“You might, as well be living, in the city!” This was the comment of a north county resident on neighborhood reaction to a local murder. Sadder than the original comment is the fact that no one seems to think anything of it.
If this is the image that the City of Saint Louis projects (and there’s no reason to doubt that that it is) city officials and business leaders had buckle down to changing the image while there is still a City left.
If the emphasis is going to be on bond issues, convention centers and airports, we can change the road signs to St. Louis Industrial Complex, Population 0. A city isn’t a city unless it has citizens who live there and all the industrial development we can imagine isn’t going to attract residents to the city.
What will attract residents is liveability, which means streets that are crime free; decent housing, good schools, accessible commercial, recreational and cultural activities. We not only need these, we have to let the world know we have them.
Some of them we already have, certainly accessibility to cultural centers is a city dweller’s bonus. But if leading institutions talk city property down; and the insurance companies, which seem to pay so handsomely for arson-for-profit, raise their rates on city property, citizens are going to be hard to come by.
Originally published in The Paper, March 1972.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1972_03.pdf, printed page 2.
