URBAN DEVELOPMENT: Wait 'till Fulton becomes a suburb

By Kevin Horrigan

Of the Post-Dispatch

04/25/2004

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Then maybe St. Louis will realize that moving ahead and moving west aren't the same.

Each year in April, on or about the anniversary of his inauguration, the mayor of St. Louis delivers his State of the City speech. The event usually occurs right before Earth Day, which is almost too much excitement for one week.

As with the president's State of the Union speech and the governor's State of the State speech, the mayor's speech usually is spun through a rose-colored word processor. The State of the City, however perilous, always is portrayed as hopeful.

This year's speech was no exception, with Mayor Francis Slay touting improved delivery of city services and rebounding housing prices. But as we say in the news business, the mayor blew the lead.

Within City Hall and at the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council, the federal regional planning commission, there is some belief that the city's half-century population decline actually may have begun to level off. At the very least, it appears the city is losing population at only a quarter of its 1990s rate. At best, the city's population - which peaked at 870,000 in 1950 - may have stabilized at around 340,000.

If this is true - if the bleeding has finally stopped - it would be remarkable news. Finally, it seems, the city's population drain has created an opportunity: open space where new homes can be built and empty houses that can be rehabilitated by the young and eager.

"As homebuilders look for new prime building sites," the mayor said, "their real choices these days are narrow: the cornfields of St. Charles County and the neighborhoods of the city of St. Louis."

This may come as a surprise to people moving into Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe and even Lincoln counties. Growth continues in the so-called edge counties of the area and, if the mayor is right, in certain parts of the central city. But the downside is that, overall, the region's population is static. People are moving from one part of the region to another, with relatively few people coming in from outside.

This is the real State of the City, with "city" being used in the metropolitan sense of the word - which, of course, is something this region is loath to do. It's every county, every city, every suburb for itself.

Tax dollars flow to the edge, pushing the edge further out. Big-box retailers move out to serve the residents who've moved to the edge. They're granted tax incentives, reducing the pool of money available for services in the area the residents left behind.

"We're taking tax money from schools and giving it to Wal-Mart," is the way Les Sterman, executive director of East-West Gateway puts it.

This is the real irony. After 50 years, the population in the city has stabilized but with a much larger percentage of its population old, poor, criminal and heavily service-dependent, so that the city has to strain to provide those services. Meanwhile, the inner county is losing population to the edges, setting up the same kind of revenue-service gap in St. Louis County that the city has been dealing with.

Even on the edges, in St. Charles County, people flow westward, creating a service gap in older parts of the county. The solution: new urbanism, creating a huge city-like community just north of Old St. Charles, replicating what was left behind in St. Louis two generations ago.

This is nuts.

It has taken the city 50 years to realize it has to get its act together, start to clean up its inefficient and duplicative government and co-operate with the rest of the region for jobs and population. And maybe, if the mayor is right, a few people are starting to realize that and move back east.

But mostly they're still moving west, spreading the same number of people and the same tax base across ever wider expanses of real estate. Services like transit and schools can't keep up. Roads and infrastructure are strained, making the region less attractive to anyone who'd consider moving in from outside.

Someday, St. Louis the region will do what St. Louis the city has begun to do: concentrate resources and centralize its political structure. Gas may have to be $10 a gallon with people commuting from Fulton, but it will happen.