What would shoppers at Chesterfield Commons change about St. Louis? 7:48 PM

ToastedRav.com posed this question: We know you love St. Louis, but what would you change about it?

For some reason, they stalked shoppers at Chesterfield Commons to elicit answers.

I don't know if it was careful editing or there were good sales going on, but negative responses were no where to be found (minus one lady griping about traffic)!

Watch the video here.

Strassenfest Should Have Gone to South City, not Chesterfield! 1:01 AM

This is the wurst news I've heard all week.

St. Louis is spilling over with German heritage--especially the South Side. Most know that the "Scrubby Dutch" for which the South Side neighborhood of Dutchtown was named was actually due to a mispronunciation of the word "Deutsch"--Germans.

From Bevo Mill, to Dutchtown, to Carondelet, to Benton Park West, to Gravois Park, to the Patch...I can think of dozens of locations that might have been more appropriate for a relocated Strassenfest. But loads of parking and "security" is always key, huh?

It's going to be on Chesterfield Parkway West, too? Is there even a space fit for a large community event there?

Boo, I say. What next? Hill Day moves to Arnold?

This is the very precise point at which you know your region has been irrevocably damaged by suburban sprawl: 3:44 PM

"We would also like the St. Louis Symphony to have a summer home here in Chesterfield," said Kathy Higgins, president of Sachs Properties. Cultural resources like the Missouri Botanical Garden, the St. Louis Zoo, as well as public libraries and parks get funded by tax money from all county residents, Sachs said, but the bulk of them are located within St. Louis City.

"We would like to bring at least pieces of those to other places, to Chesterfield," Higgins said.

Ms. Higgins is helping develop a sterile, suburban downtown for Chesterfield.

And she wants to cannibalize St. Louis's historical institutions for her (and other West Countians') driving convenience.

A bold quote if I've ever read one--and, as stated above, a sure sign that St. Louis has some of the world's worst sprawl.

If a suburbanite hypothesizes about handpicking away tourist attractions from the central city, it show a total disconnect between that suburb and its host region, and especially that suburb's relationship to the central city.

Far too many "St. Louisans" grow up without any urban frame of reference. The city, to them, is but another one of the myriad municipalities in the region.

Well, even in their minds, it is a special municipality--one marked by poverty and crime and undeserving of tourist dollars anyway, likely.

Shameful.

(To end on a more light-hearted note, here is some wackiness from Big Small Town Designs in reference to Chesterfield:



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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.