St. Louis decline continues

NY Times:

Cities, like most living things, have sensitive spots. Here in the old “Gateway to the West,” the subject of population loss is one of the touchiest.

From a peak of nearly 860,000 residents in 1950, St. Louis had lost more than half a million people by 2000, a depopulation not unlike the devastating postwar exodus from Detroit. Since the 2000 census, St. Louis has kept shrinking, the Census Bureau estimates, while most old cities have added people.

Population is a critical indicator of any city’s health, but the sinking numbers here are particularly unwelcome as the city has spiraled from one woe to the next.

In the past few months, the public schools were stripped of accreditation and taken over by the state; the city was designated the most dangerous in the country in a national crime survey; and 15 police officers and supervisors were disciplined for giving World Series tickets seized from scalpers to friends and family.

“These things are absolutely not helpful,” said John Haul, an assistant professor of architecture at Washington University who has been involved in numerous municipal planning projects. “We have to redevelop the city regardless; this just makes it harder.”

City officials question the accuracy of the census calculations and suggest the city has turned the corner. Their optimism is based on a flurry of downtown development since 2000, including hundreds of loft condominiums, boutiques and restaurants.

“We’re actually doing very well,” said Rollin B. Stanley, director of the city’s planning and urban design agency, which puts the population at 354,000, about 6,000 higher than the Census Bureau.

But the effort to put a positive spin on the population debate — and with it, the hope for a long-awaited renaissance — comes against a difficult backdrop.

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Signs of a looming disaster for the district of 35,000 students, mostly poor and black, had been clear for years. In 2004, a national education advocacy group found that only 5 percent of 11th graders in city schools were proficient in reading.

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In October, St. Louis was identified as “America’s most dangerous city” by a private research firm that publishes an annual crime ranking. Though city officials and some experts criticized the ranking as simplistic, aggravated assaults with guns, considered one of the best gauges of a city’s level of violence, were up more than 30 percent over the past two years, according to the Police Executive Research Forum.

“A few people are responsible for most of the crime, and we’re targeting those people,” said Barbara A. Geisman, the city’s director of development. “The vast majority of St. Louis is as safe as any place in the suburbs.”

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It appears that St. Louis has not practiced the broken window policy that saved NY City. The population of the city is shrunk to less than Austin, Texas which is thriving and has excellent schools. It is sad to see a once great city with great traditions fall so low. One question is how it managed to out pace New Orleans as the most dangerous city in the country.

Oh, and if the NY Times is still pushing the Democrat myth that voter fraud is a myth, they need to take a closer look at St. Louis where several have been prosecuted for the crime.