urbanSTL

Hasn't that always been the case? I don't think I've ever seen a proposal for transit expansion that didn't immediately jump out and say something like "$1 spent on transit will generate $4 in economic benefit".

I don't think many folks are hung up on the benefits, but more so on the upfront costs and the other opportunities that those dollars could go to instead.

^ In theory, this would be East-West Gateway's job. They do a lot of planning, but it's always 5-10-20-40 years, I have never seen any "real long range" documents published. One would think that if they were interested in such a thing they would have already jumped into it, or at least made a statement or something about planning to plan... Maybe they just need some nudging from entities like the State and RCGA to get started?

^ I hate to cop-out, but "it depends".

It depends on what suburb you are talking about - in 2030, I think that the Chesterfields and Claytons of the County are going to be just fine, but many small North County munis will need some TLC in the long run. Which side of the roof will places like St. Ann or Florissant or Crestwood fall... I certainly can't say with certainty.

Will places like Maplewood and UCity start to go the way of the City and start to deteriorate, or will they serve as incubators for the bridge between City and County to start to homoginize into such a "super city".

It is really hard to say what the results would be for any specific part of St. Louis city or County or any of the surrounding regions. What I do know is this: cities change at a fairly slow rate and the seeds of what we see today were planted many decades ago. People will stay and invest in places they care about and they will leave and abandon places they don't care about. Neighborhoods with distinctive architecture and strong community centers and involvement will do better. Neighborhoods that were cheaply constructed and isolated from walkability will probably not.

There is another more insidious thing going on too. In the 1950s, real estate developers began to realize that they could make a fortune by selling homes to blacks who were moving up into the middle class and then turning around and convincing the white people in the neighborhoods that they had to abandon their homes because "there goes the block." The new black majority neighborhoods are then systematically disinvested and fall into ruin while a brand new subdivision is built further out in the periphery. This cycle then gets repeated after one generation. This is a real estate strategy known as "blockbusting." While I'd like to think we're past being taken advantage of like this, I know that it still happens. It happens because the original neighborhoods were poorly designed, the people didn't love them because they were not locations of quality, and thus they could not withstand such manipulations leading to eventual abandonment after one generation.

Additionally, the current young people universally prefer living in an urban environment. This is why there are fewer transplants to our city. This is why many high school graduates and college graduates leave. Consequently, this is why many businesses have left because they can't attract these people. Now, even the older generation prefers urban environments too. The only major excuse to live in the suburbs is due to schools. I think this city would do amazingly well if it added several new magnet schools that required stringent testing (blinded to race neighborhood and economics) to get into. Then parents could be assured that if they sent their child to these schools, they would be surrounded by peers who were as dedicated to a good education as they are. As I mentioned before, several other cities such as NYC and Richmond have successfully used this strategy to attract high income families back into urban areas.

Finally, back to St. Louis. What I think will happen is that places near metrolink stops will see major urban style development, even in the county. The availability of large plots of land near these sites suggest that it will be possible. Places further from these sites may see some decline. It remains imperative that we build good public transit into new developing areas. St. Louis city has the advantage of having large plots of available land in what will be in 50 or so years, very attractive locations. Midtown especially is primed to become a location for many modern highrises after downtown is built out as it is essentially a blank slate without major height restrictions or much existing population. I think this sort of construction will start after the lindell streetcar system actually goes from proposal to planned construction. Finally, the fate of the northside depends on good public transit. The poor in these sites face a huge structural disadvantage in that they can't get to work or education without a car and they can't afford a car which keeps them poor. Meanwhile poor public transit makes these workers "unreliable" at getting to work on time or giving them crazy long commutes. Then we blame them for turning to crime because we've literally locked them into poverty. Recall that these places were vibrant before the streetcars were torn down and declined afterwards?

There are so many things that pop out as structurally wrong once you do a good analysis with an eye on the disastrous decisions of the past. The problem lies in getting the region to agree that these problems exist and working together to address them.

The Nefarious Ways Sprawl Begets Sprawl

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commut ... rawl/6879/

But here’s the thing about building new roads to serve sprawl: They give some temporary relief to congestion, maybe for as long as five to even ten years in some cases, but then they fill up and themselves become congested, because the new roads make it easier for developers to build and promote more new development. Study after study has shown that new road capacity enables and invites new traffic.

Anglophile wrote: I agree that it seems like Millennials prefer urban environments, but I'm not entirely convinced that that is the only reason that young people are leaving our region. Some go to Chicago and some go to the Northeast and some go to California, but I'd like to see exactly WHERE they're settling in those places. Are they all congregating in dense, walkable, urban neighborhoods with public transit access or are they retaining their cars and settling in suburban or semi-suburban locations? And that's not even counting the large numbers of young people who move to the sprawling cities of the Sunbelt for purely economic reasons. I think more information of this sort is needed before we can make those kinds of claims.

You are right to question any claims I make without supporting evidence. Here is what I can show you:

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2011/ ... llennials/

Almost 90% of millenials would prefer to live in an urban environment. But many cannot afford it. I am in my mid 20s and I have seen several friends come and go. Almost universally, the ones who left didn't do it because they couldn't find a job around here. They were wealthy and intelligent and could have gotten a job anywhere. It was because they were looking for someplace more urban and dynamic. These days, the educated, professional, or wealthy young people often decide where they want to live first and then find a job in that location. Unfortunately, St. Louis is not yet on the radar for 99.9% of these people.

Another big complaint I have gotten is that as a single person, they perceived it that it was very difficult to meet other single professionals. In a urban environment, you walk out of your door, you walk to the train station, you ride the train, then walk to work. And after work, you walk to a coffee shop or bar and relax before going home. In a suburban environment, you drive to work and drive home alone. Some other cities even have buses or subway cars that are advertised for single people so you can mingle during the commute. The former gives you opportunities to meet new people and serendipitously meet your next friend or wife/husband. The latter makes you obese after 20 years and gives you a lonely life stuck in traffic.

This, compounded by the fact that many young people native to St. Louis leave after high school or college, which already depletes the 20-30 range population, making it even less attractive for others in that age range to move here. Where people live in their 20s is highly correlated with where they eventually settle down.

The value added of a city or urban area is as a "social reactor." You meet people and learn ideas that you never would have elsewhere. As one person said, a real city is where any day, I might randomly meet a person that will change my life.

Yes, an urban environment is not the only story and jobs play a huge role. But every year, thousands and thousands of people 18-30 move to Los Angeles, or NYC, or Chicago or San Francisco or Boston without any job lined up to make their fortunes as they will. These cities also do a stupendous job of keeping natives in their city. If St. Louis can divert even a fraction of that flow with an improved or attractive urban environment, it would pay off huge dividends in the future.

^ I agree that our relatively small college student population in the city is a challenge but we do have some potential for growth. Webster U appears to be expanding its presence downtown by taking up space in the Arcade.... hopefully they can continue to incrementally add more students there -- or if they get frustrated with Webster, make a dramatic move. It also would be great if UMSL made some kind of home downtown, perhaps emulating the SLU move with the law school and have certain programs housed downtown. And in an admittedly fanciful fashion, I dream of Saint Louis Community College selling its Forest Park campus, which would be redeveloped in a strongly urban mixed-used fashion, and use those proceeds to move to a new downtown-ish campus. Also, the state legislature needs to pump more money into higher ed in general.

In Boston, Mayor Builds a Legacy With Construction Cranes
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/us/in ... ranes.html

During his 20-year tenure, he has overseen the addition of 80 million square feet of development, increasing the city’s total square footage of office and residential space by 11 percent.

Seems like the leaders of Boston have some guts when people try to extort tax credits out of them

After two decades in office, Mr. Menino’s hold over every aspect of city life is complete and his power to make or break any construction project is legendary.

The Filene’s property is a case in point. A few years ago, it was being developed by Vornado Realty Trust, based in New York, but construction had stalled because of the recession, leaving a crater in the middle of the city’s historic shopping district.

The company’s chief executive, Steven Roth, suggested that he might have deliberately allowed the site to become an eyesore to put pressure on the city for a tax break. This incensed the mayor, who gave no tax break. Vornado never resumed construction, and eventually Millennium Partners, another New York developer — but one with a good relationship with the mayor — took over the project.

JuanHamez wrote:I've often wondered if St. Louis should try to plan for several new institutes of higher education in the long term. St. Louis could sure look up to Boston as a regional (and even national) center of education....Where is our City University of St. Louis?

.... Universities and colleges attract young people to an area and spur economic development.

just to follow up on my previous post about colleges and prospects for the city, I see that plans have just been announced for a $30 million, 245 bed student housing project for UMKC's Hilltop campus. And then there is the previously announced mixed-use development that will include a Whole Foods for their other campus by Rockhurst. It would be nice if UMSL created some programs/presence downtown, but also I think there is a lot of room for the campus surrounding to become more urbanized. ... it does have Metrolink access after all and while there are challenges with siting, we need to take advantage. One good thing is the Great Streets initiative up there, so hopefully that can lead to some neat projects in the future to make UMSL more dynamic.

Even more evidence for the need for educational investment. Some of the results of this article have already been discussed in the St. Louis growth/decline thread.

The Boom Towns and the Ghost Towns of the New Economy
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... _page=true

The economic landscape is being reshaped around two kinds of hubs—centers of knowledge and ideas, and clusters of energy production. Overwhelmingly, these are the places driving the economic recovery. Outside them, the economy remains troubled and weak.

We gotta produce more knowledge and innovation companies. To do that we either need to create more of our own smart people or attract them from out of the region.

Colleges and universities.
Colleges and universities.
Colleges and universities.

I think this is absolutely one of the biggest things we are missing in MO. Statewide, we have relatively few colleges and unis per population. We have Wash U barely touching the city, and SLU with its whopping 10,000 or so students, and Harris-Stowe with less than 2k students. A few middling schools outside the city - Webster, Fontbonne, Maryville, LWood, UMSL. We need a big state university near downtown. We need a design/business/entrepreneurship school. We need a 4 year liberal arts add-on to SLCC. We need a technology university like Stanford/Rolla. We need a conservatory/music institute attached to Powell Hall. All of these things are essential to the future of the city, if we ever hope to be a thriving, multidimensional place. We can't be a city of doctors, lawyers, unemployed menial laborers, and multigenerational poor, and ever expect to be successful in a meaningful way. How do we do this?

I feel like this isn't even a priority. There should be a mayoral commission with backing from all the big corporate entities on this. It's no mystery that this is one of the city's major problems. "I'm going to college in St. Louis, because they have a really great college atmosphere and these great, funky streets by the U," said no one, ever. If you could increase the student headcount in the city by 30,000 or 40,000, you have just created 2-4 thriving student districts full of cool businesses, rental properties, restaurants, and safe places to be 24/7. Those former students live there after they graduate, push out the criminal trash, and over time become the city's future highly educated, high skill workforce. Crime problem solved. Schools problem solved.

What do you do about UMSL's terrible location? It's practically hemmed in by suburbia, highway, golfcourses, etc on all sides, such that there is almost no possibility of real student life. Its location only works as a commuter school. That more than anything in my opinion limits - severely limits - UMSL's potential.