St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations"
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers"
I haven't been in St. Louis for 25 years. Like a lot of midwestern center cities, its heyday is long past. The Washington Post has a feature on the new mayor, Tishaura Jones ("The first black woman is shaking up the city"), and the comment thread is pretty negative
The city is located at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and was an important port especially for north-south trade on the Mississippi, and became an important gateway to the Western US.
The city has experienced a great deal of disinvestment. The population shrunk from 857,000 in 1950 to less than 300,000 today.
The County population is about 1 million, whereas in 1950, the City + County population was over 1.2 million.
Business consolidation has hurt St. Louis significantly, as major companies like May Department Stores (Macy's), Boatman Bank (Bank of America), Monsanto/GD Searle, and Anheuser-Busch have been acquired by larger companies and the local presence of these firms has significantly diminished.
He was a bit too direct for the suburbs, and left MoCo for a high level planning position in Calgary, Alberta--Rollin is from Canada--and the mayor there is considered one of the most progressive in North America.
Before MoCo, Rollin had been planning director in St. Louis, and the revitalization plan he created there won an international award. He wouldn't provide a copy, but it happens that an article about the plan is in this document from a symposium, The future of shrinking cities: problems, patterns, and strategies of urban transformations in a global context, starting on page 127 (better formatted pdf version).
Theory of change. Even in the best of times, politics, governance, and overarching approaches to change don't seem to be particularly congruent.
Elected officials rarely think in terms of systems, let alone theoretical constructs ("It’s time to make ourselves public policy guinea pigs," Washington Post). They tend to be focused on the here and now, and planning and making decisions for the future seems particularly foreign.
A number of years ago I came across a paper "The Power of Theories of Change," in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that puts forth the concept that substantive and successful change only comes about when grounded in research, evidence, and successful practice.
And it's worse because politicians also don't think in terms of "passing the baton," they want to do their own thing, make their own mark, when successful community improvement is a multi-decade process that to be successful goes far beyond the typical two terms of a big city mayor. So when new people take over, usually programs pushed by predecessors are junked. Which makes long term improvement very difficult.
Money is scarce. It's even more difficult for declining cities because the problems are so challenging and overwhelming and mostly there is a lack of resources to do very much. Typically, planners and stakeholders are flummoxed by this reality and are mostly focused on maintaining an equilibrium of decline. Usually, improvement is beyond their mettle.
For example, some of the criticism of Liverpool's recent loss of World Heritage City status referenced Hamburg as a counter-example ("Liverpool has been careless with its heritage," Financial Times).
-- "The real lesson from Flint Michigan is about municipal finance," 2016
But Hamburg is a German city-state with access to capital and political will far beyond that of a typical center city. Plus, more importantly, Hamburg is a city that is still an economic powerhouse, while cities like Liverpool and St. Louis have been on the decline for decades.
A comprehensive approach to revitalization in a Midwestern center city and St. Louis in particular. Yes there are the equity and race issues, structural poverty, structural racism, etc. So what would a revitalization program be?
While there is a big debate in economic development -- do you invest in people or place? -- the reality is that cities are geographically bounded and by definition must invest in place.
At the same time, the approaches need to focus on the development and creation of talent, improving what exists locally while also attracting people from elsewhere.
A comprehensive program for a weak market legacy center city would be the kind of program I outlined (but did not detail) for DC's East of the River and the Takoma Langley district of Montgomery and Prince George's Counties ("Equity planning: an update," "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs") or the program I proposed for Silver Spring, Maryland, as a way to leverage the creation of the Purple Line light rail program ("Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District" | Part 1: Setting the stage").
But on a much larger scale, like Bilbao, Pittsburgh, Liverpool, Oklahoma City, Medellin, etc.
Big vision and implementation approach: Germany's International Building Exposition and International Garden Festival as models.
In 2013/2014 I wrote a series of articles on revitalization in the European Union ("REFLECTIONS ON EU IN BALTIMORE AND BLOG").
The story on Hamburg ("HAMBURG, URBAN DESIGN, AND PLACEMAKING: BIG VISION, BIG PROJECTS") referenced IBA and IGF, German revitalization "exhibition programs" that focus on a particular city over a decade a more, with multiple projects big and small, coordinated and integrated.
When I was on the design oversight committee for the proposed "garden bridge" across the Anacostia River, I suggested that IBA and IGF would be great models to further revitalization along in the US.
-- "There has to be a better way to spend $1.85 billion on "revitalization" just to demolish buildings," 2014
-- "The US needs its own version of Germany's International Building Exhibition, let's start with Detroit," 2014
-- "European Garden Festivals as a model urban planning initiative for Detroit and other US cities," 2014
-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River," 2014
While I've suggested that Detroit and DC's East of the River would be good places to start, St. Louis is just as good an opportunity (except for the money thing).
A caveat on "big planning." It takes a long time to realize a plan. For example, the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area Projects program has been underway for 29 years. Bilbao a bit longer than Oklahoma City. Liverpool's slightly more than 20 years.
(I often mention how it took up to 25 years to really see benefits from the WMATA Metrorail system in DC's core (about 20+ years for Arlington's Wilson Boulevard), and another 5-10 years for the effects to be seen in DC's outer city.)
By contrast, after Hurricane Katrina there was a big city-wide, neighborhood focused big revitalization planning effort called the Unified New Orleans Plan ("Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans," Journal of the APA, A Study Of The First Decade of Post Katrina Revitalization, LSU/UNO, "After Hurricane Katrina, a look at New Orleans’ uneven recovery among its neighborhoods," New Orleans Advocate). They still have a long way to go, after 16 years.
Similarly, Detroit went through a similar planning process in 2012-2014, and Maurice Cox, former mayor of Charlottesville and a professor at UVA, was hired to be the planning director focused on implementation. But he left for Chicago after four years.
I guess I'd say the issue is that they have great needs, and little money, for example $7.4 million for the Warrendale-Cody neighborhood ("Detroit neighborhood revitalization plan takes shape with youth input," Detroit News).
I think the lesson is that you need a multi-decade commitment to implementation that outspans the temporality of political administrations.
Poverty reduction programs. Speaking of "people" versus "place" programs, a number of cities have created anti-poverty initiatives. I'm not sure about the power of "the theory of change" for these initiatives.
I can't claim I've read all the documents: Charlotte-Mecklenburg (Charlotte Opportunity Initiative); Dallas ("Dallas ‘Grow South' Initiative Gets Mixed Grades," NBCDFW); and Richmond, Virginia (Annual Report on Poverty Reduction and Community Wealth Building Initiatives in the City of Richmond, Virginia, 2017).
Although I am impressed by how United Way of Toronto has repositioned its spending and programming around poverty reduction in particular neighborhoods (Building Strong Neighbourhoods report, Strong Neighbourhoods: A Call to Action), which in turn has shaped the City of Toronto and its funding priorities (TORONTO STRONG NEIGHBOURHOODS STRATEGY 2020).
Another one that didn't have much effect was the creation of a "Deputy Mayor for Greater Economic Opportunity" by DC Mayor Bowser--it was spurred by a conversation I had with her campaign staff in 2013, but instead I had proposed a "Deputy Mayor for East of the River," and a program encompassing both place and people.
Theoretical foundations
1. The overarching approach would be "transformational projects action planning" ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017), coming up with a set of anchor projects designed to bring community improvement to fruition, implemented through the six element approach to comprehensive revitalization described in past writings.
- the development and production of a broad, comprehensive, visionary, and detailed revitalization plan/s
- the creation of innovative and successful implementation organizations, with representatives from the public sector and private firms, to carry out the program
- strong accountability mechanisms that ensure that the critical distance provided by semi-independent implementation organizations isn't taken advantage of in terms of deleterious actions
- funding to realize the plan, usually a combination of local, regional, state, and national sources
- integrated branding and marketing programs to support the realization of the plan
- flexibility and a willingness to take advantage of serendipitous events and opportunities and integrate new projects into the overall planning and implementation framework.
2. Undergirded by the general concepts of social urbanism ("The transformation of Medellin into a ‘City for Life:’ insights for healthy cities," Cities and Health, 2019, "Governing inequality in the South through the Barcelona model: ‘social urbanism’ in Medellín, Colombia")
3. Equity planning, social infrastructure creation ("Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life") and community economic development (I like the book by Mihalio Temali).
The social urbanism program in Medellin is noteworthy for focused investments in neighborhoods, adding anchors like libraries and parks, as well as significant improvements to the mobility system, especially in areas with challenging topography, and including aerial cable car systems and escalators on steep hills. Profits from the municipally-owned utility fund many of the improvements ("Utility" infrastructure as an opportunity for co-locating urban design and placemaking improvements").
Another model, located adjacent to schools, not in the same campus or complex, is the Sorenson Multi-Cultural Center in Salt Lake City. It's a City-County facility, with multiple co-located agencies and programs.
4. And a commitment to civic engagement and participatory democracy. The idea would be to engage citizens in the process as much as they would like to be, in planning, oversight, creation of programs in their neighborhoods, etc.
Models would be:
- empowered participation as discussed in the books Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy,
- participatory budgeting, and
- the Asset Based Community Development approach pioneered by Northwestern University professor John McKnight.
Labels: building a local economy, creative economy, economic development, urban design/placemaking, urban revitalization
posted by Richard Layman @ 2:33 PM&Permanent Link
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KMOV4: City, county and residents weigh in on merging St. Louis entities together.
https://www.kmov.com/2022/11/30/city-county-residents-weigh-merging-st-louis-entities-together/
Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago Invest/West initiative, $2B on the west side.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-lightfoot-invest-south-west-chicago-20230113-ibywnqtse5bt5o5lplpbwlupee-story.html
That’s a message Lightfoot often repeats and hopes will help propel her to a second term as she works to craft an image of a generational leader whose administration brought about historic spending for disinvested neighborhoods. This past summer, at a separate groundbreaking in the city’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side, Lightfoot declared her administration is “doing things that no one else has ever done.”
But a deeper look at Invest South/West paints a much more complex and nuanced picture of what projects the Lightfoot administration has counted as successes, when those plans were conceived, how unique the projects have been compared with previous administrations and how transformative some of the ventures have been for the South and West sides.
Some of the largest investments were already on the launchpad when Lightfoot took office. Others were for standard repairs to existing buildings. And many of the projects are still in the conceptual phase and have not even begun to be built. Of the more than $750 million that the city counts as part of the public spend for Invest South/West, more than half has been allocated toward those kinds of expenditures rather than new or groundbreaking projects, the Tribune found.
Take, for instance, Invest South/West’s biggest project in terms of public cost — the $64 million development of a new headquarters for the Chicago Park District in Brighton Park on the South Side.
While Lightfoot’s administration has overseen parts of the still-unfinished project, the new headquarters was conceived, approved and announced by Lightfoot’s predecessor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who held an event there to celebrate the move from Streeterville in September 2018 — more than a year before Lightfoot unveiled Invest South/West.
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Other Invest South/West success stories touted by the mayor’s office include $34 million for a Bronzeville housing development that broke ground before she took office, $30 million for a new firehouse in Roseland that was planned before she got elected, and $17 million for a development in North Lawndale that received key approvals in 2018 and closed in 2019, the same year Lightfoot was elected.
To be sure, Lightfoot’s administration has spent millions of dollars in public funds and worked to spur both public and private development in neighborhoods that have experienced generations of disinvestment. But while the mayor regularly invokes Invest South/West as a top strategy, the tagline has become as much a marketing slogan as an economic development program.
“Invest South/West is supposed to be a project where they identified commercial corridors and they were going to pour an influx of money,” said South Side Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, a Lightfoot critic whose ward includes one Invest South/West community. “But what they’re doing is, anything that happens on the South and West Side, they claim as Invest South/West.”
Bernard Loyd, who leads the community revitalization organization Build Bronzeville, said Invest South/West is bringing “pennies on the dollar” compared with megaprojects like The 78, a $7 billion megadevelopment near the South Loop that aspires to be a new Chicago neighborhood. While The 78 is using private funding, the city is working with the developers to truly transform that area, Loyd said.
“The danger is, when we say we’re investing to transform our communities and we’re pointing to Invest South/West, people will say: This hasn’t changed the community and therefore you haven’t invested correctly or it wasn’t worthy. When the reality is, we haven’t invested anything close to what we need to change these communities,” Loyd said. “By not being clear and specific about the investments we’re making, we’re undermining the faith in the value of investments.”
The idea behind Invest South/West is not new, but it is straightforward: If government puts money into developments in Black and brown communities where disinvestment is rampant, that can spur more cash from the private sector.
From the beginning, however, Invest South/West has been hard to define. The program was first announced in October 2019, when Lightfoot stepped into a packed house on the West Side to unveil a $10 million gift from BMO Harris Bank to United Way of Metro Chicago, much of which would be spent in the Austin neighborhood.
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/invest_sw/home.html
More from Crain's Chicago Business
Invest South/West program remains mostly a vision, without a single project under construction after three years
The mayor's signature economic development initiative has promised unprecedented public funds for blighted corridors. But without a project under construction after three years, it has yet to prove it's the cure for disinvestment.
https://www.chicagobusiness.com/commercial-real-estate/invest-south-west-slow-start
9/22/2022
When developer A.J. Patton surveys the empty storefronts, vacant lots and crumbling facades lining a 3-mile stretch of Chicago Avenue between Humboldt Park and Austin, where nearly a third of residents live below the poverty line, he sees a nascent showcase for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s signature initiative to spur investment in blighted South and West Side neighborhoods.
It starts with a proposed $27.1 million mixed-use complex with 44 apartments at Chicago and Central Park avenues, one of several projects induced—and heavily subsidized—by Invest South/West. Then there's the $39 million, 60-unit apartment building with a grocery store Patton seeks to build five blocks west of there. Farther west, a prominent Austin developer plans a 20-unit condo project with a vegan restaurant on the ground floor, while other developers expect to begin work by the end of the year on a $40 million project that will put new commercial space in the landmark Laramie Bank building and build mixed-income apartments next door.
Though none of those projects have won final city approval or broken ground, "that's arguably $130 million of (planned) investment in a section of the city that hadn't seen it in 40 years," says Patton, CEO of 548 Capital, one of the most active developers in the city's poorest communities over the past couple of years. "That is game-changing."
Patton's optimism is the prevailing sentiment among neighborhood-focused developers nearly three years after Lightfoot launched what she called her "Marshall Plan" for investment-starved South and West Side corridors. Prompted by city-solicited bids, housing and commercial projects totaling almost $500 million in costs—most of which is slated to come from public funding and incentives—are moving through various city approvals, some in areas that have gone decades without meaningful investment. Neighborhood developers say Lightfoot’s strategy of directing $750 million in public money and resources into targeted, vacancy-ridden commercial districts differs sharply from the lip service those areas got from previous city administrations, which focused mainly on downtown.
Yet so far, the initiative is short on tangible results. None of the city-spurred projects in the Invest South/West corridors has put shovels in the ground, well behind the goal set more than two years ago by the city's planning head to have the first few buildings fully financed and under construction within 18 months. The slow pace raises big questions about Invest South/West's effectiveness and ability to generate the broader, long-term ripple effects that Lightfoot hopes for.
"Some real planning took place, and (the program) has drawn attention to these underinvested neighborhoods," says Rachel Weber, a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois Chicago. "The concern is that we're going to end up with (several) Whole Foods" that require ongoing public funding, "and as soon as that support is withdrawn or it's clear that is not forthcoming to other developers, that will be the end."
St. Louis at risk of going under 300,000 population, which puts them at risk for being eligible for "large city" grants.
https://www.audacy.com/kmox/news/local/how-population-loss-could-hurt-st-louis
KMOX radio
"Here's what could happen if the population of St. Louis dips below 300,000 "
The population of St. Louis City has been hovering around 300,000 for a while — but what happens if we dip below that threshold? According to Neal Richardson, executive director of St. Louis Development Corporation, population loss could cause the city to lose out on grants, funding, and more.
The 300,000 figure is important for decisions the government makes around distribution of ARPA funds, for example, Richardson said.
So many small municipalities.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/154zxqu/high_quality_municipal_boundary_map_updated_2022/
St. Louis population loss not new, could soon slip out of top 25 largest metros in US
https://www.audacy.com/kmox/news/local/st-louis-population-loss-not-new-now-23rd-largest-metro
The problem is not a new one. In 1950, the city's population was 856,000. In 2024, it's 282,000. St. Louis County's population is lower now than it was in 1990, and the Metro East is in "permanent demographic winter," meaning more people are dying than being born. The region has a higher than average population of Baby Boomers.
According to Ness Sandoval, St. Louis University demographer, the city's population loss today is mostly due to Black families moving out. Much of the new construction in the city is apartments, which appeal to singles, not families with children.
Growing metro areas also have a large Latino population, which St. Louis does not have.
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