Critical articles long on criticism, light on solutions

KMOX has an interesting 4 part piece entitled St. Louis Outside the Box. It is a shorter and more concise version of STLToday's Can St. Louis Compete? series.  I'm happy to see the local media offering up solutions to area problems and offering a more detailed analysis than we typically expect from them.  But I wish they would skip the typical history lesson and focus on what we can do to be better.

Here's my abridged version of how these articles describe St. Louis' history:

1) St. Louis rises to become one of Americas premier cities and is one of the grandest for much of its history

2) Urban decline creeps in starting in the 1950's and goes full force through the 60's, 70's and 80's

3) Along the way corporate icons disappeared, manufacturing left, and population sprawled out

4) Pathetic attempts at urban revitalization include shopping malls, housing projects, new stadiums, and other grandiose projects aimed at window dressing serious deep seated problems just make things worse

5) Before you turn off your computer, book a U-Haul, pack your stuff and move to Chicago, you are reminded that actually, things in St. Louis are at least stable and looking up in many ways

I think St. Louis has a fascinating history and is many ways a lesson of "How NOT to run a city" from 1930 to 2000.  The tone of these articles often feel to me like the writer just wants to point fingers and show off how stupid regional leadership has been (and still is in many ways).  Unfortunately the people who really screwed things up around here have mostly died, and in some ways didn't know any better.

Here's my abridged version of how these articles describe St. Louis' current state:

1) Too many municipalities take from each other resulting in zero net gain for the region

2) Too many big projects focus on making a splash and a headline rather than bringing in jobs (see #4 above)

3) Sprawl has ensured racial and economic lines change position but still remain in place

4) Area growth is stagnant

5) Grassroots urban revitalization has turned some parts of the city around

I share in these critical views but wish #5 would receive more coverage than it does.  Here is where these types of articles typically end.  They will offer up some solutions such as St. Louis developing its economic niche in something like Biotech.  Or merging municipalities together so we stop competing with ourselves.  Or introducing TIF reform.  Or how St. Louis just really needs to market itself better.

This is all well and good but it took us this long to get to what we should have been discussing all along!  Solutions.  They aren't all feasible and they won't all work, but getting a dialogue going about really turning things around is what the local media should be doing.  Some of them do it better than others. I would love for each of these features to be a weekly thing so that these topics are constantly on the table and being discussed.  And I don't mean just in the blogs like Building Blocks.

To be fair, the independent media in St. Louis does a good job at this already.  UrbanSTL has an active forum where empassioned St. Louisans discuss important issues relating to development and the future of St. Louis.  The blog UrbanReviewSTL does a good job of this as well.  More focus on area redevelopment and moving St. Louis forward can only be good for the area. If people cared about bringing more jobs, people, and advancing the local economy as they did about the Cardinals, then I'm sure many of the proposed solutions would happen sooner rather than later.  Or at least it would be a start.

Best things to happen to St. Louis in 2010

2010 is winding down so it's time for some obligatory end of year review lists.  I think 2010 was an average to good year for St. Louis.  Aside from regaining our most dangerous title, I can't think of any reason why things in St. Louis aren't any better in 2010 then they were in 2009.

Here's why:

1) Passage of Prop A.  Metro took a huge step forward in gaining passage of Prop A this past April.  I will be the first to admit I was extremely pessimistic that this would pass.  And not only did it pass, but it had a huge margin of victory.  St. Louis obviously has a very strong and vocal mass transit and progressive community to pull off this victory.  The future for Metro has never been brighter.

2) St. Louis named a top 100 place to live  This includes cities of all sizes and even has one St. Louis suburb (O'Fallon).  But the fact that Relocate America recognizes St. Louis CITY as a livable and desirable place to relocate to just reinforces what a lot of us already know.  If only this list got as much coverage as CQ press!

3) St. Louis city growing, Census says.  This actually just came out today, but I had to include it.  The 2005-2009 survey estimates are in, and the city is growing while the county is shrinking.  While 2.8% doesn't quite make us a boom town, it is a hugely positive trend.  I can't wait to see the 2010 numbers.

4) St. Louis bidding for 2012 Democratic Convention.  Yes it may turn out that another city gets picked.  But I love our chances and I like that the city and CVC are ambitious enough to fight for this.  I was at the Chuck Berry/Nelly concert at Keiner plaza this summer and I loved the enthusiasm and energy the crowd had to bring this here.

5) The Roberts Tower get finished.  It's been forever and a day since downtown had new residential construction.  Now we have a beautiful, sleek new residential tower that shows just how far downtown has come.  I wish I could afford to live there!

I want to add more but I only wanted to mention real significant stuff.  As far as bad stuff that happened, there is that nasty list I mentioned earlier and quite a few nice restaurants closed this year.  Other than that, I think 2010 was a solid year for St. Louis where we held our own despite the recession. 

Should I stay or should I go now?

The truth is I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.  My girlfriend and I bought our house in May 2009 and thanks to the $8000 first time home buyers tax credit, we have to remain here for at least 3 years.  And that's totally fine since I love this neighborhood.  North Hampton is one of the great neighborhoods of St. Louis city.  It combines a near perfect location with a great park, retail within walking distance, it is very safe, and everyone is very friendly.  Oh and the neighborhood is chock full of a remarkable housing stock, home values remain stable, and we really love our house.

So why the hell would I be thinking about moving?  Well, I have been introduced to urban living and I am hooked.  North Hampton is really great but it isn't nearly as urban as its neighbors to the north and to the east.  The neighborhood may be safe, but there isn't the real cohesive community feel that other neighborhoods have.  In fact, the neighborhood isn't cohesive at all.  There are actually two neighborhoods within North Hampton, the Tilles Park neighborhood, and Kingshighway Hills, which doesn't even have a website!

Honestly though, I don't have any real complaints about North Hampton....I can see myself living here for many many years. It is more that I am intrigued my other city neighborhoods.  I walk/bike/drive through and I get excited just thinking about living there.  The feeling is strongest when I am in Tower Grove South, Shaw, the Grove, Benton Park, CWE, and Lafayette Square.  The housing stock in this neighborhoods are some of the best in the region, they have strong neighborhood associations, they have amazing historic parks, a lot of inter-neighborhood businesses and a strong identity/sense of place.  I also get the feeling similar neighborhoods have a very bright future ahead of them too such as McKinley Heights, Fox Park, Benton Park West, and Tower Grove East.  I would buy in any of the above and not really give it a second thought assuming I liked the property and street.

Except...this is the real world and a lot of things have to go into consideration before making such a huge decision.  I am happy now, would I really gain a lot by moving?  Shouldn't we live in our house longer than 3 years so it appreciates more?  What if we have to move to another city for career advancement?  What if we really want to start a family...shouldn't we stay in southwest city where it is safest and most family-friendly?  Will our friends and relatives hesitant to visit us if we are in a more transitional area?  Are we really prepared to deal with the complications of living in a more urban place?

I ponder these questions and more all the time.  The truth is that the only thing I'm certain about is that my future will be in the city (or a city if not the city of St. Louis) and not in the far flung suburbs.

Ok so maybe things are a bit dangerous around here...

The last week (and last month actually) has been probably the worst week crime wise since I've moved back to the city.  I've just about lost track but it would appear that roughly a dozen people have been shot and of those, 7 or 8 have been killed. One particularly disturbing story  is of a man who was robbed, beaten, and shot at 6pm on busy Gravois road near the intersection with Arsenal.  Still, most of the recent up tick in violence is gang related, happens overnight, and occurs mainly in a few particularly dangerous neighborhoods on the northside.  That doesn't make it acceptable, but it helps alleviate my nerves when crazy stuff is happening.

Naturally this leads to the constant questioning of what to do when crime is seemingly out of control?  The truth is there are no easy answers.  Over on UrbanSTL, I advocated for a more open city police department that laid out exactly what was happening and what the SLMPD were doing to combat it.  Others didn't think highly of that idea based on the fact that it would be publicizing valuable gang intel and may scare people who may already be jittery about going into the city.

Fair enough.  But something has to be done.  I won't be so naive as to call on the mayor and police chief to "fix" this problem as if it were that simple.  It does appear that Police chief Isom has taken some action in response ,  I don't know if it will be enough but one thing I have noticed from studying St. Louis crime rates, is that it is definitely cyclical.  There have been long stretches this year with relatively few homicides or other high profile incidents.  And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the large majority of St. Louis neighborhoods have not seen any increase in crime and overall crime is down this year from 2009.  I hope things stay that way and that we've seen the worst crime month we will see for a very long time.

St. Louis is the most dangerous city in the U.S

Except it's not.  But that's what we're expected to believe from CQ's yearly most dangerous city rankings.  Here's my take on it (mostly copied and pasted from a post I made on City-Data )

UMSL Criminologists were recently honored for a thorough breakdown and criticism of these rankings

While there is no doubt that we have a high crime rate, to suggest that St. Louis is the most dangerous city, or even a top 10 most dangerous city is an absolute joke. The fact remains that violent crime is highly localized in a handful of dangerous neighborhood - just like every other city. The difference is our numbers aren't watered down like cities with a larger city limits that include some suburban areas. Of course if we had a higher population in the city proper that would also help water down crime numbers like it does in Baltimore and Washington DC.

No doubt the authors of this study realize this and mention it in their report. But the fact is that the headline will read that St. Louis is the most dangerous city in America. That's all most people will read, and it has a strong adverse effect on the entire St. Louis metro area, most of which is very safe. The study is put together to sensationalize crime, grab a headline and some publicity. And it does it at the cost of irreparable harm to the cities listed.

I don't want to discount the fact that the crime rate is unacceptably high in our city. I live here, work here, and spend the vast majority of my time and money here. While I haven't had even one remotely bad incident happen to me, I know others who have. I definitely take some precautions to ensure I do not become a victim. I think the best cure for crime is better education, stronger communities, more/better police, and more people. It is hard to get more people to move here when ridiculous studies like this come out.

Finally, as the violent crime rate is the one cited, the fact remains that even in America's "most dangerous city" you still have roughly an only 2% chance of being a victim of violent crime. I imagine that percentage is even lower if don't live in or frequent certain neighborhoods, and lower still if you don't sell drugs or join a gang. The average is roughly 0.4%. Crime is a very significant issue in St. Louis that we should continue to address...but superfluous studies like this one are not helping.

Beer City, USA

I've been reading a lot of talk about St. Louis reclaiming its spot as the beer city in the U.S.  I have a copy of St. Louis Brews which is an excellent book detailing the city's rich brewing heritage.  St. Louis' large immigrant German population combined with our excellent cave system (invaluable before refrigerators) made our city the undisputed beer capital in the 1800's.

Over the course of the 20th century. Anheuser Busch became the world's largest brewery, while other area breweries closed up shop.  In he last 20 years, and especially in the last 10, St. Louis has seen an explosion of sorts of new breweries.  I feel that this has grown even more apparent since Anheuser Busch's hostile takeover by InBev in 2008.  While St. Louis still boasts the worlds largest brewery thanks to ABI, a new interest in craft breweries and specialized beer has really taken off here.

In the city alone, we have the Schlafly Tap Room, Amalgamated brewing (the Stable), Six Row Brew Co, Square One, Buffalo, Cathedral Square, and Morgan Street.  Over the course of the next year we will have at least three more.  That's not even mentioning some of the great microbreweries open in the area suburbs such as O'Fallon, Hill Brewing, and Augusta.

I say, the more the merrier.  St. Louis can take advantage of this new found craft brewing culture and draw in some extra tourism dollars (food/beverage tourism is really taking off) and maybe even some beer-influenced entrepreneurial (that is, influenced by beer...not under the influence of it...).  If you needed any other indication of how big the beer scene here is getting head on over to STLHops and read all the events, message board posts, and beer reviews.  While all the excitement is around the small microbreweries popping up, I also want to reiterate that I still support AB-InBev and they still employ thousands of fellow St. Louisans.  My grandma's house was on Utah in Benton Park and I still remember the distinctive aroma as a kid, from that old brewery on Pestalozzi.  It will always be near and dear to me and AB is no doubt a huge part of St. Louis still.  I have no issues getting a pitcher of Bud Light at a sports bar or ordering one at a hockey game.

But the microbreweries are the future of beer in St. Louis.  Hopefully one day in the not-so-distant-future, St. Louis will again reign as Americas Beer capital.  Imagine this: St. Louis boasts the worlds largest and most renowned brewery and has the most microbreweries to boot.  Excited yet?

Citygarden

Citygarden's appearance on the scene in summer of 2009 coincided with my burgeoning interest in things like the built environment and urbanism.  To be honest, I wasn't sure what it was or what to make of it when I first saw it.  A year and a half or so later, I must say that Citygarden is a top 5 spot in the city for me.

What makes it so special is that it gives people downtown a place to gather, to see things, to relax, to walk, and to eat.  It is well maintained, clean, full of interesting sculptures, a large projection screen, small limestone bluffs, and my personal favorite - the water fountain that is lit by LED's at night.  Oh and did I mention there's also a restaurant?

Citygarden is the ideal example that I would hold up as what we need to be doing more of in the city.  That's not to say that our most pressing issue is the lack of sculpture parks.  But it's a sign that we care and that we're heavily invested in our community.  When you drive through a neighborhood full of falling down buildings, weeds growing in cracks in the sidewalks, and acres of urban prairie - you do not think this is a city full of people who care.  When people care, all kinds of great things happen.

In the very center of downtown, where thousands of visitors, workers, and residents pass each day this is what we used to have:


View Larger Map

^St. Louis deserves better than that!  Citygarden is what St. Louis needed, and what St. Louis deserved.

This is what we're up against

There's an article in the post today about the city of Rock Hill looking to make their city more bike and pedestrian friendly.  Against my better judgement I had to click on the "comments" tab and see what the fine readers of STLToday.com had to say about this.  Here's a small sampling:

"Insanity. A few hippie bike riders are more important than normal people. Cheezzeee. Keep the thugs off the streets first. Nobody wants the crime that is occurring in Rock Hill. Then clean the trash up. After that, if hippies want bike lanes, then charge them for using them."

"If I were Rock Hill politicians, I would concentrate on keeping the growing crime problem from festering. (don't be like Mayor Slay)"

I had no idea Rock Hill was such a warzone.  And that everyone who rides a bike is a hippie.  There were even more egregious comments but I think you get the point.  My point isn't that crazy people post over at STLToday (I think we all are well aware of that by now).  But the fact is that our region is full of backwards thinking such as the above.  The St. Louis area, and probably most of the United States is a place where 40k to improve bike and pedestrian access is considered wasteful and 140 million for an extension of page avenue is considered smart and necessary.  Notice how the first comment I quoted mentions charging cyclists for the constructed bike lanes.  I wonder if he would approve of a toll where the Page extension begins?

Hypocrisy of the American automobile culture aside, how do we build better communities when the majority don't even want them?  Or do they? Maybe I'm just exaggerating how many people think like the above comments.  Judging by the overall lack of accommodation for bikes and pedestrians in the St. Louis region, I am inclined to believe that I am definitely not exaggerating.

I think we have made great strides in the last 10 years in making St. Louis a more bike and pedestrian friendly place.  The Great Rivers Greenway, Bike St. Louis, and Trailnet have made a huge impact.  Earlier this year it was announced that a bike commuter station would open downtown.  This is great stuff, but just imagine what could get done if we had an even bigger base of support for these things across the St. Louis area.

It's blog time

I've been wanting to start a blog for well over a year now.  I figured I wouldn't keep up with it, thought it would be too time consuming, and I didn't know if I'd have enough things to write about.

Well now I am finally taking the plunge.  This is my first and only blog, Pro STL.  I think not coming up with a clever name is probably another reason I never started blogging before.  Obviously I gave up in that respect.  My main focus will be on writing about day to day life in St. Louis, mainly focusing on the city and urban areas.  The "Pro" part of the name stems from the fact that I am a die hard St. Louis booster and spend way too much time battling the "Anti" crowd.  I also want to promote the area and my politics are on the progressive side of things.  So I guess you could say it fit.

My goal is to just write about my ideas, thoughts, and impressions of day to day life in the city of St. Louis.  I'm an optimist by nature so I am sure my writing will seem a bit too positive at times.  But I can't help it, I love this city.  Of course it faces huge obstacles, challenges, and it certainly isn't a utopia by any means.  I want to write about it all and add my voice the chorus of awesome St. Louis blogs.

About me...I'm 25, and have lived in the St. Louis area my whole life.  I consider myself fairly well traveled and love to experience other cities as well.  My parents were both born and bred south siders and I spent the first 10 years of my life in south city too before moving to south county where I graduated high school (no I am not telling you where from).  I received my BA in Political Science from UMSL in May 2008 and currently work for the Federal Government in downtown St. Louis.

In May of 2009 my girlfriend and I bought a house in the North Hampton neighborhood in south city.  I will write more about that, but that's when my outlook and attitude towards St. Louis changed completely.  I love the city and I can't wait to write more about it.  Stay tuned!