I just wanted to get some opinions of the recent placing of those concrete barriers things we all know and love along some of St. Louis's venerable side streets.
The Dutchtown/Gravois Park/Benton Park West areas to the southeast of Gravois have seemingly been inundated with these obtrusive structures. Our street grid is being made ever less traversable. I attempted to drive home today from SLU to my house by way of the state streets. Yes, it's out of my way, but I just wanted to drive down some of them for a little architectural tour on my way home. I tried this just two nights ago as well. You cannot follow an entire north-south street for too long before you run into a barrier or a sudden change of direction in the street (i.e., from one-way north to one-way south).
I know why this is done--but I really don't think it does as much as for a city as government officials and angry residents think it does.
Steve Patterson on Urban Review St. Louis cites the St. Louis street grid as one of the city's greatest assets. Sometimes, I just have to ask, what street grid?
Any truly ritzy City neighborhood has already employed any number of grid-killing tactics for reasons of neighborhood safety and quiet.
The Central West End is littered with streets featuring amazing private residences. A lot of the CWE is essentially a gated community, some with black cast-iron gates. I know that this is more of a historical feature of this neighborhood, as the affluent St. Louisans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries established private residences here. Nevertheless, much of the CWE is exclusively residential for that reason.
Several other more upscale neighborhoods that border "shady" areas have had closed-off streets for years. The West End, Tower Grove East, Shaw, to name a few, all have streets that don't connect. Drive down Tower Grove Ave. just east of the Missouri Botanical Garden and you will see that the large homes on Flora Place and other Shaw streets don't connect to Tower Grove Ave. at all. There are abundant examples of neighborhoods trying to stratify themselves on a block-by-block basis for the purposes of preservation of large, upscale homes. Even St. Louis University, home to some 6,000 undergraduate students for the better part of the year, placed iron gates around its campus.
The Tiffany neighborhood just east of troubled McRee Town set up barriers along 39th street that I believe are still in place. And Tiffany is not exactly a thriving area itself. Similarly, the north side neighborhood of Hyde Park, whose long-reigning alderman I had the pleasure of speaking to for a school project, has, according to Mr. Bosley, benefited from the placing of these barriers all around the neighborhood, including Hyde Park proper.
Further, a drive down any part of St. Louis near an interstate--where the street grid has obviously been thrown into complete disarray--can be quite frustrating if you don't know the dead ends. Along I-55, for example, the neighborhoods adjacent to the interstate are hopelessly sliced up. Click here for just one example. (It should be a map of the area around Bates and I-55. Just look at the side streets to the north and south.)
The barrier technique that is taking over the South Side probably does make streets quieter and less traveled. But how does this affect our city as a whole? With such a maze of cut-off streets, we're at risk of being compared to labyrinthine suburbia. We're a city, people. Crime is not shipped in entirely through cars. In fact, cutting off significant vehicular traffic from a street may lead to a more abandoned and less safe street than before. We all seem to stress that most developments need on-street parking and through traffic. This generally refers to business or mixed-use ventures. But why should an urban neighborhood, which, in my opinion, should presumably be open to mixed uses such as corner stores, be any different?
Not to mention, these barriers are ugly. At least private streets in Shaw and the CWE are ornate, completed with gardens and benches in some instances. In these troubled areas where barriers are considered temporary panaceas, I suppose people will settle for such uninspiring and imposing structures.
And so, I ask you all...
Will the destruction of our street grid have any repercussions on any potential future revival of some of these areas that want to seal themselves off from crime? Do residents really feel these barriers are necessary? Should a public right-of-way be sacrificed for private owners by way of placement of an unsightly barrier? Am I totally off-base?
P.S....something I forgot to include in my original post. The Northhampton and Southampton neighborhoods are structurally more or less entirely intact and so are their street grids. I believe the Hill and Dogtown are fairly grid-friendly as well, though each might have one or two barriers and a couple convoluted streets. My point is that it seems neighborhoods that have remained completely stable since their inception, such as N'hampton and S'hampton, are least susceptible to this barricading/privatizing of streets. Of course, that makes sense. They have low incidence of crime and border other relatively stable neighborhoods. I just wanted to throw that observation out there as well.
The Dutchtown/Gravois Park/Benton Park West areas to the southeast of Gravois have seemingly been inundated with these obtrusive structures. Our street grid is being made ever less traversable. I attempted to drive home today from SLU to my house by way of the state streets. Yes, it's out of my way, but I just wanted to drive down some of them for a little architectural tour on my way home. I tried this just two nights ago as well. You cannot follow an entire north-south street for too long before you run into a barrier or a sudden change of direction in the street (i.e., from one-way north to one-way south).
I know why this is done--but I really don't think it does as much as for a city as government officials and angry residents think it does.
Steve Patterson on Urban Review St. Louis cites the St. Louis street grid as one of the city's greatest assets. Sometimes, I just have to ask, what street grid?
Any truly ritzy City neighborhood has already employed any number of grid-killing tactics for reasons of neighborhood safety and quiet.
The Central West End is littered with streets featuring amazing private residences. A lot of the CWE is essentially a gated community, some with black cast-iron gates. I know that this is more of a historical feature of this neighborhood, as the affluent St. Louisans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries established private residences here. Nevertheless, much of the CWE is exclusively residential for that reason.
Several other more upscale neighborhoods that border "shady" areas have had closed-off streets for years. The West End, Tower Grove East, Shaw, to name a few, all have streets that don't connect. Drive down Tower Grove Ave. just east of the Missouri Botanical Garden and you will see that the large homes on Flora Place and other Shaw streets don't connect to Tower Grove Ave. at all. There are abundant examples of neighborhoods trying to stratify themselves on a block-by-block basis for the purposes of preservation of large, upscale homes. Even St. Louis University, home to some 6,000 undergraduate students for the better part of the year, placed iron gates around its campus.
The Tiffany neighborhood just east of troubled McRee Town set up barriers along 39th street that I believe are still in place. And Tiffany is not exactly a thriving area itself. Similarly, the north side neighborhood of Hyde Park, whose long-reigning alderman I had the pleasure of speaking to for a school project, has, according to Mr. Bosley, benefited from the placing of these barriers all around the neighborhood, including Hyde Park proper.
Further, a drive down any part of St. Louis near an interstate--where the street grid has obviously been thrown into complete disarray--can be quite frustrating if you don't know the dead ends. Along I-55, for example, the neighborhoods adjacent to the interstate are hopelessly sliced up. Click here for just one example. (It should be a map of the area around Bates and I-55. Just look at the side streets to the north and south.)
The barrier technique that is taking over the South Side probably does make streets quieter and less traveled. But how does this affect our city as a whole? With such a maze of cut-off streets, we're at risk of being compared to labyrinthine suburbia. We're a city, people. Crime is not shipped in entirely through cars. In fact, cutting off significant vehicular traffic from a street may lead to a more abandoned and less safe street than before. We all seem to stress that most developments need on-street parking and through traffic. This generally refers to business or mixed-use ventures. But why should an urban neighborhood, which, in my opinion, should presumably be open to mixed uses such as corner stores, be any different?
Not to mention, these barriers are ugly. At least private streets in Shaw and the CWE are ornate, completed with gardens and benches in some instances. In these troubled areas where barriers are considered temporary panaceas, I suppose people will settle for such uninspiring and imposing structures.
And so, I ask you all...
Will the destruction of our street grid have any repercussions on any potential future revival of some of these areas that want to seal themselves off from crime? Do residents really feel these barriers are necessary? Should a public right-of-way be sacrificed for private owners by way of placement of an unsightly barrier? Am I totally off-base?
P.S....something I forgot to include in my original post. The Northhampton and Southampton neighborhoods are structurally more or less entirely intact and so are their street grids. I believe the Hill and Dogtown are fairly grid-friendly as well, though each might have one or two barriers and a couple convoluted streets. My point is that it seems neighborhoods that have remained completely stable since their inception, such as N'hampton and S'hampton, are least susceptible to this barricading/privatizing of streets. Of course, that makes sense. They have low incidence of crime and border other relatively stable neighborhoods. I just wanted to throw that observation out there as well.
