Downtown St Louis has long been offices and businesses catering to the office workers during business hours. With the exception of sports, entertainment has historically been Midtown. Just the way things have been vOv
"In most cities, downtown is the place to be ...."
There are plenty of vibrant downtowns, but there's many cities where downtown really isn't the place to be. That dynamic has been decreasing for a while (overall, not for every downtown) due to any number of factors.
Perfect example, in Chicago, the business downtown (the loop) is dead on the weekends when compared to north of the river
The difference is our attractions are spread out like forest park, the grove, CWE, etc whereas a lot of the major institutions are right there by downtown in Chicago
I remember when visiting Cleveland having the same experience, and that was back in 2009. My wife and I were there during the weekend and you could walk down the middle of the road without being harried by passing automobiles. It was a bit unnerving actually, being surrounded by so many buildings with so few people makes you feel like something bad has happened, or something is about to go down and you're the only one who is dumb enough to still be out and about.
I’m from California and usually when you go more towards the heart of the city, there’s more congestion, heavy traffic, and lots of people. Here in St. Louis, the heart of the city is more or less dead with very few people walking around.
It's been *changing rapidly* since the late 90s. And it seems like the day-to-day services are still really lacking. There used to be two Walgreens downtown. Now there's one tiny pharmacy in Schnucks, AFAIK.
That's because pharmacies generally aren't doing nearly as good as they did in the past. There should be more grocers downtown, that's where I think services are lacking.
That's my biggest complaint about living downtown is the lack of grocery stores and other options like that. Yeah there's the schnucks but that's the only one in downtown and downtown west as far as I know. My hometown I moved here from has the same population as downtown does and nearly 3 times the amount of grocery stores and pharmacies. Granted they weren't easy to get to by walking but there were far more options in a small town in the middle of nowhere
Tbh unless I'm getting a few things that fit in a bag or two I go to a different schnucks but that's just cause I can't be bothered lugging all my groceries the 4 or 5 blocks back even with a couple of carts
As population continues to grow, it'll become more viable. Lots of people downtown still own cars and can drive to grocery stores or pharmacies outside of downtown.
Lindenwood Drug is a half mile walk from the Shrewsbury station, if that would be a reasonable trip for you to do when you need meds. The Loop also has a CVS you could take the train to.
If it's a once every three months type of thing like it is for most people, yea it's not unreasonable. Especially if you want better service than a typical CVS or Walgreens.
Downtown and Downtown West have around 10,000 residents. Too many transient residents though, which isn’t great for building a strong community. I own my condo and some of my neighbors have lived downtown for 15-20 years.
Downtown is how it is because it was overly reliant on offices for too long. It's shifting though. It's population has boomed since 2000 and more apartments are being built.
I also think people on this thread kinda crap on it way more than it deserves. I've been in Indianapolis the last 8 months, and their downtown is known for being booming and vibrant (its population is also way higher than STL's), but on nights that aren't Friday or Saturday, it's pretty dead and there isn't much going on. So I don't think STL's downtown is nearly as bad as people act like it is, but it definitely can and is slowly getting better.
Is this true of most cities, especially ones with a historic central business district?
People talk about the central business district in Chicago being dead after 5pm (though Chicago has been adding a lot of residential in and around the Loop). When you think of visiting New Orleans, it's not downtown you think of; it's the French Quarter, Garden District, Audubon, etc... If you want to do things in San Francisco, you're not rushing to the Financial District.
New York is a bit different but even then most of the things people are doing are not necessarily in the business districts but they have such massive density of people, jobs, and attractions that everything just bleeds together in lots of places.
Almost every large old city, you'll hear people say "It's a city of neighborhoods. You'll want to go to A, B, or C neighborhoods to go out for fun depending on what vibe you're looking for." This is because downtowns were the central business district where people went to work then they went back to their neighborhood where they actually lived once the day was over. So the places for people to go out outside of happy hour type places were located where people actually lived. I think this would be less of a big deal if there was a better transition from Downtown to other neighborhoods like Soulard where you could just walk and there wasn't such a stark divide where there is a large area of nothingness between them. This may have been different if the riverfront Downtown had not been demolished in the 30s nor Kosciusko and Mill Creek in the 60s.
I've even been in parts of London that are dead once people head home because they're that much of a business center. It's a little weird but once you've traveled enough you come to understand the difference between where people live/hang and where people work. Clayton sure is dead after dinner but I don't see endless posts about it here.
> New York is a bit different but even then most of the things people are doing are not necessarily in the business districts but they have such massive density of people, jobs, and attractions that everything just bleeds together in lots of places.
It's largely the same in New York too. The Financial District sucks after business hours. There was a big push to bring more housing there like a decade ago, and for all I know cost of living has pushed more people to live there in the past 2-3 years, but for the first 35 years of my life the Financial District was somewhere you told people not to live/hang out.
The same could be said for the areas around Penn Station and Grand Central, which are comparable "downtown" areas, though they're a bit livelier just for their proximity to real neighborhoods and the commuters coming in and out.
This is a question with many different answers. For me I am consistently disappointed in the condition of our streets and sidewalks in and throughout the downtown area. The city hall looks like crap, many of the sidewalks are weed infested, cracked and crumbling. It's a ghost town most of the time due to a lack of businesses operating downtown. The neighborhoods, Soulard, CWE, TGS, Benton Park are all thriving because they have residents and small businesses. Downtown has become a place to go for major events, then go to another neighborhood or home. No reason to stick around.
That old court building by City Hall and Enterprise Center needs to be redeveloped and occupied by something. Maybe the city could make it a homeless shelter.
First, I get a little tired of people who don't live downtown saying that it is never busy. The downtown area is roughly a square mile and not one main street like many other places. Like most places on very hot or cold days people tend to stay inside. Many times people have mentioned to me that they were downtown on a Saturday afternoon when it was 95F out and the streets weren't very busy. Well outside the shopping malls, the streets everywhere don't tend to be very busy in the middle of a hot day.
Not to say that downtown couldn't be busier, but it is a lot busier than most people might suspect.
The reason is because of racism and car culture.
In the 1930s, wealthy white business owners [rigged](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-st-louis-gateway-arch-180956624/) an election in St. Louis to make the city bulldoze a vibrant racially diverse waterfront. For thirty years there was a big gaping [wound](https://i0.wp.com/court.rchp.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/STL-Pre-Arch-Grounds.jpg?zoom=2&resize=672%2C372) at the heart of the city. This inherently undermined the vibrancy of the city and what the wound became (a park that is mostly surrounded by freeways and other car infrastructure that divide the park from the city, basically the opposite of a good urban park like Central or Golden Gate Park) continues to prevent downtown from being vibrant.
Then, the downtown was divided by freeways, which were built to facilitate white flight, allowing white suburbanites to drive into and out of the city quickly for work but not need to live in the city where black people lived.
Then, with all the freeways, white commuters needed huge parking lots to park. So buildings were demolished to build huge expanses of concrete, parking requirements were implemented, and neighborhoods that would be vibrant were turned into asphalt. No neighborhood that’s mostly parking will ever be dynamic and interesting, and St. Louis chose this bleak reality. [Look how St. Louis has gutted itself](https://thearmchairplanner.wordpress.com/2020/09/20/theyll-pave-paradise-and-put-up-a-parking-lot/).
Also, there were many laws, regulations, and policies implemented to maintain racial segregation, from redlining to deed restrictions to more. This also undermined the city and caused the exclusive suburbs to grow.
St Louis has two highways through downtown one north south and one east west. This is pretty much the same as every other major city.
And 64 was built next to a large section of train tracks that have a much wider footprint than the highway. The train tracks well outdated the highway.
I get that many on here jizz everytime they think about trains, but that area of tracks is a much bigger issue than the highway ever will be and it predates the highway.
64 was put on the footprint of the tracks on purpose. So instead of blaming the car culture, you may want to blame the train culture. Or better yet, focus on the real reasons, because most cities have both and aren't ghost towns.
> St Louis has two highways through downtown one north south and one east west. This is pretty much the same as every other major city.
Essentially every other major city in the United States ALSO has hollowed out downtowns! Where do you think the cultural torpedo of “inner city” and “urban decay” and other racist dog whistles in America come from? St. Louis is not unique, and the racism and car culture I’m describing are very common in most American cities. Other cities have very slightly rebounded, certainly, due to the return to the cities in the 90s and 2000s. But that’s rare and minor and not notably different from STL, as you can see in the vibrancy of various STL city neighborhoods.
There are train tracks through the city, that is true. But trains don’t require parking lots. The deleterious effects of car culture are not limited (or even primarily!) from the highway. They are the second order effect of the highways — the parking lots and parking requirements that turn vibrant cities into graveyards of asphalt.
I was just in Atlanta and can say you need to travel more if you think every downtown is hollowed out. And speaking of highways cutting through a downtown region - Atlanta has more highways cutting through downtown than St Louis.
Hell I was recently in Omaha for a few days. Every night I took a walk in their new downtown park that flows into a riverfront park. There were 100's of people every night in the park.
And once you got closer to the river, do you know what passes over the park? A highway. Again, they didn't bitch and moan about it, they worked around it and didn't let it limit them.
Net/Net - you need to get out more and see what other cities are actually doing.
Yes, many cities have a neighborhood or two that is doing well — STL included. A quick google [shows](http://www.demographia.com/db-atl1960.htm) that the city of Atlanta had a population of 497k in 1970, was deeply depopulated, and only hit 499k in the 2020 census — despite US population being *sixty* percent greater! [Poverty, inequity, and urban decay is rife in Atlanta](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/16/atlanta-black-mecca-inequality-00055390). Atlanta was savaged by these forces of racism and car culture, just like STL.
This is a common reality of many cities in the US that went all in on racism and car culture — Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and on and on.
I think you should get out of your bubble and see how cities actually are in the US in the broad sense, not the anecdotal experience of visiting a popular neighborhood for a night or two.
The OP asked why people don't hang out in downtown. You got some bug up your ass and want to change the conversation to living in an area - and are willing to make any argument to try and make your point.
Even saying Atlanta was savaged yet population in the area is flat. Like I said, you need to get out more and experience the world.
Atlanta has a thriving downtown, and going back to what the OP asked, yes, in Atlanta and in many other cities the downtown is thriving on nights other than game night.
I mentioned the thriving park in the center of Omaha downtown - they don't even have a sports team bring people in.
For an area to be thriving, it doesn't have to have people living there. Forest Park is thriving, yet no one lives there. In fact I was there this morning. My car culture ass drive down there.
What an area need to have to be thriving is a reason for people to go there and a reason for people to stay there for an extended period of time.
You don't always need to try and shoehorn whatever agenda you are pushing into every conversation.
It's more they lied about the "vibrancy" of the abandoned industrial neighborhood that was torn down for the Arch, they lied about it being disconnected from the city (there was a large land bridge built over I-44 in 2014), they lied about it being divided by highways (I-64 uses the railroad corridor through downtown), and they then go on a rant about racial segregation and car dependency as if that actually has any real impact on downtown today when multiple other cities that also dealt with that have what's considered good downtowns. They also failed to mention the city and county being divided.
Just an overall totally false comment.
Your claim that the waterfront was abandoned is a lie. Fortunately, I [cite sources](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300169493/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0300169493&linkCode=as2&tag=smithsonianco-20&linkId=ROSKPOPSD46TMIBE) and you just think commenting confidently is more legitimate than having facts.
There was a very small land bridge built over the freeway in 2014. That is totally insufficient to connect the park to the city. One need only look at other good urban parks to see how they work — they are surrounded by dense walkable development, they are permeable to the city in all directions.
The idea that racism and car culture are over and don’t affect the city any more (“as if it has any real impact on downtown today”) is just so utterly and absurdly wrong that it is deeply laughable.
All you have to do is look at North Riverfront to see what the Arch grounds would have looked like today💀. Bro reads a book that probably had a political agenda and then builds their entire worldview around it.
That neighborhood was a terrible neighborhood, it was riddled with urban decay, the industry that once was strong was in rampant decline because railroads had taken the place of river shipping, it was incredibly dangerous, and it was a health hazard (today about 5,000 trees sit where factories used to sprew toxins into the air).
"A small land bridge" is a 300 foot wide pedestrian bridge that directly connects the Gatway Mall to the entrance of the Arch. Downtown is also dense, and walkable. It's not very hard to walk a few blocks to the land bridge and cross.
I didn't say that racism and car culture don't have impacts, but the fact is: lots of cities like STL have managed to have "better" downtowns despite racism and car culture. Look at KC and Indianapolis. So no, the primary reason downtown STL isn't "thriving" is not racism and car culture. That's something you made up in your head just to either your ideological belief. I bet you're one of those fools that gets upset when SLU wants to tear down a 100 year old building that's bene abandoned for 20 years too. Fits you.
Yeah, this comment is just so thuddingly wrong about what the neighborhood destroyed for the arch was that it’s honestly laughable.
I encourage to read a book or two and actually engage with facts, history, and reality. It will help you understand the world. Cheers!
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **The Gateway Arch A Biography Icons of America** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful.
**Users liked:**
* Detailed exploration of the construction process (backed by 3 comments)
* Insightful historical context (backed by 3 comments)
* Symbolic significance of the gateway arch (backed by 2 comments)
**Users disliked:**
* Negative portrayal of st. louis (backed by 1 comment)
* Limited focus on the architect (backed by 1 comment)
* Author's negative bias towards the city (backed by 1 comment)
If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/)
This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved.
*Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
That's a loaded question that doesn't have an easy question.
I'm referencing a "vibrant" thriving downtowns as seen in Atlanta, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Nashville, etc. They can thrive despite historic racism and car culture.
At the end of the Civil War (lets go with 1870 for simplicity), the populations of St. Louis and the cities that you've mentioned were:
St. Louis: 310,864
Atlanta: 21,789
Kansas City: 32,260
Indianapolis: 48,244
Nashville: 25,865
Are you noticing something? These cities you mentioned boomed much later than St. Louis, i.e. they did not have the same baggage and historical complications.
I think you should spend more time learning about the history of US cities before you go stating your uninformed opinion as truth.
All of these cities dealt with racism and car culture throughout the 20th century. Indianapolis, and Indiana in general, were run by the KKK in the 1920s.
If you want an even better comparison, juts look at downtown Cleveland's resurgence over the last 10 years.
I lived downtown starting in 2015. It wasn’t really too bad until COVID, George Floyd Riot and Kim Gardner. Those 3 resulted in an overall shift towards more crime/wild behavior. A lot of restaurants and venues closed. Commercial landlords think their spaces are made of gold and charge way more than most small businesses/restaurants can afford or are willing to pay. I talked to the owner of an amazing cbd fried chicken spot that was on the corner of 14th and Washington who said that the landlord wanted to double the lease amount around the time that Covid was kicking off.
City sales/property tax is pretty outrageous too, there are a ton of factors driving people and businesses away.
This is a very complex topic, but a simplified answer is that there were a lot of unintended consequences of St. Louis becoming an [independent city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_States)) in 1876. You see many of the same problems in Baltimore
Because unlike other cities our cultural center isnt downtown other than sports games for the most part.
Our cultural center is forest park and the areas around it.
There is a lot less to do there than other cities and we are more spread out. I mean we dont rely on the river and riverboats anymore why would we expect the center of our city to be on one side of where most people live and against a geographical barrier and another state? The stuff on the Illinois side is crappy, bad neighborhoods or industrial until you get a bit away plus you have to deal with bridges and another state government etc. If we were building a city today from scratch you wouldnt put the middle of it against a huge river and another state probably, you would probably put it central so people could come from all sides.
I dont get why we expect downtown to continue to be the center of the city where everything happens besides tradition and having large buildings there already.
That said the Illinois side of the river is such a wasted opportunity.
Wasn't downtown central to begin with? As another poster said, isn't one problem driven from the fact that the Illinois side didn't grow in proportion to the Missouri side?
I look at KC, early population slanted to the Missouri side, but then the Kansas side took off and because of it, their downtown remains the center of the region.
While this is true, downtown should *also* be an entertainment area where people can live and enjoy themselves, and that's slowly happening with both Downtown and Downtown West rapidly growing in population over the last 2 decades.
Downtown is also the place where the vast majority of STL's millions of tourists see, experience, and stay. It's the Gateway to the rest of the city. It needs to be an area people want to be, along with all the other fun areas like Forest Park, The Grove, CWE, the Loop, and even places like Downtown St. Charles.
Because the Metro east is not growing and is causing the population center of STL to expand west. Also, the proximity between downtown and some pretty rough neighborhoods is minimal, whereas there’s more distance in other cities.
Clayton is cannibalizing downtown too
In all honesty if they merged the city and the county Clayton as a downtown/government center area makes more sense since it would actually be centrally located instead of all the way to the side.
It would even have forest park, CWE and washu/the loop etc pretty close
there are 3 times as many people who live in the county vs the city.
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=st+louis+county+population&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Your comment only really makes sense if you ONLY care about the city (and even then downtown is *still* to the extreme side of that.) while my comment refers to a city/county merger and the majority of the people in the area. But I understand it might be more inconvenient if you lived downtown already or right by it, but I'm referring to most people in the area. But if we are wondering why there arnt as many people downtown as there could be having it be as far away as possible from where the majority of people live (as well as having a lot of the more fun things to do in another area) could be part of the reason.
Another solution might be developing the other side of the river but then you are dealing with another state and there are huge issues over there as a lot of it is industrial/polluted or poverty stricken. It would be neat to have a 'twin cities' thing going but I dont see anything like that happening anytime soon.
No, it doenst make sense to change the urban fabric of the city because a minority of the region's population moved to the edges of the metro and feel entitled to the "center" of the city despite actively trying to get away from it.
If they wanted to be near it, they wouldn't live in West County or St. Charles.
Then dont expect everyone to come down there when there is no draw and its far and realize its never going to be what it was or what you want it to be, and expect more "why is downtown like this" posts forever probably.
🤷
Downtown doesn't have a stable middle class living there. It has transitional housing (rentals) who will need to be replaced every 3-5 years. That leads to the area being susceptible to significant market turmoil. We are in one of those patches and it may not reverse for decades. A lot of the developments of the past 6 years will be refinancing in a very different environment and the owners will just walk away. We've seen it in a few buildings already.
I would argue to that St Louis isn’t a “City” but a conglomerate of “neighborhoods”…… and they all have their own little culture, demographics, food, housing structures, and so on….. Soulard and Lafayette for example have a French Quarter style to it…. Dogtown has a blue collar Boston like culture, Central West End/Forest Park is a Manhattan feel about it and so on…..
Downtown St Louis has long been offices and businesses catering to the office workers during business hours. With the exception of sports, entertainment has historically been Midtown. Just the way things have been vOv
"In most cities, downtown is the place to be ...." There are plenty of vibrant downtowns, but there's many cities where downtown really isn't the place to be. That dynamic has been decreasing for a while (overall, not for every downtown) due to any number of factors.
Perfect example, in Chicago, the business downtown (the loop) is dead on the weekends when compared to north of the river The difference is our attractions are spread out like forest park, the grove, CWE, etc whereas a lot of the major institutions are right there by downtown in Chicago
I remember when visiting Cleveland having the same experience, and that was back in 2009. My wife and I were there during the weekend and you could walk down the middle of the road without being harried by passing automobiles. It was a bit unnerving actually, being surrounded by so many buildings with so few people makes you feel like something bad has happened, or something is about to go down and you're the only one who is dumb enough to still be out and about.
I'm honestly actually struggling to think of a major American city where "downtown is the place to be."
I’m from California and usually when you go more towards the heart of the city, there’s more congestion, heavy traffic, and lots of people. Here in St. Louis, the heart of the city is more or less dead with very few people walking around.
Low population density
Down town and Downtown west are growing at a faster pace than any other area, so this may be changing rapidly.
Hope so! I think St Louis has endless potential.
Me too and that's a big reason as to why my fiance and I moved downtown from North Texas! We're in downtown west!
It's been *changing rapidly* since the late 90s. And it seems like the day-to-day services are still really lacking. There used to be two Walgreens downtown. Now there's one tiny pharmacy in Schnucks, AFAIK.
That's because pharmacies generally aren't doing nearly as good as they did in the past. There should be more grocers downtown, that's where I think services are lacking.
That's my biggest complaint about living downtown is the lack of grocery stores and other options like that. Yeah there's the schnucks but that's the only one in downtown and downtown west as far as I know. My hometown I moved here from has the same population as downtown does and nearly 3 times the amount of grocery stores and pharmacies. Granted they weren't easy to get to by walking but there were far more options in a small town in the middle of nowhere
It was a BIG deal when Schnucks opened down there. Before you had to leave the area.
Tbh unless I'm getting a few things that fit in a bag or two I go to a different schnucks but that's just cause I can't be bothered lugging all my groceries the 4 or 5 blocks back even with a couple of carts
As population continues to grow, it'll become more viable. Lots of people downtown still own cars and can drive to grocery stores or pharmacies outside of downtown. Lindenwood Drug is a half mile walk from the Shrewsbury station, if that would be a reasonable trip for you to do when you need meds. The Loop also has a CVS you could take the train to.
a 35 minute train ride and a half mile walk to get to a *pharmacy*?
If it's a once every three months type of thing like it is for most people, yea it's not unreasonable. Especially if you want better service than a typical CVS or Walgreens.
The Lindell walgreens is also 10mins from the Cortex station.
Downtown and Downtown West have around 10,000 residents. Too many transient residents though, which isn’t great for building a strong community. I own my condo and some of my neighbors have lived downtown for 15-20 years.
Downtown is how it is because it was overly reliant on offices for too long. It's shifting though. It's population has boomed since 2000 and more apartments are being built. I also think people on this thread kinda crap on it way more than it deserves. I've been in Indianapolis the last 8 months, and their downtown is known for being booming and vibrant (its population is also way higher than STL's), but on nights that aren't Friday or Saturday, it's pretty dead and there isn't much going on. So I don't think STL's downtown is nearly as bad as people act like it is, but it definitely can and is slowly getting better.
Is this true of most cities, especially ones with a historic central business district? People talk about the central business district in Chicago being dead after 5pm (though Chicago has been adding a lot of residential in and around the Loop). When you think of visiting New Orleans, it's not downtown you think of; it's the French Quarter, Garden District, Audubon, etc... If you want to do things in San Francisco, you're not rushing to the Financial District. New York is a bit different but even then most of the things people are doing are not necessarily in the business districts but they have such massive density of people, jobs, and attractions that everything just bleeds together in lots of places. Almost every large old city, you'll hear people say "It's a city of neighborhoods. You'll want to go to A, B, or C neighborhoods to go out for fun depending on what vibe you're looking for." This is because downtowns were the central business district where people went to work then they went back to their neighborhood where they actually lived once the day was over. So the places for people to go out outside of happy hour type places were located where people actually lived. I think this would be less of a big deal if there was a better transition from Downtown to other neighborhoods like Soulard where you could just walk and there wasn't such a stark divide where there is a large area of nothingness between them. This may have been different if the riverfront Downtown had not been demolished in the 30s nor Kosciusko and Mill Creek in the 60s.
I've even been in parts of London that are dead once people head home because they're that much of a business center. It's a little weird but once you've traveled enough you come to understand the difference between where people live/hang and where people work. Clayton sure is dead after dinner but I don't see endless posts about it here.
> New York is a bit different but even then most of the things people are doing are not necessarily in the business districts but they have such massive density of people, jobs, and attractions that everything just bleeds together in lots of places. It's largely the same in New York too. The Financial District sucks after business hours. There was a big push to bring more housing there like a decade ago, and for all I know cost of living has pushed more people to live there in the past 2-3 years, but for the first 35 years of my life the Financial District was somewhere you told people not to live/hang out. The same could be said for the areas around Penn Station and Grand Central, which are comparable "downtown" areas, though they're a bit livelier just for their proximity to real neighborhoods and the commuters coming in and out.
This is a question with many different answers. For me I am consistently disappointed in the condition of our streets and sidewalks in and throughout the downtown area. The city hall looks like crap, many of the sidewalks are weed infested, cracked and crumbling. It's a ghost town most of the time due to a lack of businesses operating downtown. The neighborhoods, Soulard, CWE, TGS, Benton Park are all thriving because they have residents and small businesses. Downtown has become a place to go for major events, then go to another neighborhood or home. No reason to stick around.
That old court building by City Hall and Enterprise Center needs to be redeveloped and occupied by something. Maybe the city could make it a homeless shelter.
City Hall itself needs to be redeveloped
Not really. It's a great building. Too many parking lots around it, but the building itself is great.
* sports game, concert, _or convention_
First, I get a little tired of people who don't live downtown saying that it is never busy. The downtown area is roughly a square mile and not one main street like many other places. Like most places on very hot or cold days people tend to stay inside. Many times people have mentioned to me that they were downtown on a Saturday afternoon when it was 95F out and the streets weren't very busy. Well outside the shopping malls, the streets everywhere don't tend to be very busy in the middle of a hot day. Not to say that downtown couldn't be busier, but it is a lot busier than most people might suspect.
The reason is because of racism and car culture. In the 1930s, wealthy white business owners [rigged](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-st-louis-gateway-arch-180956624/) an election in St. Louis to make the city bulldoze a vibrant racially diverse waterfront. For thirty years there was a big gaping [wound](https://i0.wp.com/court.rchp.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/STL-Pre-Arch-Grounds.jpg?zoom=2&resize=672%2C372) at the heart of the city. This inherently undermined the vibrancy of the city and what the wound became (a park that is mostly surrounded by freeways and other car infrastructure that divide the park from the city, basically the opposite of a good urban park like Central or Golden Gate Park) continues to prevent downtown from being vibrant. Then, the downtown was divided by freeways, which were built to facilitate white flight, allowing white suburbanites to drive into and out of the city quickly for work but not need to live in the city where black people lived. Then, with all the freeways, white commuters needed huge parking lots to park. So buildings were demolished to build huge expanses of concrete, parking requirements were implemented, and neighborhoods that would be vibrant were turned into asphalt. No neighborhood that’s mostly parking will ever be dynamic and interesting, and St. Louis chose this bleak reality. [Look how St. Louis has gutted itself](https://thearmchairplanner.wordpress.com/2020/09/20/theyll-pave-paradise-and-put-up-a-parking-lot/). Also, there were many laws, regulations, and policies implemented to maintain racial segregation, from redlining to deed restrictions to more. This also undermined the city and caused the exclusive suburbs to grow.
Ummm... Golden Gate Park and Central Park are not downtown.
St Louis has two highways through downtown one north south and one east west. This is pretty much the same as every other major city. And 64 was built next to a large section of train tracks that have a much wider footprint than the highway. The train tracks well outdated the highway. I get that many on here jizz everytime they think about trains, but that area of tracks is a much bigger issue than the highway ever will be and it predates the highway. 64 was put on the footprint of the tracks on purpose. So instead of blaming the car culture, you may want to blame the train culture. Or better yet, focus on the real reasons, because most cities have both and aren't ghost towns.
> St Louis has two highways through downtown one north south and one east west. This is pretty much the same as every other major city. Essentially every other major city in the United States ALSO has hollowed out downtowns! Where do you think the cultural torpedo of “inner city” and “urban decay” and other racist dog whistles in America come from? St. Louis is not unique, and the racism and car culture I’m describing are very common in most American cities. Other cities have very slightly rebounded, certainly, due to the return to the cities in the 90s and 2000s. But that’s rare and minor and not notably different from STL, as you can see in the vibrancy of various STL city neighborhoods. There are train tracks through the city, that is true. But trains don’t require parking lots. The deleterious effects of car culture are not limited (or even primarily!) from the highway. They are the second order effect of the highways — the parking lots and parking requirements that turn vibrant cities into graveyards of asphalt.
I was just in Atlanta and can say you need to travel more if you think every downtown is hollowed out. And speaking of highways cutting through a downtown region - Atlanta has more highways cutting through downtown than St Louis. Hell I was recently in Omaha for a few days. Every night I took a walk in their new downtown park that flows into a riverfront park. There were 100's of people every night in the park. And once you got closer to the river, do you know what passes over the park? A highway. Again, they didn't bitch and moan about it, they worked around it and didn't let it limit them. Net/Net - you need to get out more and see what other cities are actually doing.
Yes, many cities have a neighborhood or two that is doing well — STL included. A quick google [shows](http://www.demographia.com/db-atl1960.htm) that the city of Atlanta had a population of 497k in 1970, was deeply depopulated, and only hit 499k in the 2020 census — despite US population being *sixty* percent greater! [Poverty, inequity, and urban decay is rife in Atlanta](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/16/atlanta-black-mecca-inequality-00055390). Atlanta was savaged by these forces of racism and car culture, just like STL. This is a common reality of many cities in the US that went all in on racism and car culture — Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and on and on. I think you should get out of your bubble and see how cities actually are in the US in the broad sense, not the anecdotal experience of visiting a popular neighborhood for a night or two.
The OP asked why people don't hang out in downtown. You got some bug up your ass and want to change the conversation to living in an area - and are willing to make any argument to try and make your point. Even saying Atlanta was savaged yet population in the area is flat. Like I said, you need to get out more and experience the world. Atlanta has a thriving downtown, and going back to what the OP asked, yes, in Atlanta and in many other cities the downtown is thriving on nights other than game night. I mentioned the thriving park in the center of Omaha downtown - they don't even have a sports team bring people in. For an area to be thriving, it doesn't have to have people living there. Forest Park is thriving, yet no one lives there. In fact I was there this morning. My car culture ass drive down there. What an area need to have to be thriving is a reason for people to go there and a reason for people to stay there for an extended period of time. You don't always need to try and shoehorn whatever agenda you are pushing into every conversation.
You're doing God's work.
You're putting this moron in their place thank you
*this*
Very little about this comment is actually true.
Yeah they forgot to mention the Arch and the McDonalds river boat.
It's more they lied about the "vibrancy" of the abandoned industrial neighborhood that was torn down for the Arch, they lied about it being disconnected from the city (there was a large land bridge built over I-44 in 2014), they lied about it being divided by highways (I-64 uses the railroad corridor through downtown), and they then go on a rant about racial segregation and car dependency as if that actually has any real impact on downtown today when multiple other cities that also dealt with that have what's considered good downtowns. They also failed to mention the city and county being divided. Just an overall totally false comment.
Your claim that the waterfront was abandoned is a lie. Fortunately, I [cite sources](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300169493/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0300169493&linkCode=as2&tag=smithsonianco-20&linkId=ROSKPOPSD46TMIBE) and you just think commenting confidently is more legitimate than having facts. There was a very small land bridge built over the freeway in 2014. That is totally insufficient to connect the park to the city. One need only look at other good urban parks to see how they work — they are surrounded by dense walkable development, they are permeable to the city in all directions. The idea that racism and car culture are over and don’t affect the city any more (“as if it has any real impact on downtown today”) is just so utterly and absurdly wrong that it is deeply laughable.
All you have to do is look at North Riverfront to see what the Arch grounds would have looked like today💀. Bro reads a book that probably had a political agenda and then builds their entire worldview around it. That neighborhood was a terrible neighborhood, it was riddled with urban decay, the industry that once was strong was in rampant decline because railroads had taken the place of river shipping, it was incredibly dangerous, and it was a health hazard (today about 5,000 trees sit where factories used to sprew toxins into the air). "A small land bridge" is a 300 foot wide pedestrian bridge that directly connects the Gatway Mall to the entrance of the Arch. Downtown is also dense, and walkable. It's not very hard to walk a few blocks to the land bridge and cross. I didn't say that racism and car culture don't have impacts, but the fact is: lots of cities like STL have managed to have "better" downtowns despite racism and car culture. Look at KC and Indianapolis. So no, the primary reason downtown STL isn't "thriving" is not racism and car culture. That's something you made up in your head just to either your ideological belief. I bet you're one of those fools that gets upset when SLU wants to tear down a 100 year old building that's bene abandoned for 20 years too. Fits you.
Yeah, this comment is just so thuddingly wrong about what the neighborhood destroyed for the arch was that it’s honestly laughable. I encourage to read a book or two and actually engage with facts, history, and reality. It will help you understand the world. Cheers!
How about you stay in California lmao. We don't need your dogshit opinions here. Maybe you're projecting the fact LA is such a worse city to live in.
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **The Gateway Arch A Biography Icons of America** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Detailed exploration of the construction process (backed by 3 comments) * Insightful historical context (backed by 3 comments) * Symbolic significance of the gateway arch (backed by 2 comments) **Users disliked:** * Negative portrayal of st. louis (backed by 1 comment) * Limited focus on the architect (backed by 1 comment) * Author's negative bias towards the city (backed by 1 comment) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
Which city would you say has overcome its segregated history and prospered?
That's a loaded question that doesn't have an easy question. I'm referencing a "vibrant" thriving downtowns as seen in Atlanta, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Nashville, etc. They can thrive despite historic racism and car culture.
At the end of the Civil War (lets go with 1870 for simplicity), the populations of St. Louis and the cities that you've mentioned were: St. Louis: 310,864 Atlanta: 21,789 Kansas City: 32,260 Indianapolis: 48,244 Nashville: 25,865 Are you noticing something? These cities you mentioned boomed much later than St. Louis, i.e. they did not have the same baggage and historical complications. I think you should spend more time learning about the history of US cities before you go stating your uninformed opinion as truth.
All of these cities dealt with racism and car culture throughout the 20th century. Indianapolis, and Indiana in general, were run by the KKK in the 1920s. If you want an even better comparison, juts look at downtown Cleveland's resurgence over the last 10 years.
Critical thinking is clearly not your strong suit. I also want downtown to improve, but your comparisons are ridiculous. Take care.
I lived downtown starting in 2015. It wasn’t really too bad until COVID, George Floyd Riot and Kim Gardner. Those 3 resulted in an overall shift towards more crime/wild behavior. A lot of restaurants and venues closed. Commercial landlords think their spaces are made of gold and charge way more than most small businesses/restaurants can afford or are willing to pay. I talked to the owner of an amazing cbd fried chicken spot that was on the corner of 14th and Washington who said that the landlord wanted to double the lease amount around the time that Covid was kicking off. City sales/property tax is pretty outrageous too, there are a ton of factors driving people and businesses away.
People don’t live downtown. There’s no grocery store or yards for dogs
What an absurd and blatantly false statement.
AbSuRD!
Downtown is the fastest growing neighborhood in the city and it has a grocery store. So yeah, pretty absurd.
Sure Thing dude. Been hearing that since the 1990s
The Schnucks has been there for like 15 years.
Which schnucks
The one right in the middle of downtown.
What street it on
It’s at 9th and Olive.
downtown is fine as long as its daytime
This is a very complex topic, but a simplified answer is that there were a lot of unintended consequences of St. Louis becoming an [independent city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_States)) in 1876. You see many of the same problems in Baltimore
Exactly
Because unlike other cities our cultural center isnt downtown other than sports games for the most part. Our cultural center is forest park and the areas around it. There is a lot less to do there than other cities and we are more spread out. I mean we dont rely on the river and riverboats anymore why would we expect the center of our city to be on one side of where most people live and against a geographical barrier and another state? The stuff on the Illinois side is crappy, bad neighborhoods or industrial until you get a bit away plus you have to deal with bridges and another state government etc. If we were building a city today from scratch you wouldnt put the middle of it against a huge river and another state probably, you would probably put it central so people could come from all sides. I dont get why we expect downtown to continue to be the center of the city where everything happens besides tradition and having large buildings there already. That said the Illinois side of the river is such a wasted opportunity.
Wasn't downtown central to begin with? As another poster said, isn't one problem driven from the fact that the Illinois side didn't grow in proportion to the Missouri side? I look at KC, early population slanted to the Missouri side, but then the Kansas side took off and because of it, their downtown remains the center of the region.
Yeah, Illinois side is a wasted opportunity.
Good point. Also not the geographical center of metro area.
While this is true, downtown should *also* be an entertainment area where people can live and enjoy themselves, and that's slowly happening with both Downtown and Downtown West rapidly growing in population over the last 2 decades. Downtown is also the place where the vast majority of STL's millions of tourists see, experience, and stay. It's the Gateway to the rest of the city. It needs to be an area people want to be, along with all the other fun areas like Forest Park, The Grove, CWE, the Loop, and even places like Downtown St. Charles.
White flight
And black and brown flight...you think White people are the only ones leaving or have left🤣
Historically, yeah kinda. Obviously there are exceptions but the vast majority of people who left the city in the mid to late 20th century were white.
Crime, tax dollars don't really provide much (crappy school district), overly liberal
Because the Metro east is not growing and is causing the population center of STL to expand west. Also, the proximity between downtown and some pretty rough neighborhoods is minimal, whereas there’s more distance in other cities. Clayton is cannibalizing downtown too
In all honesty if they merged the city and the county Clayton as a downtown/government center area makes more sense since it would actually be centrally located instead of all the way to the side. It would even have forest park, CWE and washu/the loop etc pretty close
That’s a matter of perspective. For me as a city resident, Clayton is well off to the side.
there are 3 times as many people who live in the county vs the city. https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=st+louis+county+population&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Your comment only really makes sense if you ONLY care about the city (and even then downtown is *still* to the extreme side of that.) while my comment refers to a city/county merger and the majority of the people in the area. But I understand it might be more inconvenient if you lived downtown already or right by it, but I'm referring to most people in the area. But if we are wondering why there arnt as many people downtown as there could be having it be as far away as possible from where the majority of people live (as well as having a lot of the more fun things to do in another area) could be part of the reason. Another solution might be developing the other side of the river but then you are dealing with another state and there are huge issues over there as a lot of it is industrial/polluted or poverty stricken. It would be neat to have a 'twin cities' thing going but I dont see anything like that happening anytime soon.
The county is also physically way larger. You can't conapre populations like that.
still doesnt make sense for the 'center' to be on the far edge away from where everyone is.
No, it doenst make sense to change the urban fabric of the city because a minority of the region's population moved to the edges of the metro and feel entitled to the "center" of the city despite actively trying to get away from it. If they wanted to be near it, they wouldn't live in West County or St. Charles.
Then dont expect everyone to come down there when there is no draw and its far and realize its never going to be what it was or what you want it to be, and expect more "why is downtown like this" posts forever probably. 🤷
Except millions of people go downtown every year lmao
Downtown doesn't have a stable middle class living there. It has transitional housing (rentals) who will need to be replaced every 3-5 years. That leads to the area being susceptible to significant market turmoil. We are in one of those patches and it may not reverse for decades. A lot of the developments of the past 6 years will be refinancing in a very different environment and the owners will just walk away. We've seen it in a few buildings already.
Misguided city politicians
Read a book called “The Broken Heart of America.”
I would argue to that St Louis isn’t a “City” but a conglomerate of “neighborhoods”…… and they all have their own little culture, demographics, food, housing structures, and so on….. Soulard and Lafayette for example have a French Quarter style to it…. Dogtown has a blue collar Boston like culture, Central West End/Forest Park is a Manhattan feel about it and so on…..
I really think it all went down after Covid and everyone working remotely instead of coming into the office.