mass transit.
e) leverage all of this to begin enticing major employers to the region once again.

ttricamo wrote:You know, the city county merger initiative should be folded into a larger "municipal consolidation" initiative and sold to St. Louisans a' la City to River.org. You would at least have the ability to garner support from a wider population basis. Does anyone know of any such endeavor?

High level, I think you could appeal to many people by touting:

a) a major reduction in municipal/county overhead by consolidating as many municipal agencies as possible.
b) becoming the dominant Missouri city, if not the dominant city in the Lower Mid-west.
c) reduce the zero-sum infighting that currently exists between municipalities.
d) focusing a dedicated tax revenue base that would link the entire "city" with mass transit.
e) leverage all of this to begin enticing major employers to the region once again.

I agree completely. I've said many times that there's no real reason for my municipality to exist as an independent entity, and I have to think some pretty significant efficiencies could be realized by consolidating with other neighboring municipalities.

^ I think one could convince a number of high-level individuals to get on board with the idea.

What issues would the naysayers have with "mass consolidation"? Loss of power? There's a political fear tactic in there somewhere. Perhaps a mayor that doesn't want to lose power claims his municipality loses some of its "identity" (i.e., parades, festivals, hokey street signs, etc.). How would areas of a larger St. Louis be governed?

I often hear:
- We don't want to inherit the problems of the City
- We'd lose our local identity
- We'd have to share $$$