Originally Posted by
claireianthelibrarian
StL and Detroit have many parallels. They're neck-and-neck in certain measures of violent crime, vacancy rates, population loss, and baseball. Curiosity about Detroit-as-a-rusty-sister-city was what first brought me up here from St. Louis for a trip in 2008. I liked it a lot, and ended up moving here a year ago.
I'd say within the cities themselves, disregarding their metropolitan areas, St. Louis is much more segregated. City services, as well as private loans and insurance, are much more concentrated in certain areas, and as a result problems are much more geographically concentrated too. You all have Alter Road and 8 Mile, which are boundaries between different cities, but StL's version of Alter runs right down the middle of the city. If you are white, everyone will tell you not to go north of Delmar. I lived there for years, and people would actually not believe me when I told them where I lived. When one looks at maps of resource distribution, even if they lack a street grid, one can tell exactly where Delmar is.
In fairness, I have yet to spend more than an evening in Brightmoor and other such places here, and that limits my perspective on Detroit. In StL, I lived for years in a neighborhood that had borne the brunt of decades of failed wipe-out-the-black-slums projects. My St. Louis neighborhood before that one was in the icy grip of an alderman who'd recently gotten to eminent domain and bulldoze six blocks elsewhere in his ward and who was trying for a repeat where I lived, and so.... Suffice it to say, I didn't experience the city's best side. I have been more conservative in choosing a neighborhood here because I after all that I am worn out.
Both cities have that depopulated Rust Belt creative gumption. Low rent, low property values, and low barriers to entry can do a lot for a city's cultural life. In St. Louis, I was astonished at some of the cultural opportunities I got simply because I was reasonably skilled and willing to step up. I doubt I'd have gotten to curate a film series at a major museum before my 22nd birthday if I were in New York or Portland, but in St. Louis I did. Detroit strikes me as a place such things are true threefold, providing that you can make your business meet your living expenses or keep the city from abruptly bulldozing your folk art environment. It's a balancing act, I suppose. For the frustration of watching what happened to Theater Bizarre, I watched some of my favorite actively, publicly creative St. Louisans get run off by specific actions taken by the city's development-at-the-expense-of-all-else government. But still, there are great things going on in both cities.
I'd also say Detroit feels a little more international than St. Louis does. Immigration to the metropolitan area is more active here than it is in StL. I more frequently meet people who have had exposure to life and ideas outside of Detroit [[versus St. Louis).
On the flip side, population loss in St. Louis City has supposedly stemmed. Three-term Mayor Slay's administration's schtick is to challenge Census findings whenever they are released, insisting that St. Louis has more residents than they gave it credit for. Closer examination of the numbers reveals that the city has recently lost thousands of black residents, and most new residents are white, which is particularly noteworthy in a city that was recently just barely black majority. It is noteworthy also in light of the current administration's steadfast support for a Matty Moroun type developer who has spent the past six years eviscerating the predominantly black Near North Side, often using old fashioned 1950s blockbusting tactics to scare residents into selling their homes and businesses. The demographic profile and moreover the voting profile of the city are changing.
In fairness, I'm definitely in my honeymoon period with the D right now, and I also am taking a breather from closely following city politics. I am biased, but at least somebody's biased in favor of Detroit, right?
Regarding those articles specifically: Living in St. Louis, it can sometimes feel like the city government believes its sole purpose is to drive real estate development. StL politicians love big, flashy development by campaign donors, and simply put, the TIF is king.
Last year, they actually considered and approved a $390,000,000 TIF out of the city's ailing General Fund, with 50% of the bonds backed by the city, for an ill-defined large scale development project spanning several neighborhoods. The TIF included condemnation rights to literally thousands of properties, the owners of which had not been notified. It was approved in September 2009 in a hearing rife with glaring procedural violations of the TIF statute and then voided by a judge very recently. It's the most dramatic example, but if you've got the right connections in StL, damned if you'll have to pay to build your own grocery store. That's what city and state money are for!
Downtown St. Louis has fewer straight-up rotting abandoned buildings than it did five years ago, as Deputy Mayor of Development Barb Geisman notes in the first article, but that's only part of the story. The vacancy rate is still very high. There is a lot of finished, empty space. As someone who only began driving last year, in my experience it actually has become harder in recent years to take care of basic, practical needs Downtown than it used to be. The locksmith, the original grocery store, the yarn store, the place that had affordable shoes, the place where I got the best Bettie Page haircut of my life, the Walgreens, two lil' cheapie pizzerias, all those places are among those that have closed in the past couple of years. Often, they were kicked out by developers starting some flashy project that ultimately kinda crapped out, and years later the space has not had a single tenant since. Some new businesses have opened, but many have closed. And for all the vacancy, cheap residential rent Downtown is a thing of the past. Again, demographic profiles are changing, and it's worthwhile to ask who all this newness is benefitting and who is being driven out. Sure, things are shinier and less ragged overall, but it hasn't translated to that drastic a change in the quality of life.
If StL City Hall is going to continue prioritizing the support of business over basic quality of life issues, they really ought to consider subsidizing small businesses a lot more and big developers less [[if at all), as you said about Detroit. I'd particularly like to see some help for those who'd rent a first floor commercial space. More demand side, less supply side. Let's get those Downtown storefronts full of life, get a few people employed and resuscitate sidewalk life, before we create even more empty space. One of the more ethical developers Downtown has a history of giving local artists free rent in his unrented storefronts, and actual shops seem to take notice and move on in pretty quickly once that happens. And good lord, money for stadiums does not grow on trees, it grows on closed schools and missing sidewalks.
In the neighborhoods, StL has a rich, rich culture of DIY rehab. A huge percentage of the people I know have little projects, and people work together and share ideas and tools. It is an almost entirely brick city, and compared to Detroit the surviving building stock is older. Those buildings are purty, and they can take years of neglect while remaining viable. To the extent that the city has reversed its decline, it has done so largely as a result of individuals knitting neighborhoods back together building by building and block by block.
If I were mayor of St. Louis, I'd look for ways that the city could remove civic and fiscal roadblocks for small-time rehabbers and business owners. Just like Detroit, the reasons projects get stalled are insane. A friend consulted on a rehab of a building purchased from the city, and the whole project got stuck in a holding pattern for three months because they didn't have a line item in their budget for mini-blinds, and no one told them it was necessary for three months. A friend who bought her house from the city suddenly found herself with thousands of dollars worth of sewer problems because the city had not paid the $12 insurance on the sewer when it owned it the year prior. And to buy a building from the city, you have to gain the approval of the alderman, who are generally every bit as competent, open-minded, and mature as members of Detroit's City Council. Dealing with that culture and taking a bite out of loan and insurance redlining would do more for the city than any half-empty but very sparkly loft building Downtown ever would.
More than you asked for, but that's my two cents. There is a lot I don't know about Detroit, and I'd appreciate the perspectives of those of you who know what's up. Any of this sound familiar? Have you been to my hometown?
