Rankings, lists, and such

[ignatius]

It's just a list but good news to see KC is not on it...

20 cities you don't want to live in (yet)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42135402?slide=1

Surprised to see Indy on the list as economically they are in pretty good shape.  STL listed third after Detroit and Flint, ouch. STL isn't _that_ bad.  Again, just another ridiculous list.

[Downtowner]

Agree with a lot of their list. STL_is_that_bad. Always in the top three of population loss, crime, std's, corporate losses...you name it. It's a city that progress has passed by. It has some nice tourist destinations that mask the fact it's a lousy place to live. I was one of the 500,000 people that left after my five years was up. Nearly every one of my friends had been held up at gunpoint or carjacked. My Lindell/Union apt had great views of drug deals all day long at the intersection. For cities over 2 million, is there any worse? They can slug it out with Detroit and Cleveland.

[FangKC]

Cities can come back from the brink.

Rome, Paris, and London all lost population at one time--to the point of being almost abandoned.  Rome lost a million people and was reduced to about 20,000 in the Middle Ages.

[warwickland]

I'm not discounting your experience nor am I in denial of the regions problems, Downtowner, but St. Louis is nowhere near as bad as Detroit. I mean to be fair I had the same crime experiences, maybe worse, that you had in St. Louis when I lived in midtown KC, but I haven't written off KC. I don't know when you lived in StL, but many neighborhoods like mine had an influx of wealth and educated adults after the middle of the last decade  - I can go take pictures of baby strollers and big dogs if you would like.  :)

[FangKC]

When I lived in the East Village of NYC, my roommate warned me when I moved in not to go into Alphabet City past Avenue B.

Ten years later, Alphabet City was being gentrified, and now yuppies live there.

[pash]

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[FangKC]

Yes, and there are parts of the East Side that are closer to Mission Hills than my house in the Old Northeast.

[pash]

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[aknowledgeableperson]

Cities can come back from the brink.

Rome, Paris, and London all lost population at one time--to the point of being almost abandoned.   Rome lost a million people and was reduced to about 20,000 in the Middle Ages.

But in how many lifetimes?

[FangKC]

Kansas City is a very young city in the spectrum of history as is St. Louis.

[KCMax]

Right, because Mission Hills is at all comparable to, say, the Upper East Side.  You are off by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Manhattan as a whole, but especially south of 110th, is on another planet compared to KC.  The gentrification of LES was inevitable once Giuliani cleaned up the crime.

I don't think Mission Hills is Manhattan, but wasn't it just called the third wealthiest city in the country?

[chrizow]

I don't think Mission Hills is Manhattan, but wasn't it just called the third wealthiest city in the country?

sure, but that is just a quirk of its borders and homogeneity than anything else.  mission hills has about as many residents as a couple of blocks on the upper east side.  most of those "wealthiest cities" are tiny villages that are uniformly wealthy - i think the #1 wealthiest "city" was basically a gated community of 400 people outside Dallas where CEOs and NBA stars live.  if you drew municipal lines around the 3,000 people who live around 55th and Ward Parkway, it would probably be the 3rd wealthiest.  

[KCMax]

sure, but that is just a quirk of its borders and homogeneity than anything else.  mission hills has about as many residents as a couple of blocks on the upper east side.  most of those "wealthiest cities" are tiny villages that are uniformly wealthy - i think the #1 wealthiest "city" was basically a gated community of 400 people outside Dallas where CEOs and NBA stars live.  if you drew municipal lines around the 3,000 people who live around 55th and Ward Parkway, it would probably be the 3rd wealthiest.  

Sure, I'm just saying there's a bunch of rich people within miles of some pretty blighted urban areas. I think Fang's point that cities on the brink have bounced back several times is apt. 30 years ago, who would have thought Brooklyn and Harlem would be hot areas for young people? That we would have anyone living in the Crossroads? I think St. Louis can bounce back - I always get more of a sense that suburbanites there are rooting for downtown more than people do here. But it won't be easy.

[chrizow]

Sure, I'm just saying there's a bunch of rich people within miles of some pretty blighted urban areas. I think Fang's point that cities on the brink have bounced back several times is apt. 30 years ago, who would have thought Brooklyn and Harlem would be hot areas for young people? That we would have anyone living in the Crossroads? I think St. Louis can bounce back -

STL is already bouncing back.  formerly dodgy areas (if not outright no-go zones) like Old North STL, Cherokee street, The Grove, Forest Park Southeast, Benton Park, midtown/grand center, olive/compton area (not sure what that is called), and the like have been seeing a great deal of investment in homes and businesses.  and areas like the CWE, Shaw, Soulard, etc. never really went away.  STL has a steeper hill to climb, though, because the urban core is so large that it will take a long time before things raelly start to coalesce - it's an urban core built for 850,000 that currently has about 1/3 of that, but the physical aspect of it is still there. 

[warwickland]

St. Louis is pretty misunderstood, there are many more great places to live in the urban core than even just 10 years ago but you wouldnt know that by the negative press (i think st. louis gets unfairly slammed harder than any other city) and people who harbor a certain amount of vitriol for the city and the general negative mindset surrounding a city that that lost most of it's prestige in one generation, psychologically it's going to take nearly a blank slate but there are people looking at it that way now -it just takes some effort and understanding...that is all...Sorry for adding to the St. Louis talk...

[warwickland]

and areas like the CWE, Shaw, Soulard, etc. never really went away. 

Actually, here is Soulard in the late 70s....Shaw and the CWE have also come a long way.


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3214/298 ... 2b69_b.jpg

[chrizow]

[ComandanteCero]

yeh, I was around when the Botanical Garden decided to basically tear down McRee Town (the neighborhood immediately north of Shaw) as an incredibly ham fisted and messed up way of dealing with the issues there.  Pretty messed up, pretty sad.

(here are some pics during demolition)

http://www.builtstlouis.net/mcree01.html

Apparently some  of the remaining non-demoed parts are being rehabbed.  In fact, as of August of last year you could buy this home for $1



http://preservationresearch.com/2010/08 ... red-for-1/

In the early 00's the Shaw neighborhood itself was still a patchwork place, where on one block you'd have young professionals and students and normal folk, and on the next you'd have drug deals and violence going down and you didn't know which was which unless you lived there.  

[warwickland]

I drive the 4300 block of McRee almost every day where that house is. It's a lot better than it used to be, theres a number of businesses down at the end of the block like Confluence Design and UIC+CDO http://uicstl.com/ which is actively working on a massive infill project in that area.

[FangKC]

The secret to reclaiming parts of cities is to take a small area on the edge and focus efforts on rebuilding that neighborhood over time. Sometimes what has worked is what real estates agents have done in NYC. Rename a section of the greater neighborhood.

The East Village used to just be part of the greater Lower East Side. It was a naming gimmick that expanded the West Village east.  A part of Hell's Kitchen became Clinton and slowly replaced all or most of Hell's Kitchen in real estate parlance.

Soho, Tribeca, Noho, and Dumbo in Brooklyn were all real estate concoctions.  Formerly forelorn parts of Brooklyn came back not so much by renaming, but by real estate agents and developers focusing efforts on one section, and then expanding it.

Let's take Brookside for example.  There are neighborhoods of houses east of Brookside proper that are very similar to Brookside houses. They just happen to be east of Troost.  You call that neighborhood Brookside East and start rehabbing a block at a time as houses come up for sale. Slowly expand eastward to Paseo.

The same could be done north of Brush Creek.  Call everything east of Troost and south of 43rd Street Plaza East.  Everything north of 43rd Street, south of 31st Street, and East of Troost to Bruce Watkins becomes East Hyde Park.

From 31st Street north to 27th, East of Troost to Bruce Watkins becomes East Dutch Hill or East Longfellow.

But you can't just rename neighborhoods, there also has to be renovations of homes, and infill.  The infill can't just be Habitat for Humanity homes either.  You also have to make sure when you put in a quality infill house that the adjoining houses are already renovated as well.

It can be just starting one block at a time.  That's how new neighborhoods are built, so why can't one entire block be redone at a time?  In  many situations, that's what keeps some people from buying a house. The house itself might be fine, but the house across the street or next door is a wreck.

There are other innovations that can be considered. You can make streets on select blocks closed only to residents.  Not forever, but until the neighborhood stabilizes. This controls who has access to the neighborhood. It can keep drug users out of vacant houses and reduce theft. Place cameras on block entrances.

Another idea is creating neighborhood housing cooperatives where people living in a neighborhood can pitch in money to purchase and renovate a troubled house on their block. They all buy shares in the house and once the house is renovated and sold, they can distribute any profit to shareholders, or use profits to buy another troubled home and replicate the improvement.  Once they have accomplished their goal, the coop can be disbanded. 

Perhaps a tax incentive could be in place where they don't pay any state or city taxes on any income or profits they make improving their neighborhood. The coop would also not pay any property tax for the year the house was being renovated.  This type of incentive would be limited to houses over a certain age, and in specific distressed neighborhoods. 

There could also be exemptions if the house was in a better neighborhood, but has sat on the market unsold for over a year because of its' appearance.  For example, if it's been damaged by fire or a storm and the owner cannot afford repair, or was occupied by a hoarder.