Interesting --- Good read:



St. Louis shortchanged its statistics when it severed the city from the county. But even as calls for a merger grow louder, experts say it’s too late—the dividing line itself has moved west.

David Linzee



In 1920, St. Louis’ leaders tried to undo what they had done 50 years before: They tried to put the city and county back together. “Their main reason was that it would make us look better to the rest of the country,” explains University of Missouri–St. Louis political scientist Terry Jones. “We’d have more than a million population and be back in the top 10.”



The effort failed, and the question remains: Has the city/county split hurt us? Does it handicap St. Louis in competing with other cities for tourism, new residents and new business?



Jerry Matacotta, a transplant from New York City, thinks so. On his first visit to St. Louis, he was pleasantly surprised. It had the urban amenities and cultural attractions of a big city, without the hassles. When he told friends he was thinking of retiring here, though, they were appalled.



Source

Rather than merge, what if we broke the city into separate towns of 10K-50K each with local control. Downtown would be Downtown St. Louis. Then we could define a new structure for similar sized townships to work together. Isn't London kind of like that?

That's how melbourne is - but there's also a level of state planning control that all local municipailites must abide by, and I don't think for a second that americans would ever be willing to give up local control in a measure like that.



That being said, it works great over here.

^^^



I've always been pro-merger, or even pro-annexation. And not just so that St. Louis city has a larger tax pool. St. Louis county has too many chiefs for the population, and I believe annexing St. Louis city into the county would foster a series of annexations and mergers. I.e. Florissant and Chesterfield could pick up their smaller neighbors, Clayton / U City and Olivette could merge, etc.



But this is an interesting perspective. People do understand the idea of an MSA better now than they did in the past, even if they don't know to call it an MSA. Of course this is chiefly because even sprawl cities like Houston and Atlanta are facing the fact that their suburbs are not within the city limits.



I guess if there are few economic and political advantages to a merge, then maybe it's not worth the trouble. The most important thing, really, is that St. Louis retains its identity and distinct culture.

Interesting read.



And interesting idea on the splitting of the city. I'm not sure it would benefit very many people, however. Although it would be very unique for the city to create areas similar to that of New York. Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx are all known around the world. I'm not sure about the city, but I'd definitely like to see the county do this a little more. I like some of the mergers that have taken place, and I'd be fore even more mergers. Why not merge Webster and Kirkwood? Why not Florrissant, St. Ann, and others could combine.



But then I'm all for reorganizing every High School conference in the St. Louis Area to make it better for the schools involved.

I say we just create a UGB - Urban Growth Boundary. Prevent any more sprawl than we already have. Then within that UGB create an overseer government that takes the taxes for transportation and infrastructure etc and spends them in our area. In essence - people in the STL MSA wouldn't pay for roads (other than interstates) outside our UGB. Since St. Louis already pays more in taxes than we get back... we could build the MRB. Also if we wanted to divert some more funding to Metro expansion... it wouldn't be hard. Plus the museum districts would get taxation from the entire district - and could get a LOT more funding - and we could charge for anyone living outside the UGB... and be free for the people inside. If Matt Blunt wants to toll roads / bridges in Missouri - we put a toll on every person who lives outside the UGB who is trying to come in. The UGB could then also encourage current political organizations to combine (the Clayton Richmond Heights etc). And since there will be this bigger government (similar to the City government over NYC - where all the Burroughs still have governments) the distinction of St. Louis City or Chesterfield would be less important. The "counted" population of any future "crime surveys" etc would be this UGB. The only people who would loose would be the people outside the UGB - as they would have to pay for their own transportation / infrastructure needs ... as well as pay to use ours.

The only thing UGBs accomplish is inflating real estate prices within the boundary to the point where it will once again make sense to sprawl. I despise sprawl, but UGBs can do more harm than good.

My main point wasn’t the UGB itself but the overseeing government that would basically supplant the state as the level of government between municipal and federal. But that having been said -- about the UGB.

Wikipedia.org wrote:
Urban growth boundaries have come under an increasing amount of scrutiny in the past 10 years as housing prices have substantially risen, especially on the West Coast. By limiting the supply of developable land, critics argue, UGBs increase demand and therefore the price of existing developable and already-developed land. As a result, housing on that land becomes more expensive. In Portland, Oregon, for example, the housing boom of the past four years drove the growth-management authority to substantially increase the UGB in 2004. Housing prices continue to rise at record-matching paces, though. Supporters of UGBs point out that Portland's housing market is still more affordable than other West Coast cities, and housing prices have increased across the country.

They can do more harm then good if not planned correctly. Then don't make the UGB at the existing "populated area" give the developers plenty of room to expand... but not this infinite area that they are currently given. And there is still plenty of open area (especially on the IL side) to develop that isn't in as far out as Warrenton. Or make it once the entire area reaches a pre-determined density, the UGB can be extended. A properly planned UGB is SO much better than this never ending sprawl that costs us billions of dollars. At the current rate.. when we reach 3.5-4 million, we will have consumed Springfield (Il) and Columbia (Mo). (CrAzY)

What is the current status of this consideration? What needs to happen to reinvigorate this proposition (city/county merger)?

tbspqr wrote:My main point wasn’t the UGB itself but the overseeing government that would basically supplant the state as the level of government between municipal and federal. But that having been said -- about the UGB.

So what would be wrong with a level of government that represents the metro area. Isn't that what Bi_state is, and the zoo-museum district, etc. The good reasons for setting up those metro area agencies probably apply to law enforcement, downtown revitalization, and highway and bridge construction. Why let people in outstate Missouri manage our metro area?

Not to be obnoxious -- I'm glad you all enjoyed the article -- but can we adhere to the same guidelines about posting St. Louis Magazine stories in their entirety that everyone follows in posting/commenting on stories from the P-D or the Business Journal?



Here's the link to the story on our website:



http://www.stlmag.com/media/St-Louis-Ma ... -to-Merge/



Again, not trying to be unappreciative for your interest in the article, just saying ...

It's not obnoxious, it's the forum rules.

confidential, copyrighted or trademarked material

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Fair use allows for a portion of the article to be posted, but not the whole thing. I have edited the post accordingly.



And please cite us when you steal our google earth thread.

With regards to growth boundaries, I found this interesting:

The book touches on the debate about whether there should have been an urban-growth boundary put in place in St. Louis County. The boundary envisioned roughly follows where Lindbergh Boulevard runs today, Tranel said. It was a serious proposal in 1962 but was not implemented, due largely to lobbying by the Home Builders Association of Greater St. Louis.

I wonder what St. Louis would be like had this been enacted.



Link

I wonder more what would have happened if the City had remained in the County in the first place, it would been more legislatively difficult to create any city under 10-25,000 people within St. Louis County all these years (really only made difficult recently, I believe post-Wildwood), and the SLPS District was not the same as City limits. Perhaps then, St. Louis would have looked more like Kansas City in land area.

The only thing UGBs accomplish is inflating real estate prices within the boundary to the point where it will once again make sense to sprawl. I despise sprawl, but UGBs can do more harm than good.

I'm not sure this would happen in St. Louis the way it did in Portland. I think we have SO many places in the city and parts of the county that could be rebuilt. I think this would still be better than a sprawling city that eventually is a "city" along Hwy 70, which is unfortunately the goal of many outstate idiots. Draining St. Louis of it's power and resources will not benefit the state in the long term. St. Charles will look like Jennings in twenty years without an urban growth boundary. I GUARANTEE it. There needs to be some type of UGB in the St. Louis region.

UGB-classic Portland was reported as continuing to appreciate despite a national downturn in housing. I'm sure that's a "problem" many cities would love to have right now. But more importantly, I doubt you can attribute it to the UGB, when the other city making the same headlines in going against national trends was Charlotte, which is the antithesis of a UGB.



To be fair, the free-market types are increasingly criticizing Charlotte, for while the city limits keep sprawling outward to become one of the nation's ten largest cities (granted, very misleading since not metro region), it is adopting and enforcing increasingly progressive and smart-growth policies, from station-area principles with booming TOD to building complete streets and even fighting cul-de-sacs. And so now, the Wendell Cox-types claim that while the Charlotte region remains affordable, the City of Charlotte is becoming overpriced. And it's true, Charlotte is quickly becoming an inverted market of higher prices closer to its strong CBD (lowest vacancy rates in the nation and largest change in jobs).



But surely as a UGB doesn't directly cause overpriced housing, it's not other smart-growth policies directly increasing housing costs, as much as I think it's these leading cities in attracing new households being at the forefront of the growing move-back-to-cities movement. And when you attract those creative and upwardly mobile types, you are going to lead in national trends. New urbanites at the forefront will demand progressive policies, if not choose to move to places where such progress helped attract them in the first place.