Bulldozing cities to help them survive

[csberry]

I love the plan discussed in THIS ARTICLE from the Telegraph. While the likelihood of the plan discussed in the article becoming a reality outside of Flint, Michigan is still quite speculative, I'm really hopeful that this proves successful. Both the fiscal responsibility of contracting the size of the city service's reaches and the shift from abandoned, but developed to completely undeveloped are great reasons to give this a go. It is amazing the types of redevelopment that has followed greening projects (cleaning up brown zones or turning abandoned/unused property into greenway or park land). There are portions of North and South St. Louis that would tremendously benefit from this (East St. Louis is a lost cause for numerous reasons.).

Comments

[cosmosmariner.livejournal.com]

When my niece was at Children's Hospital in the Lou a few years ago, we drove down to see her and my sister and had to venture into an area that was nothing but burned out crack houses. Rob was a freaking mess, he was so scared. I told him that St. Louis is like that everywhere.

It would be great if they could just raze whole parts of that city or do some sort of urban renewal project.

We should just burn ESTL down. No kidding.

[csberry.livejournal.com]

What amazes me about St. Louis is its history. It was a rampaging business and industry town that was thriving a century ago. How some parts have maintained their charm during the city's decline and yet other parts look like a scene from a post-apocalyptic film has puzzled me since I've seen them.

I used to love to drive around and see how the survival or death of neighborhoods seemed almost sporadic. There are small clusters of gorgeous, lively n'hoods surrounded by abandoned buildings or poorly maintained dense residential. I once wandered some direction north of Forest Park and was stunned when we came upon a neighborhood (5 or 6 sq blocks, at least) of 2 and 3 story Victorian mansions that were barely standing on these large, unkempt acre lots. Our journeying through the neighborhood during winter was especially creepy with gray skies and these enormous, old-growth trees punctuating the landscape with their bare limbs. Very much like a Tim Burton movie.

It are the clusters of fantastic neighborhoods spread throughout the city (Tower Grove, Richmond Heights, Carondelet, Central West End) that make me hopeful that, some day, St. Louis will get a good, cohesive city govt that will be able to focus on fixing the trouble spots.

Everything across the river just needs to be flattened and returned to nature. Humans haven't been able to do anything good with that area since the Indians built the Cahokia Mounds.

[cosmosmariner.livejournal.com]

The insane thing is that STL changes on every city block! We took my sister and bro-in-law to dinner when we went to see Serria in the hospital and going down three blocks we saw decent area, scary-lock-the-door area, and OMGgangviolence! area. And that was just getting to a Steak-n-Shake. Rob turned down the wrong road, saw three guys wearing red bandanas, and nearly shat himself. That whole city is so intense.

My cousin still lives there but I cannot remember which neighborhood she bought into.

How long did you live in the area? My maternal fam lived there off and on through my mom's childhood, living usually in places like Eureka and Arnold...

[csberry.livejournal.com]

While many large cities have a fluctuation between blocks, the differences between how nice a street can be one block from Forest Park and how crummy they can be 5 blocks away is striking.

I only lived in St. Louis for a year. I was in Richmond Heights (technically, it is a city on St. Louis(city)'s border). I lived about 1/2 a mile from Forest Park and loved to walk/bike around the park and the surrounding neighborhoods. After being laid off (and during the following 7 months of unemployment), I really started reading up on the history of the city and just wandering around exploring. Nothing bad ever happened to me, so I never feared wandering the entire city during the day. Some of the folks my wife worked with were a bit shocked by the areas were I was wandering - especially my journeys into North St. Louis.