Can We Compete? My Thoughts. 12:40 PM

I love how the Post-Dispatch is forcing the conversation on St. Louisans: can we compete in a changing economy, with a lot of the metrics stacked against us?

There is no simple answer to this question. It's an impossibly complicated, messy question with an even more tangled answer. But there are good steps we, as a city and region, could be taking to get to that elusive answer (answers, in reality).

One obvious one to me is: openness. Let's be an open city--a place where ideas big and small are discussed and debated openly, involving all parties.

In my mind, our government and our larger power structure in the city is essentially conservative and concerned with self-preservation. No one in the system wants to surrender power. Remind me why we can't have an open discussion of just how many aldermen we need. Tell me again why we don't have a huge public forum discussing how aldermanic courtesy is hurting our city. Or why we have primaries or political parties at all in an essentially one-party system? Preserving age-old divisions (white vs. black vs. other; North Side vs. South Side vs. Central Corridor; etc.) is the last thing St. Louis needs. Yet few want to take a dip into these murky waters to try to change the status quo.

Few leaders put forth good ideas or any ideas at all. Most of our local government officials still operate under the rubric of damage control. They react to constituent complaints and try to mop up after each one.

We need an open government that involves residents at all turns. We need our elected officials floating ideas about how to improve our city. We need our corporate underwriters to get on board with helping ideas come into fruition.

The ideas don't have to be literally big--like the NorthSide project or China Air Cargo Hub. In fact, as it relates to development, they should probably be small, organic, and incremental. But there should be a constant stream of ideas to improve our city. Let's reexamine our circa 1949 zoning code. Let's look into completely obliterating the "North of Delmar" stigma. Let's all have a discussion about what's right for the Ballpark Village site. And on and on and on and on (crime, schools, etc.).

But we can't have this discussion if we're not all at the table--or if there is no table at which to discuss.

Take a look at what one rapidly improving city has done. Pittsburgh's Public Square Project is all about connecting citizens to their government, opening it up, and demystifying its ways. PopCity Pittsburgh has a great article that sums up the group's goals. While St. Louis is working on similar projects in different capacities (see UrbanSTL, which is uniting urbanist voices into one super-network), there's still no one place that we all come together--whether online or in the physical realm of our large, fragmented region. We need this discussion table more than anything right now--so that a lot of the ideas floating around can gain currency and spread. Most importantly, those at the table should be from all the varied backgrounds St. Louis can offer. While projects like Citygarden are great and improve our city, their public consultation process is limited and doesn't represent the city's denizens as a whole. In large part, St. Louis is either apathetic about its government, doesn't understand it, or doesn't trust it.

Our first step needs to be: open up our government! Part and parcel to this is more regional cooperation and coordination between our many governments. This is all easier typed than done; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be rebuilding our own "Public Square" and letting the light shine in on our government. That way we can get people involved and motivated to discuss how to move our city and region forward.

(Thanks go to Jeff Vines for forwarding me the Pittsburgh Public Square Project!).

The Post-Dispatch Needs a Geography Lesson 10:55 AM

From Post-Dispatch

Don't try to click that video from the Post-Dispatch's website (it's a screen capture); instead, ask yourself, what's wrong with that picture?

That's right. The Moonrise Hotel is in St. Louis City, not University City.

I, for one, am happy that the "U City Loop" has become the "Delmar Loop," wherein the city's side is acknowledged. Let's not set the clock back, Post-Dispatch. (Or should I say turn back the tide?)

UPDATE (4:58 p.m.): The Post has changed the video's title to read "Moonrise Hotel opens in the Loop". I guess I wasn't the only one peeved.

We're #52: thanks, P-D! 8:21 PM

Why does the Post-Dispatch dwell on population figures that will likely be challenged and reversed as has happened for the past six years in a row? At least the article was good enough to mention that fact.

Why not entitle the article "Census says #52; city prepared to challenge" if they wanted to stay the least bit neutral? Better yet, why not be outright optimistic and entitle the article "St. Louis's Census slide likely in error".

Now the STL Today forums are abuzz with the talk of the imminent demise of the city.

Yikes.

Horrific murder rate this year is looking more and more likely. 3:37 PM

Despite the overwhelmingly positive response to the recent Call to Oneness March, violence has continued at an unacceptable rate.

The latest P-D article tells of four slayings in one night in the city; one in Academy, one in Kingsway West, and two in Hyde Park.

I checked the Police Department's website for the most up to date crime stats. There were 63 murders between January and May 2008--only five months. We are on pace to top 150 homicides in one year. That's an unbelievably high murder rate of 50 per 100,000.

Our cities and our nation need leaders who will not shy away from bold, progressive policies that will reduce crime and reinvest in education so that our cities can be stabilized. This is a moral issue, whether or not the victims of violence we witness nearly every day are involved in gangs, are drug addicts, or any other factor that people typically use to diminish the weight of a particular crime.

We need unqualified action.

When Credit is Due... 2:29 PM

I have to hand it to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at times. Just when I'm ready to write it off as a tabloid unconcerned with St. Louis's myriad urban issues, it produces an article of journalistic excellence.

A previous such article is "A Tax-Credit Bill for One Man?" by Jake Wagman (written on my birthday in 2007 (June 17)--a present just for me?). Wagman's article was so balanced (perhaps even biased towards the beleaguered Blairmont-afflicted neighborhoods) that it drew fire from Mayor Slay. In a city where Mr. Slay was able to recruit the National Trust for Historic Preservation to supply a fluff piece about the "unfortunate need" to demolish the Century Building in that same newspaper, Wagman's criticism of the deathly silence at City Hall was astonishing.

The latest gold star for the P-D comes in the form of "Charles Lee 'Cookie' Thornton: Behind the smile". The shootings at the Kirkwood City Hall back in February of this year by "Cookie" shocked the nation. But the article seems to indicate that the city of Kirkwood had become inured to Cookie's explosive behavior, watching his deterioration without wondering why.

My point is not to exonerate Cookie. What happened at City Hall is inexcusable. But the article does display the bitter irony of Negro Removal that I hinted at in my previous post, which also mentioned Cookie's Meacham Park neighborhood.

Poor African American neighborhoods are often so neglected that, when they do get any sort of attention, even if the form of urban renewal, the residents are often complicit in the plans. City leaders can then point to residents' willingness to sell their homes as evidence that there's no will or way to salvage these neighborhoods.

Truly, the burden of proof should be on the municipalities who neglected the neighborhoods, who ushered in or failed to halt the decline in the first place.

Instead, they become humanitarians--givers of fresh new housing, destroyers of dilapidated old housing; bringers of Wal-Mart and Target, takers of hopelessness and blight.