Celebrating Blog’s 19th Anniversary

 

  Nineteen year ago I started this blog as a distraction from my father’s heart attack and slow recovery. It was late 2004 and social media & video streaming apps didn’t exist yet — or at least not widely available to the general public. Blogs were the newest means of …

Thoughts on NGA West’s Upcoming $10 Million Dollar Landscaping Project

 

  The new NGA West campus , Jefferson & Cass, has been under construction for a few years now. Next NGA West is a large-scale construction project that will build a new facility for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in St. Louis, Missouri.This $1.7B project is managed by the U.S. Army …

Four Recent Books From Island Press

 

  Book publisher Island Press always impresses me with thoughtful new books written by people working to solve current problems — the subjects are important ones for urbanists and policy makers to be familiar and actively discussing. These four books are presented in the order I received them. ‘Justice and …

New Siteman Cancer Center, Update on my Cancer

 

  This post is about two indirectly related topics: the new Siteman Cancer Center building under construction on the Washington University School of Medicine/BJC campus and an update on my stage 4 kidney cancer. Let’s deal with the latter first. You may have noticed I’ve not posted in three months, …

Recent Articles:

St. Louis County Moved Mandatory Beg Button After I Complained About Not Being Able To Reach It

September 10, 2020 Accessibility, Featured, Planning & Design, St. Louis County, Walkability Comments Off on St. Louis County Moved Mandatory Beg Button After I Complained About Not Being Able To Reach It
 

Buttons used to activate pedestrian signals are derisively called “beg buttons.”

These buttons have long been decried and criticized by advocates for walking, anyway. The buttons’ purpose is less to keep people safe than to reinforce the primacy of cars on the street by forcing people who want to cross a street to “beg” for a walk signal. (California Streetsblog)

In the City of St. Louis many buttons don’t do anything, a walk signal is displayed even if you don’t press it. In June I encountered an intersection in St. Louis County where it was mandatory to press a button to get a walk signal across one street, but not the perpendicular street from the same corner.

On June 3rd I was at the southeast corner of Hanley & Dale Ave, wanting to cross Hanley — but using a wheelchair I couldn’t get to the button.

Looking west across Hanley.

Crossing Dale Ave doesn’t require pressing the beg button, it activates the walk signal in conjunction with the traffic lights. However, if you don’t press the button you’ll never get a walk signal to cross Hanley. Even when Dale traffic gets a green light you’ve got a don’t walk unless you pressed the beg button. Without a walk signal westbound Dale motorists turning left onto southbound Hanley wouldn’t expect to see any pedestrians crossing the street. On June 3rd I had to cross, in my power wheelchair, even though I didn’t have a walk signal.

Thankfully left-turning motorists yielded to me.  I later shared my frustration on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

A friend & reader suggested I call St. Louis County. Though this is in the municipality of Richmond Heights, Hanley is maintained by St. Louis County — a fact she knew. I’m not a fan of making voice calls but I did find a compliant form on their Department of Transportation website. A day or 2 later I got a phone call from a county engineer. I emailed him the photos I took rather than call him back. A few weeks later I got an email saying it had been moved.

Yesterday I went out to the nearby  Trader Joe’s  and another store so I went to this intersection to see the change. I’d suggested the button(s) not be used, just switch to a walk signal timed with the light. So I figured the beg button would still be mandatory, I just wanted to see if I could reach it.

A pole was added to hold the two beg buttons — one mandatory and the other completely useless.

Now looking west across Hanley.

No telling how many years this was like this. It amazes me how often I see situations where someone wasn’t thinking about disabled pedestrians. There are likely many more examples out there.

— Steve Patterson

Still Not Used To Seeing Citygarden Empty, Fountains Off

September 3, 2020 Downtown, Parks Comments Off on Still Not Used To Seeing Citygarden Empty, Fountains Off
 

When Citygarden opened on June 30, 2009 there wasn’t the usual ribbon cutting. Instead then-mayor Francis Slay called the maintenance building and asked them to turn on the fountains. With the exception of winters and one period they had a maintenance issue the fountains have been on. During warm months someone was always getting wet.

It has been nearly six months since this pandemic began and I’m still not used to seeing Citygarden devoid of human activity.

August 31, 2020 @ 7am

To counter the desolation here’s a photo I took almost six years ago.

Citygarden on September 8, 2014 @ 8pm, with the fountains & lights on

Close up of splash fountain at Citygarden, from 2011

There will be a time when the fountains and lights will be back on, but that’s likely more than a year from now. Looking forward, trying to be patient.

— Steve Patterson

30 Years in St. Louis

August 28, 2020 Featured, Steve Patterson Comments Off on 30 Years in St. Louis
 

Me pre-stroke in the December 2006 issue of St. Louis Magazine, this was near my heaviest weight of 275-300lbs. Photo by Dillip Vishwanat

It was three decades ago that I officially moved to St. Louis, from Oklahoma City. I’d planned to move to Washington DC, but instantly fell in love with St. Louis on the way.

The building stock and street grid called for me to stay. Many buildings needed renovation but even pre-renovation the proportions, massing, details, and spectacular brickwork were unlike anything I’d seen before. The potential of the city was enormous. 

The renovated Union Station and St. Louis Centre each were only 5 years old. Vincent Schoemehl was in his 3rd/last term as mayor of St. Louis. The Circuit Attorney was George Peach, but his hypocritical behavior would catch up to him just over a year later.

I missed being counted in the 1990 census by six months. The total that year was 396,685, more than a 12% drop from the 1980 census. I have been counted as a St. Louis resident in three census (2000, 2010,2020). Next year we’ll learn the results of the 2020 census, St. Louis’ population will likely drop below 300k. Thus, in my time here roughly 100,000 people have left.

Seems too few saw the potential I did 30 years ago. Or they recognized it but were also unable to reverse negative reality & perceptions about the city. My first weeks in my new apartment the manager advised me to not venture north of Delmar. You can’t change what so many willingly continue to perpetuate.

The point where I spent half of my life in St. Louis came 7 years ago, in 2013. I’ve now been blogging for more than half of my years in St. Louis, this Halloween will be the 16th anniversary of this blog.  The last third of my time here has been on disability, unable to work. When I came out in 1983 the idea of same-sex marriage wasn’t even on my radar, but I’ve been married twenty percent of my years in St. Louis. I’m on my 7th address, my 5th zip code.

With Stage IV Kidney cancer I know I won’t make it to a 4th census in St. Louis, a fact I’ve come to accept.  The treatment is keeping my tumors “stable”, but there will be a point when treatments will no longer be effective. 

I now weigh 165 lbs, about what I did in 1990.

Days before my 2008 stroke I looked into getting a burial plot at Bellefontaine Cemetary, but after I arranged with Washington University School of Medicine to donate my body for research. The point when treatment no longer works I’ll likely have a party to celebrate my life while I’m still here.

In the meantime I’m going to continue exploring, writing, suggesting, etc.

— Steve Patterson

Literature Review: Women’s Suffrage in St. Louis

August 26, 2020 Featured, Politics/Policy Comments Off on Literature Review: Women’s Suffrage in St. Louis
 

It was 100 years ago today that the 19th amendment to the constitution was certified, just in time for millions of women to cast their first votes in the 1920 presidential election. By the time the 19th amendment became effective women in some states had been voting for decades, but now all women could vote in all elections.

DATE: 1916-06-14 Suffragists gathered on the steps of the old City Art Museum at Nineteenth and Locust Street for the Golden Lane demonstration during the 1916 Democratic National Convention. The crowd is gathered on the steps of the museum and on both sides of the street. A sign on the left reads: “Headquarters of the National State and City Woman’s Suffrage Association. Welcome!”

Last month we watched The Vote on American Experience/PBS which demonstrated women weren’t given the right to vote — they spend many decades fighting for the right.

One hundred years after the passage of the 19th Amendment, The Vote tells the dramatic culmination story of the hard-fought campaign waged by American women for the right to vote — a transformative cultural and political movement that resulted in the largest expansion of voting rights in U.S. history.

In its final decade, from 1909 to 1920, movement leaders wrestled with contentious questions about the most effective methods for affecting social change. They debated the use of militant, even violent tactics, as well as hunger strikes and relentless public protests. The battle for the vote also upended previously accepted ideas about the proper role of women in American society and challenged the definitions of citizenship and democracy.

Exploring how and why millions of 20th-century Americans mobilized for — and against — women’s suffrage, The Vote brings to life the unsung leaders of the movement and the deep controversies over gender roles and race that divided Americans then — and continue to dominate political discourse today. (American Experience/PBS)

Highly recommended. It got me thinking about the effort here in St. Louis, so I thought I’d look up old Post-Dispatch articles.  I found thousands of of articles on my search. Not all were relevant many about events elsewhere. I’ve spent days going through search results from 1874 – February 16, 1913. I’d hoped to at least get though this day 100 years ago, but time ran out. I will finish and update the research found below.

— Steve Patterson

… Continue Reading

Broadway and 4th Street Need To Become Two-Way Again

August 24, 2020 Downtown, Featured, Planning & Design, Transportation Comments Off on Broadway and 4th Street Need To Become Two-Way Again
 

Last week, in response to a death as a result of late night racing downtown, St. Louis put up temporary barriers in various places, including blocking all traffic across the Eads Bridge.

In addition to the bridge, the city also closed a section of Washington Avenue from Tucker Boulevard to 14th Street with barricades this week. Barriers also narrow traffic in stretches of 4th Street, Broadway and Market Street.
 
“These are temporary changes,” Krewson said Friday. “This isn’t something that we expect to be there forever.”

Krewson said downtown streets are built to hold a much larger volume of traffic than the city sees in an average day, and with fewer people working downtown because of COVID-19, the streets are even less crowded. (Post-Dispatch)

The last paragraph, quoted above, is an admission our streets are too wide. Previously when anyone argued the 4th Street/Broadway couplet (one-way in opposite directions) should be returned to two-way traffic the claim was always they needed to remain one-way due to traffic volume.

Southbound cars on Broadway at the Cole Street light. Three very wide lanes.

When the light turns green Broadway widens to five total lanes. The two outside lanes are no-parking, except for rare times when tickets are being sold at the Dome.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic the volume on 4th/Broadway couldn’t justify the one-way couplet. It’s past time for the decades-long experiment on our streets to end. The sole purpose of originally converting these streets to one-way decades ago was to quickly move cars into downtown offices in the morning, and then vacate them in the afternoon — just before the sidewalks were rolled up each night. Part of the engineer’s disastrous effort also included banning on-street parking — that slows down the flow of vehicles. This is exactly the opposite of how you build a user-friendly downtown.

Now, approaching Convention Plaza (Delmar), the vehicles that raced from the light form a single-file line.

Looking back North from Convention Plaza (Delmar)

Walk Broadway from Cole Street to I-64 and see how it feels being next to one-way traffic for over a mile. You’ll see in places the street has 5 very wide lanes that encourage high speeds. Even with the barricades at points, drivers coming off I-44 onto southbound Broadway at Cole street they reach high speeds to get into single file formation at Convention Plaza (aka Delmar).

The prior week a vehicle knocked over a bollard on the Southwest corner of Broadway & Washington Ave.

And then crashed through this temporary wall.

Changing 4th/Broadway back to two-way traffic is only part of the needed solution. Traffic signals must be timed so that a person taking off from a red light doesn’t encounter another red light just a block or two down the street. Our signal timing often encourages people to speed to make it through the next two or three lights. Lane width also matters — the wider the lanes the faster the traffic.

This isn’t the St. Louis of 1950, we need to reverse decisions made by people born in the late 19th century.

— Steve Patterson

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