St. Louis Metro today includes St. Louis County (523 sq.
mi.), and St. Charles County (593 sq.mi.); total 1116 sq.mi.
St. Louis Great Highway Grid
St. Louis benefits from its Interstate Highways. Commuters can use these Interstates to go
quickly across town in any direction. Prior to the Highway grid, St. Louis had
4 lane roads that connected the area that are still in use. The highway
over-grid was a blessing.
I-70 is East to West.
St. Louis chose to route I-70 around the North side of the city, to exit
to the St. Charles County exurbs. I-55
is South to North and wraps around the South end of the city. I-64 goes through the middle of St. Louis and
becomes Highway 40 that connects to I-70 in St. Charles. I-44 goes to Tulsa and runs closer in on the
South side.
The North-South grid began with I-270 connecting I-55 and
I-70 across the middle of outer St. Louis County. I-170 crosses St. Louis County closer in.
Regional Resistance
Cities have existed in St. Louis County for a long
time. Most of these cities were formed
100 years ago. When Regionalism hit St. Louis after 2000, the cities ignored
it. They had no highway congestion
problems and weren’t interested in what appointed Regional Overlords had to
say. That’s why St. Louis has fewer
Agenda 21 property rights abuse problems than other cities.
In Atlanta, we are the “poster child” Metro for highway
gridlock and Regionalism. Our new cities
are forming now and are very vulnerable to Agenda 21 abuse as cities use
Marxist Plans rather than taking the DeKalb County zoning as a start, as they
should. If DeKalb County had taken better care of their roads, these new city
committees wouldn’t be rising. If these
new cities are voted in, residents will suffer death by 1000 permits. Voters
should vote NO.
Forest Park
St. Louis leaders bought the land for Forest Park to use
as the 1904 World’s Fairgrounds and gave it to the city. After the Fair, a golf
course was added and tennis courts were built next to the lagoon and lake by
the canoe docks. The Art Museum took a building overlooking the lake, the Zoo,
and the Muni Opera were added. Later in
the 1960s, Steinberg Skating Rink opened. It offers lots of “free-range room for family
barbeques and open space for ball games. All of the most popular venues were gathered
together with easy entry and exits and more than ample parking. There are lots
of free things to do. The Shakespeare festival players perform in the summer.
German bands perform on the Zoo grounds.
Good Early Leadership
St. Louis was blessed with good “turn-of-the-century leadership
in 1900. The Danforth family owned Ralston Purina, the Bush family owned Anheuser
Bush, JS McDonnell founded McDonnell Douglas and a dozen others worked to
ensure that St. Louis continued to be a good place to live. Their grandkids continued to work together to
keep corruption down. I met them in the
1960s and actually worked for Dr. Bill Danforth, Chancellor of Washington
University in the 1970s.
Blue Collar City
St Louis Metro was built-out as a “Blue Collar” city. Not
unlike Atlanta, St. Louis is largely residential. Most recreation is free market, private sector
and are open 24 hours a day to accommodate shift work. The people are super-nice and
“down-to-earth”.
Schools
Catholic schools dominated St. Louis Metro in the 1960s. Every parish had a k-12 school and dozens of
all-boys and all-girls high schools took up the slack. This allowed the state the funds to develop a
good road and highway system. Now public
schools dominate the St. Louis Metro, but the private schools are still there
in force and the necessary roads and highways have been built.
High Regard for Private Property
St. Louis Metro respects private property. They would put
up with a little temporary “blight” than violate private property rights. They will take your property if you refuse to
pay your property taxes, but they are not a “Developers Feeding Ground”.
Private property owners are accustomed to maintaining their own property. The
individual cities in St. Louis Metro don’t have predatory policies aimed at
increasing their own revenue by condemning and seizing private property.
Black Migration
Black families typically lived in the city of St. Louis
on the South side or across the Mississippi in East St. Louis. There was a time
in the 1960s when “Blacks” moved into “White” residential areas like Wellston
and Ferguson and the property values plummeted. These were small, older homes
and the “Whites” simply took their losses and moved out to Florissant. We did suspect that some Real Estate Agents
had engineered the migration to Wellston to buy the last of these houses at
rock-bottom prices.
Atlanta Journal Corrections & Omissions
The AJC article was slanted to use the Marxist Ferguson
Event to announce the “death-knell” of St. Louis. Don’t believe it. Our AJC Regionalists did take a slam in this
article at “regional disconnectedness”. I explained this as Regional Resistance
above. The article put the Atlanta population at 5.5 million, an obvious
overstatement. The real Metro area
population is closer to 3 million when you add up DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and
Cobb. I consider Cherokee, Forsythe, Fayette and other counties as exurbs or
rural. The AJC St. Louis population of 2.8 million is also overstated. The City of St. Louis, St. Louis county and
St. Charles County add up to population of about 1.8 million. Again the AJC included an extra 1 million from
the surrounding rural counties in Missouri and Illinois to get 2.8 million
population number from their East-West Gateway Council.
Atlanta Comparison
The four counties I consider Metro Atlanta are DeKalb (268
sq.mi.), Fulton (529 sq.mi.), Gwinnett ( 437 sq.mi.) and Cobb (345 sq.mi.),
total 1579 sq.mi. Larger than St. Louis
by 463 sq.mi.
Atlanta’s Advantages
We have tended to have mild winters in Atlanta. That will
help as we enter the sun-caused global cooling period that began a decade
ago. We should have lots of water, if we
get busy and build more reservoirs before our next drought period.
Atlanta’s Disadvantages
Atlanta is a victim of its interstate highways. We don’t have a functional highway grid
system. We have MARTA, but it doesn’t
stop where we usually need to go. We don’t have a Forest Park, so all of our
“venues” are spread all over town. Utilization is poor, so we charge more at
venues. Parking is often
problematic. We don’t have a free press;
we have regional propaganda machine. We have UN Agenda 21 in the Atlanta
Regional Commission for an area that has been long dominated by developers,
banks, politicians and cronies, not voters. Politicians don’t listen to the
voters. They prefer to torpedo their challengers and carry water for the
special interest groups. They can win
some SPLOSTS, but it takes a lot of bribes and hype.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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