urbanSTL

sirshankalot wrote:The point is I get tired of people assigning our north side's woes to white people. It's too easy and simplistic. We can talk about race all you want, I'm not afraid of it. I have told a story here previously about my extended family who lived in the Baden neighborhood. After two generations (~50 years) of living there and owning a cleaners, they packed up a few years ago. They moved to Sunset Hills and there cleaners is doing thrice the biz....So I ask you big boy:

Is their moving to Sunset Hills racist? Is their need to salvage a fledglingfamily biz and relocate it racist? Maybe in your pie-in-the-sky mentality it is. Maybe they should have stayed and gone down with the Titanic...

In my more practical mind, I think they made a GREAT move....you know why? because with the increased biz they have hired 2 more full-time employees.. 2 jobs that didn't previously exist. I hope that is important to you, because it should be.

I think you boiling down all the arguments to "assigning NSTL's woes to white people" is too easy and simplistic.

roger wyoming II wrote:

True_dope wrote:Any one want to predict how all this would effect the city?

Really hard to say.... big question in my mind is whether it slows the movement of blacks out of North City into North County... does it become "why move there if things are no better?"

But the biggest question impacting the region as a whole I think is what the outside world thinks... will it slow investments in the region? Collectively I don't think we're looking too good right now -- for god's sake the police are battling the Rams -- so we'll have to see.

I'm thinking the the region could get hit with the same negative view from outsiders as what Birmingham, Alabama got during the 60s due to Bull Connor. That is still 50 years after the fact having a negative impact there due to perception. I also think state politics and stuff from Jefferson City isn't helping outside perception either.

roger wyoming II wrote:

True_dope wrote:Any one want to predict how all this would effect the city?

Really hard to say.... big question in my mind is whether it slows the movement of blacks out of North City into North County... does it become "why move there if things are no better?"

But the biggest question impacting the region as a whole I think is what the outside world thinks... will it slow investments in the region? Collectively I don't think we're looking too good right now -- for god's sake the police are battling the Rams -- so we'll have to see.

Just the opposite. If anything it will speed up the shift of poor blacks northward and away from central St. Louis that was really the cause of the Ferguson situation in the first place. This all happened BECAUSE St. Louis is changing, not because it isn't changing. Ferguson is an effect of the changes, not a cause of them. It's very ironically a sign of St. Louis relative success in resuscitating the central corridor. St. Louis isn't 'solving' problems of poverty and economic and racial isolation, but it is shifting it northward away from the center of town.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ I agree the Central Corridor will continue to see redevelopment and more white population/less black population overall but I'm not sure what your point is beyond that.... I didn't say anything about the Central Corridor but only that it may impact the movement of blacks in North City where the greatest amount of "Black Flight" has taken place.

I can easily see a greater number of blacks staying put in North City or perhaps moving to South City (I believe a lot of blacks moving from the Central Corridor btw relocate in South City and not NoCo, btw) than otherwise would have happened as some of the challenges of NoCo increasingly are in plain sight. Do you disagree with that?

I do disagree. Poor blacks are on the bottom of the property ladder. If anyone with even slightly more money or better credit wants something they might want, they lose out. If a poor black person is outbid even 30 bucks a month for an apartment they can't up the ante. That is how they are priced out of many areas. Poor blacks are moving northward because the neighborhoods they've left simply have no inhabitable housing anymore, at any price. All the value has been 'extracted' from areas just to the north of the Central Corridor. If they try to move to south city, they will often be outbid. If they go north, they don't have any competition. Nothing about this dynamic has been changed by the riots.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ Let's flesh this out a bit.... I think we may be agreeing that the dynamic of the 00's where thousands of blacks moved into South City neighborhoods will continue but that largely will be comprised of movements of blacks that previously were living in the northern portion of the South Corridor and the Central Corridor. Is that right?

As for settlement patterns of those in North City, I just think it is a lot more complex than saying there is no value left and there's no place to go but NoCo. There's still lots of homeowners in North City and areas of relatively stable neighborhoods. This segment may not want to be moving out to NoCo as much as before (and I think we've already seen that school enrollments have been stable and an indication that more families are staying). For renters and those on subsidized housing, I agree movement largely will be to pricing and Section 8 availability but it will be interesting to know what pricing is.... is a unit in Dutchtown more expensive than WestFlo?

Anyway, we'll really never know what the impact is on black settlement patterns but I wouldn't be surprised to see a slowdown to at least some degree out of the city into the County from what we might normally have expected.

Another factor no one is talking about with black migration patterns nationwide, people on this thread hadn't touched yet is the new great migration back to the south. African Americans have been making in recent years leaving the north and the rust belt behind. I know people may not want to talk about this. But Black people who are fed up with the city and now the county, might just try leave the region as a whole.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ very true and not just blacks. White people and Asian people and Purple people, too. This goes in hand with my Big Question of how the events affect outside investments.... if opportunities increasingly are elsewhere more people just may be saying eff it, I'm out of here. I'm not saying that the Saint Louis region will suddenly face mass outmigration but our growth may not be as much as it would be if our wounds and dysfunction weren't revealed so much to the world. If this doesn't spur us into progressive action the damage could be serious.

It will be really hard to tell, but I'm getting the feeling that it may not be too much of a negative, if for no other reason than the wounds and dysfunction are shown in many ways a national issue so it won't be seen as anything particularly worse here. I was thinking since its related, some of the issues coming from the state capital could be causing problems, since if certain groups of people don't feel welcome it would make it hard for people to invest or move here.

Ideally what could come out of it is it gives the area a hard look at the structures in place which are often holding back potential

^^ you are right on the tone-deaf nature of a lot of the leadership here and the question of general competence, from people on both sides of the isle. I know from a few people locally say this combined with a lot of the legislation coming from the state on social issues makes them considering moving to another state where they feel the climate is a bit more accepting. And some of those said they would actually move to a number of southern states saying its either more tolerant at this point or is becoming that way since they see the reverse happen here.

The theme I keep thinking is a failure of leadership and the insular parochial view that allows basically the same retreads to hold onto power with the agenda seeming to be about power preservation.

it also doesn't help that many times more people protested in NYC without a single violent incident, to my knowledge. no fires set. no ex-cops driving their minivans into crowds of protesters with guns drawn. etc. it says something about the types of people around here.

roger wyoming II wrote:^ Let's flesh this out a bit.... I think we may be agreeing that the dynamic of the 00's where thousands of blacks moved into South City neighborhoods will continue but that largely will be comprised of movements of blacks that previously were living in the northern portion of the South Corridor and the Central Corridor. Is that right?

As for settlement patterns of those in North City, I just think it is a lot more complex than saying there is no value left and there's no place to go but NoCo. There's still lots of homeowners in North City and areas of relatively stable neighborhoods. This segment may not want to be moving out to NoCo as much as before (and I think we've already seen that school enrollments have been stable and an indication that more families are staying). For renters and those on subsidized housing, I agree movement largely will be to pricing and Section 8 availability but it will be interesting to know what pricing is.... is a unit in Dutchtown more expensive than WestFlo?

Anyway, we'll really never know what the impact is on black settlement patterns but I wouldn't be surprised to see a slowdown to at least some degree out of the city into the County from what we might normally have expected.

Think of a rolling wave of 'value extraction' spread from just north of Delmar to the north county border. The wave of declining value leading to declining maintenance leading to declining value leading to maintenance problems, etc. began just north of Delmar and moves slowly northward. These waves crash onto the 'shore' of north county and are the larger context of Ferguson. These waves of declining value are the cause, Ferguson is the effect. Ferguson won't have an impact because it is itself the impact of the waves of declining value. Detroit's 'rebirth' is another example of the same phenomenon. I know there is a lot of talk about 'turning points' and 'changing direction', but they are just worthless good intentions. Larger forces are at work. They will help the Central Corridor and much of South city and hurt north county and no one can do anymore to stop it than they could have done to stop St. Louis city's earlier decline caused by the massive creation of a national suburban/free highway/mortgage interest deduction industrial complex in the post war decades. Ferguson was the house damaged by the earthquake. The earthquake is the changes in real estate markets and metro economies in the U.S. They are beyond our control. If you want to succeed you have to learn to ride the wave, not try and stop it. You'll only drown....like many in Ferguson.

I don't Think Ferguson would cause people to leave but would cause people to leave is if our region dose not invest in to rail transit and get with the times we don't need a south county connector or more highways. There are a lot of metros smaller than St. Louis that are building rail like crazy. Ferguson was also cause by us not getting with the times and also local real estate trends.

I think Nixon has become the clown of politics not cause I'm a critic of him but he keeps backtracking in his words. I'm a little optimistic about Ferguson but not to say Ferguson doesn't have a lot of mind blowing problems as the same as St.Louis City. We need Ferguson to heal properly in oder for the entire region to heal. A better progressive functioning Ferguson isn't only good for North County but good for all of St.Louis.

True_dope wrote:I don't Think Ferguson would cause people to leave but would cause people to leave is if our region dose not invest in to rail transit and get with the times we don't need a south county connector or more highways. There are a lot of metros smaller than St. Louis that are building rail like crazy. Ferguson was also cause by us not getting with the times and also local real estate trends.

Ferguson happened because St. Louis IS getting with the times in real estate trends. You can't have poor blacks rioting in a suburb if you don't have poor blacks in that suburb in the first place. St. Louis is not immune to the forces of the larger world.

Toys R Us in Ferguson closing. . . . Allegedly unrelated to the unrest.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/morn ... 1424873246

More a function of the Internet. I live very close to that store.

Without massive ticket revs Ferguson budget craters. They had budgeted a $1M increase in fines from FY 14 ($2.1M) to FY15 ($3.1M) and it dropped to $1M in FY15 instead. Fragmentation and low productivity development patterns are synergixing to hasten the march to insolvency. Ferguson can't disincorporate itself. Should the region do it via the Board of Freeholders or let is list?

Stltoday - As revenue from court fines drops, so does Ferguson's budget

http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/articl ... c1c5b.html

Ferguson is a charter city. There is no process in state statutes for the disincorporation of charter cities (nor 3rd class cities). That's why I was pushing HB741 which didn't even make it to the house floor despite unanimous passage in two committees. Disincorporation could go on the ballot if Ferguson violates SB5, if the Governor signs it.

Not sure about merger.

The city and county can disincorporate it via the Board of Freeholders, IMO.