I think it would be great. I kinda feel that 500,000 is satisfactory and healthy.

Lots of new homes, schools, apartment/condo buildings, retail, restaurants.

Hopefully, a lot of the new development would be TOD as new streetcars and MetroLink lines would be constructed.

I see it as more diverse with less racial tension, less crime, economically-diverse and hopefully politically-diverse with no coo-coo bird politicians .

Definitely more residential, retail and jobs downtown.

Going there this weekend. I love that town like life itself.

Both those cities are capital cities (or next door to capital cities) and have the big state U in them. Denver has the mountains, Minneapolis has the lakes and river bluffs, both have great climates. They are the crown jewels of their states. In many respects, we are at least 50 years behind. There are at least that many years of white flight to reverse - I'd argue more since so much of the urban cultural apparatus was dismantled in the process - whatever intellectual/creative/idea scenes the region may have had the capability to produce, it couldn't do so effectively without a healthy urban setting in which to flower - and so culturally we have a big discontinuity that is only now starting to be rebuilt. Institutions to establish that never existed in the first place. When your city has the trifecta of corporate might, flagship public research U, and state gov, it's unstoppable. Add the remarkable natural amenities those cities enjoy, and it's hard to imagine competing under any circumstances. Those things create the demography a city needs to be successful: an endless supply of well-educated people, top paying jobs, outsized political influence, and quality of life. We're struggling to hang onto the corporate piece, most natural amenities are outside the city, and don't have the other two at all. CORTEX is great but limited. Wash U isn't big enough and it isn't really in the city. We need a big state University very badly.

So, you want 500k people? The city has to establish a big public research university and do everything humanly/civically possible to make it incredible and successful and huge. That is the single most important step. The state and STL county will not support this effort - it will be entirely up to the city. With the built environment that already exists, that is our city's single best shot at reversing the job loss, nurturing more homegrown talent, make ourselves attractive to out of town firms, and create a big educated mass of people that will pay taxes and do amazing things.

Getting Saint Louis State University off the ground is the most important thing all of us contributors to this site could get behind, contribute our talents to, and force to happen. It is the make or break future of this place.

So f*** fragmentation. We don't need their help.

Sure, or just name it something else. Whatever it's called, it is the key to the city's future. If it could be built out from H-S, great. If not, do it another way. We just need to do it.

Legacy? I know I let legacy define the limitations of my life. Jeezus. We can pick and choose the parts of our legacy we want to do something with. And we can identify things we suck at or don't have and decide to have them or be better at them. Like universities. Not pursuing a big research U is one way of needlessly handicapping the city, when we should just do the hard work and get it off the ground. Who cares if it pisses of SLU? Why not just give up on light rail, crimefighting, and schools, too. What's the point of doing anything cool? If that really is the prevailing attitude, then yeah, we should just put it in a coffin and bury it. It would be less wrenching than watching it endlessly struggle.

As far as urban, the Twin Cities are also urban in the traditional sense. The whole place was built around street car lines, a riverfront, and a traditional downtown. The urban area is actually quite a lot larger than ours if you count St. Paul and MPLS together. Lots of manufacturing - more than here actually. It's newer and less bricky, yes, but just as urban.

My point is that none of that would possible with out funding from the state and support from the broader region. I'm not saying its a bad idea. You said a public research University and we currently have 2 with UMSL and Harris-Stowe (which also a HBCU). I think building these facilities up would be more beneficial than starting a new one, but then again that is a state issue. Minnesota and Colorado support higher education in a way that Missouri doesn't. Missouri couldn't even get into the Big 10 because we have taken the southern strategy and opted for a low tax, low service model. Virtually saying we would rather be like Arkansas and Mississippi than Minnesota and Illinois. The result is that nobody is clamoring to move here, whether it be families or singles. What many of our rural Missourians fail to realize is that the Civil War is over and many states like North Carolina, Virginia, and now even to an extent Tennessee have gotten pass the old South bull crap and realize that they need strong urban areas and well funded universities to grow. Missouri being Missouri has jumped on the bubba band wagon about 150 years to late and wishes it would have been able to succeed during the War of Northern Aggression, so it decides it wants to live out is old Southern legacy in 2014.

Yes, the state will not be a source of support for anything the city does. Its legislature is currently dominated by a bunch of neoconfederate sisterf***ers. Check.

The state's hostility/indifference is a given, as is a big chunk of the metro's. Any effort to establish a big public research U in the city limits has to be a self-contained initiative. I think this is doable. Tiny Lindenwood, while not public, managed to somehow grow from the edge of collapse and virtually no student population to 10,000 or more students and multiple locations and a healthy endowment. Whether that is the model to follow or not, it is illustrative of the potential as that was in 60k St. Charles, not 300k+ STL, so set your sights higher before assuming legacy is destiny. It isn't. Big public research U is the highest impact tool for growing the city to 500k, and attracting and retaining the class of people needed to build the city's future. And I don't mean 4 miles outside the city/11 miles outside downtown UMSL. That ain't STL, despite the name.

I can't believe someone claimed Minneapolis had a "great climate". Maybe in July and August. But for the rest of the year that's one advantage the Twin Cities doesn't have on us.

It's only bad in Jan/Feb (just as bad as July/Aug here). Otherwise you can count on snow being there all winter for sledding, skiing, snowboarding, building snowmen, forts, ice skating, being pretty. It's only slushy at the beginning and end of winter. The rest of the year from late April to Thanksgiving is temperate and pretty mild - high 40s to low 80s most of the time, with few tornadoes, and few torrential rains, hail is almost unheard of. You don't get crazy amounts of snow like in New England.

But again back to subject, to get to 500k we have to stop kidding ourselves and thinking the state will do anything to enable that. It will have to be 101% homegrown.

goat314 wrote:Baltimore has the benefit of being in a diverse and urban state on the Eastern seaboard. You are correct Baltimore has been able to retain a lot more urban density and population than we have and part of that is due to it having an ideal location, despite facing many similar issues. It seems that since the Civil War, Maryland has been going in the exact opposite direction as we have as a traditional border state. Maryland is a solidly Democratic state, its also small in land area, and about a third African American.

Plus Baltimore is catching a lot of spillover from the DC area. I know people that live in Baltimore and commute daily by train to/from Washington DC

^ definitely. D.C. is having hyper-growth. I have neighbors who are moving out for a job in D.C.... forget about living in D.C. itself; they're renting in MD near the Metro line at first but Baltimore could be a good option for an eventual home.

onecity wrote:Both those cities are capital cities (or next door to capital cities) and have the big state U in them. Denver has the mountains, Minneapolis has the lakes and river bluffs, both have great climates. They are the crown jewels of their states. In many respects, we are at least 50 years behind. There are at least that many years of white flight to reverse - I'd argue more since so much of the urban cultural apparatus was dismantled in the process - whatever intellectual/creative/idea scenes the region may have had the capability to produce, it couldn't do so effectively without a healthy urban setting in which to flower - and so culturally we have a big discontinuity that is only now starting to be rebuilt. Institutions to establish that never existed in the first place. When your city has the trifecta of corporate might, flagship public research U, and state gov, it's unstoppable. Add the remarkable natural amenities those cities enjoy, and it's hard to imagine competing under any circumstances. Those things create the demography a city needs to be successful: an endless supply of well-educated people, top paying jobs, outsized political influence, and quality of life. We're struggling to hang onto the corporate piece, most natural amenities are outside the city, and don't have the other two at all. CORTEX is great but limited. Wash U isn't big enough and it isn't really in the city. We need a big state University very badly.

So, you want 500k people? The city has to establish a big public research university and do everything humanly/civically possible to make it incredible and successful and huge. That is the single most important step. The state and STL county will not support this effort - it will be entirely up to the city. With the built environment that already exists, that is our city's single best shot at reversing the job loss, nurturing more homegrown talent, make ourselves attractive to out of town firms, and create a big educated mass of people that will pay taxes and do amazing things.

Getting Saint Louis State University off the ground is the most important thing all of us contributors to this site could get behind, contribute our talents to, and force to happen. It is the make or break future of this place.

So f*** fragmentation. We don't need their help.

You're completely right.
St. Louis is never going to be in the same class as Denver and Minneapolis and we need to stop comparing to them.
-Denver and the Twin Cities are THE metropolitan areas for their state.
-Denver and the Twin Cities are state capitals
-Colorado's main university campus is basically in a suburb of Denver. Minnesota's main campus is right in the heart of Minneapolis with a satellite campus (agriculture and biology IIRC) in St. Paul.
-Denver is located pretty much at the dead middle of the state and the Twin Cities have no battles with Wisconsin.
-St. Louis is fragmented: City vs County vs St. Charles vs East Side.

St. Louis is St. Louis and we need to stop comparing ourselves.

Do we really need Saint Louis State University? Why not:
-let Wash U expand? Just wait until they can't build any more and buy Fontbonne University as well as Concordia Seminary
-keep SLU expanding. And I'm not talking about grass lots, fountains, fences and gates.
-help move UMSL from Normandy to the North Side
-help move Webster downtown.