Pretty interesting article. Sad as well. The fortunate part is that this is mostly on the North Side, rather than being more widespread. But you don't want this to happen anywhere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us....html?_r=2&hpw

I remember a St. Louis blogger stated that he had seen bricks in New Orleans' newly-built sidewalks that said "St. Louis" on them. I can't so for sure if they were illegal or not.

It's really sickening that people destroy their own city like this, but what else is new? I wish more could be done to stop them.

Here's a North Side tour, which is probably one of the most depressing tours on this site. The East St. Louis tour is pretty sad as well. There are positives certainly, especially in the Downtown/Washington Ave areas. Unfortunately, there are bad areas [[again mostly on the North Side and Illinois) as well.
http://www.builtstlouis.net/northside/map-overall.html