urbanSTL

The air pollution was a major reason to leave for the suburbs back then. Compared the the city, the fresh air likely added years of life expectancy to those living outside of it.

Cities have really only substantially reversed this in the past couple decades. Still a ways to go. Car pollution (NO2, particulate and noise) is probably the biggest problem now but cities are much cleaner and more livable than 1950

goat314 wrote: ↑

May 20, 2024

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

May 20, 2024

SF has also done it. But yeah I think I agree.

I think DC and Boston have too, but that's heavily economics based. Also, those cities invested heavily in mass transit. It seems that legacy cities that invested heavily in mass transit remained more centralized. 

I suspected those as well but I checked and they’re surprisingly far from their 1950 peak

goat314 wrote:

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

May 20, 2024

SF has also done it. But yeah I think I agree.

I think DC and Boston have too, but that's heavily economics based. Also, those cities invested heavily in mass transit. It seems that legacy cities that invested heavily in mass transit remained more centralized. 

Downtown Boston did a big turnaround and attracted business back to the bay front from the suburbs. Maybe Chouteau Landing developments in work is the start of something similar here.


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JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

May 20, 2024

Other than NYC has any major turn of the century city returned to its 1950/60 peak population?

For cities that had at least a couple of decades of post-war population decline, it looks like Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle also had recovered peak population by 2020 without relying on annexation or consolidation. Boston, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. have a shot in the next 2-3 decades. Longer term I can see Chicago and Philadelphia.

Milwaukee seems pretty interesting; it has avoided the severe decline seen by STL, CLE, DET, PITT, etc, and its mayor has announced a goal of reaching 1m people... that seems improbable in the next several decades as it's at 575,000 now, but a return to its 1960 peak of 741,000 seems at least plausible.
https://www.wpr.org/economy/wisconsin-m ... -residents

At least they're making it a goal, though I think it would take a lot of climate change refugees to do it.

^ yeah, it's kind of tricky here for St. Louis City I think as you don't want to set a goal that is unrealistic (absent some huge societal change beyond our control) and thus dismissed, but I think it is important for the city to lay out a vision of how we can return to growth in the near term and then what we might look like with sustained growth in say 2040 or 2050.

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

May 24, 2024

^ yeah, it's kind of tricky here for St. Louis City I think as you don't want to set a goal that is unrealistic (absent some huge societal change beyond our control) and thus dismissed, but I think it is important for the city to lay out a vision of how we can return to growth in the near term and then what we might look like with sustained growth in say 2040 or 2050.

I agree, I think the city and region in general needs to get very serious about sustaining and growing it's population. Even the county risks having significant population decline if it doesn't get serious about redevelopment and retention of residents. I've always thought a target of 500,000 to 600,000 would be a great population number for St. Louis City. The County would benefit from adding a couple hundred thousand around redevelopment mixed use nodes the county.

^ fwiw 500,000 ppl would put our density just above 8,000 people per square mile, which is pretty dense for U.S. cities... that's a bit above Minneapolis currently.  Boosting density a bit more we could look at Washington, D.C.... it's exactly our size in geography at 62 sq. miles and with a population of about 675,000 it has a pop. density just under 11,000/sq.mi. 

In some respects, you should be able to argue that the city would or should have an easier time at it with a couple factors of having plenty of /cheap/infrastructure rich land with a wide swath of development opportunities from dense high rise to rebuilding the north/south city single family residential while at the same time doing in under one city/county entity.   County has a lot lot of fragmentation to overcome.   Of course the trade off, city loses out on perception of crime and trying to compete against smaller school districts

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

May 24, 2024

JaneJacobsGhost wrote: ↑

May 20, 2024

Other than NYC has any major turn of the century city returned to its 1950/60 peak population?

For cities that had at least a couple of decades of post-war population decline, it looks like Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle also had recovered peak population by 2020 without relying on annexation or consolidation. Boston, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. have a shot in the next 2-3 decades. Longer term I can see Chicago and Philadelphia.

Milwaukee seems pretty interesting; it has avoided the severe decline seen by STL, CLE, DET, PITT, etc, and its mayor has announced a goal of reaching 1m people... that seems improbable in the next several decades as it's at 575,000 now, but a return to its 1960 peak of 741,000 seems at least plausible.
https://www.wpr.org/economy/wisconsin-m ... -residents

Hard to see any Midwest city making that leap any time in the foreseeable future. I think the mid Atlantic is in the same position

goat314 wrote: ↑

May 24, 2024

STLrainbow wrote: ↑

May 24, 2024

^ yeah, it's kind of tricky here for St. Louis City I think as you don't want to set a goal that is unrealistic (absent some huge societal change beyond our control) and thus dismissed, but I think it is important for the city to lay out a vision of how we can return to growth in the near term and then what we might look like with sustained growth in say 2040 or 2050.

I agree, I think the city and region in general needs to get very serious about sustaining and growing it's population. Even the county risks having significant population decline if it doesn't get serious about redevelopment and retention of residents. I've always thought a target of 500,000 to 600,000 would be a great population number for St. Louis City. The County would benefit from adding a couple hundred thousand around redevelopment mixed use nodes the county.

What would solve a large amount of this issue would be just having an average percentage of foreign-born population for a metro area. This would alomost have to happen due to shortage of workers combined with more and more places in the US are starting to get too costly.

Central Corridor See Population Growth, Despite Decades Long City-Wide Population Loss

Not national news...but still wonderful to read! 

"In 2020, roughly 26,000 people lived in the Central West End, Midtown, Downtown West and Downtown neighborhoods in the city. Now roughly 30,000 people live in the area, after a 13% population increase."

^Chesterfield, Ballwin, and Wildwood all LOST population from 2020-2023 while the four Central Corridor neighborhoods saw a sizeable increase. It also helps perception that those four neighborhoods are all much more likely to be visited by out-of-towners than the neighborhoods that are losing population.

On that I'm not ready to just take for granted that the census estimates in declining neighborhoods are that dire based on the Detroit challenges of the methodology of deducting two residents for every (mostly empty already) home that is demolished. 

^Any idea where they went? My guess is even further away (deep St. Charles or Warren counties?), but that's pure speculation. I visited Innsbrook (Warrenton County near Wright City) over the holiday weekend and we were half-joking about Wright City becoming the new O'Fallon in 10 years as the Whitey flight picks up in St. Chuck.

Some probably died. Not all population change is people moving. We'll see lots of change due to dying with the Boomers exiting. Some were probably young people moving out.

Baltimore Jack wrote: ↑

May 30, 2024

^Chesterfield, Ballwin, and Wildwood all LOST population from 2020-2023 while the four Central Corridor neighborhoods saw a sizeable increase. It also helps perception that those four neighborhoods are all much more likely to be visited by out-of-towners than the neighborhoods that are losing population.

On that I'm not ready to just take for granted that the census estimates in declining neighborhoods are that dire based on the Detroit challenges of the methodology of deducting two residents for every (mostly empty already) home that is demolished. 

West County is older and less diverse than the central corridor. Many areas of St. Louis and St. Charles County are about go into a demographic winter. The St. Louis region in general has some serious demographic challenges rapidly approaching, which is why we're going hard after immigrants but it may not be enough to stop major declines in the next couple decades. 

goat314 wrote:

Baltimore Jack wrote: ↑

May 30, 2024

^Chesterfield, Ballwin, and Wildwood all LOST population from 2020-2023 while the four Central Corridor neighborhoods saw a sizeable increase. It also helps perception that those four neighborhoods are all much more likely to be visited by out-of-towners than the neighborhoods that are losing population.

On that I'm not ready to just take for granted that the census estimates in declining neighborhoods are that dire based on the Detroit challenges of the methodology of deducting two residents for every (mostly empty already) home that is demolished. 

West County is older and less diverse than the central corridor. Many areas of St. Louis and St. Charles County are about go into a demographic winter. The St. Louis region in general has some serious demographic challenges rapidly approaching, which is why we're going hard after immigrants but it may not be enough to stop major declines in the next couple decades. 

Exactly. West County’s decline is simply less occupants per home than the families they are replacing.


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SRQ2STL wrote: ↑

May 29, 2024

Central Corridor See Population Growth, Despite Decades Long City-Wide Population Loss

Not national news...but still wonderful to read! 

"In 2020, roughly 26,000 people lived in the Central West End, Midtown, Downtown West and Downtown neighborhoods in the city. Now roughly 30,000 people live in the area, after a 13% population increase."

Is there a link to a Greater STL report or other information on the actual numbers cited? These neighborhoods already had 30,000 people in 2020 so I'm a bit confused. Perhaps they are only looking at a portion of the area.

int Louis City - Population Trends
Between 2020 and 2023, 64% of the population decline was from the Black population and 29% was from the White population.

Year	2020	2021	2022	2023	Change 2020-2023	Percent Change
White	134,115	132,066	129,842	128,697	−5,418	−4.0%
Black	132,487	128,098	123,529	120,461	−12,026	−9.1%
Saint Louis City	300,496	293,622	286,193	281,754	−18,742	−6.2%

Anybody found a larger population at 3 km?

This is biggest one I’ve found. No metro stops makes a pretty big argument we have to push metrolink expansion into south city.

A line down Gravois has always made the most sense

I agree that a line down Gravois makes a ton of sense... so why does it seem that the St. Louis region has never studied it before? 

I've looked into MetroLink expansion options going back fifteen or more years in St. Louis and can't find anything that shows that Gravois has ever been seriously considered. 

I think it has something to do with which govt entity controls Gravois

I was going to say, I believe the state of Missouri maintains Gravois. 

I wonder if that would complicate the process to the point that all parties would seek other options as preferred alternatives. 

I do think Kingshighway would be another great connection for south city that you could take up into north city as well. 

It'd be so wonderful to see more density and activity along both corridors, Gravois and Kingshighway. 

The state maintains it by agreement curb to curb, the city can take it back at any point.