Saint Louis: City and River Pt. I

Saint Louis has had a difficult relationship with the Mississippi River through most of its existence. Obviously, the city owes its location to a sizable bluff in proximity to the confluence of two of the largest rivers on the continent and its storied history to the trade generated by its location. The riverfront was a center for economic activity and a melting pot for many distinct races and ethnicities and a stage for some of Saint Louis's greatest figures. Over time the riverfront became a center of civic identity to the extent that created events like the Veiled Prophet Parade were deliberately intertwined with the setting of the river.


Saint Louis once opened its front door to the river. (1907 aerial view)

The importance of the river began to falter as the city was eclipsed by the rail capital of Chicago. The losing battle for dominance engendered desperation and bold proposals throughout the 20th century. While the clearance of 40 blocks of irreplaceable 19th century cast-iron architecture for the construction Gateway Arch and Jefferson National Expansion Monument was, in the end an even trade, many other decisions were shortsighted at the least.


The demolition of an intact 19th century riverfront in 1940 made way for the arch

Certainly, Saint Louis wasn't alone in undertaking such grand plans. What sets Saint Louis apart was the early date at which it started and the massive scale of operation. As an efficient labor force combined with federal incentives in the postwar period, demolitions for interstate corridors, slum clearance for industry, and the development of massive public housing projects eviscerated the city. By the 1980's over 800 blocks of urban fabric had been erased -- almost 11% of the total land area of the city. The mid-century desire to reinvent the city coincided with the implementation of the The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. While interstates were originally conceived to skirt cities and connect to existing boulevard and parkway networks, powerful interests in the city demanded direct access to lure development. As David J. Masenten writes in his excellent thesis, optimism prevailed and "few thought these elevated expressways would have a serious detrimental effect on the cities they served." This was the case in downtown Saint Louis, where the effort to create a bold new connection between city and river was cut off by the construction of depressed and elevated lanes of Interstate 70.


Interstate 70 blockaded the front door of Saint Louis for half a century.

The existence of Interstate 70 prevented Dan Kiley's masterful landscape from becoming a vital part of Saint Louis. Furthermore, the alternating elevated and depressed lanes have stunted redevelopment on both sides of the highway.

While Saint Louis's front door has been closed for over 50 years, the next decade will be a once in a lifetime chance to reconnect city and river. Three events are converging to make reconsideration of this condition possible. First, The National Parks Service has updated their General Management Plan for the arch grounds. Secondly, the new Ronald Wilson Reagan Mississippi River Bridge will be the first new river crossing since 1967, and will provide a radical restructuring of the current highway network in both Saint Louis and Illinois. Finally, as part of the NPS GMP, an international design competition is underway to rethink the arch grounds and riverfront. This competition, consisting of globally recognized teams of architects, engineers, urban designers and historians will undoubtedly interject some bold new vision into an under-considered area.

As a number of designers and urbanists saw this confluence on the horizon, we formed an advocacy group we call City to River. We successfully lobbied the National Parks Service to issue the following statement in the GMP:

"The National Park Service would prefer and strongly supports the removal of the Interstate highway between Poplar Street Bridge and Eads Bridge at some point in the future. [emphasis added]

NPS JNEM Final General Management Plan p.5-15

We have been meeting with stakeholders ranging from MoDOT to local business associations since that time and have now substantiated our vision enough to present it to the public. We are calling for the removal of 1.3 miles of Interstate 70 to be removed from downtown Saint Louis and replaced with an urban boulevard. Beginning with a presentation at Pecha Kucha STL we have been bringing our vision to the broader community.


Paul Hohmann and I Present at Pecha Kucha STL. Image by Geoff Story.

In the past two weeks, we have been lucky enough to receive coverage from The Saint Louis Beacon, The Urbanophile, KMOV, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Three days ago the Post-Dispatch editorial board formally endorsed the concept of highway removal.

In Part II of this article I will argue for the replacement of the downtown stretch of I-70 with an urban boulevard and explain the potential for highway removal.

Transportation alternatives: walkability and sking to work

Skis on walkbridge over Metrolink tracks, Forest Park. Photograph by author.

One of the hallmarks of our species is the efficient mobility which has resulted from one hundred millennia of evolution. We developed bipedal locomotion to better watch for predators and locate food and this adaptation drove brain development and led to higher intelligence. Over thousands of years we were able to develop multiple modes of transportation from the the taming of the horse to the cart to the bicycle and the steam locomotive. Many populations in extreme climates tailored specialized transportation devices to their environments. Similar inventions in far flung locations arose separately or became globalized through trade networks. What is striking is that through this entire process humanity did not discard previous solutions, but rather added new solutions alongside existing technologies.

That is until the twentieth century.

If I were to survey today, the vast majority of Americans used automobiles as our only means of transportation. To many, anything other than automotive transportation is "strange", "a novelty", or even worse "exercise". While everyone looks fondly back on their college years when everyone walked or biked to class, loves the freedom and leisure that alternative transportation provides on vacation, or sees it as an enticement to visit the land of fruit and nuts we avoid it in everyday life.

While it may be quite easy to naïvely crusade to enlighten people and yank them from their cars, such effort will run into a half century of governmental subsidization. According to Stanley Hart and Alvin Spivak, government subsidies towards automobile manufacturing and usage account for as much as 10% of the annual Gross National Product. The reason that Amsterdam can boast more bicycle trips than automobile trips on an annual basis is that the Netherlands has never skewed subsidy in the way that the United States has. Raising the gas tax will help to close this gap, but we must rethink our entire way of living and doing business and create corresponding policy.

By favoring the redevelopment of existing urban communities and prioritizing dense, walkable infill on brownfield sites we can begin to (re)build the conditions that make multi-modality possible. However, building construction is not the whole answer. We must also devise financial assistance to small businesses in dense areas, adopt form-based zoning overlays for mixed use districts, drastically reduce existing parking requirements, and require creation of complete street infrastructure . While this will require political courage and effort, such changes will also keep cities competitive and attract a new generation of future entrepreneurs and leaders.

To use a personal example I am a member of the so-called "millennial generation", I can attest that, like myself, the majority of my classmates in graduate school prioritize urban life, transit accessibility, and alternatives to driving when looking for places to live. For every few acquaintances who moved to the sunbelt, many more moved to a handful of multi-modal connected hotspots such as San Francisco, New York, Portland, Seattle, or Chicago.

When I chose to move within Saint Louis, I picked my neighborhood based on a combination of known bike routes, light rail accessibility, amenities, price analysis on Zilpy, and geographic analysis on WalkScore. As Jamais Cascio writes in the Atlantic new web-based technologies "offer the capacity to do something that was once limited to a hermetic priesthood. Intelligence augmentation decreases the need for specialization and increases participatory complexity." This could well be the rallying cry of the millennial generation. We have unimagined access to data, and we have the tools to use it to shape our decisions. These developments will result in increasingly bloodthirsty competition between cities for desired demographics; conversely the complacent will swiftly decline.

WalkScore™ of Central West End via WalkScore.

Physical conditions alone constitute only half of the battle of sustainable transit alternatives. The remainder is a battle of hearts and minds. When we examine the neighborhood my priorities have led me to select, we find that it has a WalkScore of 94. According to the site, only 4% of users have a higher walkscore. Yet, when I think of my daily life I do not live like I am in the ninety-sixth percentile for walkability. While I am lucky enough to have a part time position less than a mile away, the bulk of my employment requires a commute of four and a half miles. While I am able to commute there by bicycle often, job demands and weather compel me to drive more than I'd like.

Yet, as someone who advocates for access to alternative transportation methods and tries to minimize my car usage accordingly, I was pleased to be pictured on page A2 of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on January 8th.


Photo of the author in the Post-Dispatch Image by Dawn Majors.

I was on my way to my part-time job and unable to bicycle due to four inches of powdery snow on the ground. My next instinct was to drive, but my car had been parked in. Since I was lucky enough to live close enough to that place of employment, I grabbed my skis and headed to work. On the way Ms. Majors spotted me and took a series of pictures.

Soon thereafter I received a letter from Gregory F.X. Daly, the Saint Louis Collector of Revenue commending for my "dedication to my employer". While I appreciate his kind gesture, I think that associating non-automotive transit with extraordinary dedication indicates a conditioning antithetical with the wide-scale acceptance of transportation alternatives. Interestingly enough, an identical response occured in comment thread concerning skiing to work in Madison, Wi, while in Alaska a company pays employees to bike, ski, or skate to work . Perhaps a little latitude makes all the difference?


I do not endorse this skier's disregard for traffic law nor the abuse he causes to the bottoms of his skis

In a related note, I have started a statistical microblog at Daytum where I am tabulating my life. Of particular relevance to this entry is transportation. My resolution for this year is to equalize my sustainable transit usage with automobile usage. I hope that by tracking this over the coming months I can cut down on the 152 gallons of gas (and 2900 pounds of resulting CO2) I used last year.



View my life in statistics at Daytum.

The grass, perhaps, is greener?

St. Louis skyline at night. Photograph by author.

My adopted city of Saint Louis has increasingly been the focus of national media in the past six months. While coverage formerly focused on Saint Louis being designated as America's Most Dangerous City in 2006 or dwelled on the sordid tale of Michael Devlin. Compared to these stories almost anything would seem an improvement, especially for a city with notoriously low civic esteem. While a lack of vision and regressive attitudes still constitute the largest challenge to Saint Louis, the view from outside has begun to change markedly.

While the summary demolition of Charles Colbert's San Luis Apartments was viewed with concern outside the city, the NorthSide project has been commended for its visionary scale with the caution that "If it's done right, it could be transformative" and potentially an example to the rest of the Rust Belt. Whether that example is positive remains to be seen, but eyes around the nation are watching and we must demand a higher standard and cannot allow this opportunity to become a failure.

Saint Louis CityGarden -- a project by the Gateway Foundation designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz. Photograph by author.

City Garden, the most significant improvement to the city of Saint Louis since the restoration of Forest Park, and like Forest Park, is an extremely positive example of the utility of public/private partnerships in the face of diminished local planning. City Garden has received glowing reviews in a number of sources from parenting and travel magazines to industry publications. East West Gateway's Great Streets pilot program on South Grand has provided momentum for a sorely overdue assessment of the urban design of commercial corridors in the city and provides a vision for a move away from the strict prioritization of single-occupant automobile transit on city streets. While the trial narrowing of Grand has gotten the most attention, the participatory process leading to the proposed option set an excellent local example by combining education with participation.

Visitors to the UrbanNexus conference included Sarah Szurpicki of the Great Lakes Urban Exchange and Sharon Carney of the Michigan Suburbs Alliance pictured here with Jeff Vines at Chouteau's Landing. Photograph by author.

Perhaps it was the growing national recognition of a changing attitude that brought Next American City to St. Louis for a conference. I was honored to be invited to participate on a panel of emerging voices in the Vanguard Regional Roundtable. As Michael Allen has noted, the Next American City conference was fated to be in both chronological and philosophical opposition to another event: the hearing on the McKee NorthSide TIFF request.

The latest public exposure is perhaps the most striking: Richard Layman, author of Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space is examining St. Louis Metro's Moving Transit Forward planning campaign. As a transplant to St. Louis I find the transit issue infuriating. While most outsiders will readily admit that both the St. Louis Metrolink light rail system and MetroBus system is effective and even unexpectedly good for a city of St. Louis's resources, the local perception is that public transportation here is defunct, unworkable, and that ownership of an automobile is essential for daily life. At a recent conference on urban issues Alvin Reid, editor of the St. Louis Argus compared the MetroLink to a toy. As an example of a functional system he pointed to Washington's metro system.

This is exactly what makes Layman's post so interesting. The subtitle is "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region." Layman focuses on the efforts of metro to educate the public as part of the process. This is a long overdue effort. In hindsight it was poor communication and an inability to justify the importance of Metro funding that doomed last year's Proposition M. In a vacuum of information it ceased to be an initiative on badly needed expansion, and instead became a referendum on past problems. Metro must take an active role in justifying its importance to the region and in educating residents. To echo Layman, another needed step would be to clarify the subsidization of automotive transportation to eliminate the transit-welfare stigma. Despite the antipathy towards transit frequently evidenced here, it is gratifying to know that Metro's ambitious and inclusive new initiative is at least recognized outside of the Mississippi valley.

For the first time in years Saint Louis is receiving noteworthy attention on the national stage. With attention comes increased expectations. We must build on the foundation of participatory involvement and education evidenced in the best projects of this past year, reject negativity and insecurity, and advocate for a city that can once again serve as an example to the region and to the nation beyond.