Revisiting St. Louis revitalization planning in the face of population shrinkage

 KMOX radio reports ("Here's what could happen if the population of St. Louis dips below 300,000") that St. Louis is depopulating still, with a risk of going under 300,000 population, which would render it ineligible for certain types of funding made available to larger cities.

In response to a feature in the Washington Post about Tishaura Jones, Mayor of St. Louis, in 2021 I wrote a couple pieces outlining what I would do were I in charge of revitalization planning there.

-- "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"

1.  A big point is merging the city and county, which would immediately increase the city's population, maintaining its eligibility for large city funding opportunities.  That's been sputtering for awhile ("City, county and residents weigh in on merging St. Louis entities together," KMOV-TV).

The population of the county as a whole is just under one million.

2.  And further investment in transit, which might be moving forward ("Reduce crime in St. Louis? Mayor looks to transit, investment in north side," St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

3.  Obviously, the city's number one priority needs to be neighborhood stabilization and resident recruitment to staunch the population losses.  Live Baltimore is one of the nation's best practice examples of how to do residential recruitment.

Later I wrote a couple of other relevant pieces on urban revitalization:

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021 
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021
-- "Pontiac Michigan: a lagging African American city in one of the nation's wealthiest counties," 2022

Interestingly, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, who just lost her bid for reelection, had a revitalization initiative for the South and West parts of the city, called Invest South/West.

-- "Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s signature Invest South/West program is 3 years old. But some of its big projects were already planned when she took office," Chicago Tribune
-- "Invest South/West program remains mostly a vision, without a single project under construction after three years," Crain's Chicago Business 

Even though I wasn't particularly impressed by Mayor Lightfoot, the reality is that it takes a lot longer than three years to move a revitalization plan forward in significant ways.  

I'm not holding DC up as a great example, but it took about 20 years to start to see movement on the redevelopment of the Skyland Shopping Center, and H Street's revitalization hit in the 2000s once trends favored urban living, and after the city announced plans to add streetcar service to the corridor--leading to $1 Billion in new development--but the city had been working on revitalization of that riot scarred corridor since the late 1970s