The August 2005 issue of ‘The Healthy Planet’ is now available at local businesses such as 10th Street Italian (504 N. 10th) and MacroSun International (1310 Washington Ave). Check out my ‘City Scene’ column on page 12.
– Steve
Everywhere I go I hear the phrase, “We need to reduce density.” Reducing density is thought to solve problems. However, most of our urban ills come as a result of lack of density.
Throughout the entire world it is density of population that sustains a city. Without a minimum number of people in a given area things such as mass transit and the corner store cannot be economically feasible. St. Louis is not exempt from logic that applies the world over.
Some of the arguments I’ve heard for the reduce density theory are:
1) People don’t like to live on top of each other. By tearing down every other house it will open things up more. People will be more willing to live in the city then.
2) Fewer owners is better. Converting a four-family to two townhouses will give you only two owners compared to four if converted to condos.
3) Converting a four-family building into two townhouses will reduce density and make areas more attractive to home owners.
4) Problem areas have too many people. We need to thin out the area to solve issues of crime.
The real issue in St. Louis is a lack of density, not too much. In some of the so-called bad areas where density is often cited as a problem the real culprit is overcrowding. Density is a greater number of living units in a given area while overcrowding is too many people in a given unit. It doesn’t matter if the unit is a 500 sq. ft. efficiency or a 2,000 sq. ft. townhouse.
Some of the world’s celebrated cities have substantially greater density than St. Louis — Paris, London, Tokyo, and Amsterdam just to name a few. In North America cities like New York, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver all have higher densities than St. Louis. It takes density to support local retail stores (mom & pop, big box and everything in between). It also takes density to support mass transit and to shift from a gutted auto-dominated city to a pedestrian & bicycle friendly city.
We must embrace density.
– Steve
From today’s Post-Dispatch:
“Only four wards reported an increase in vacant buildings last year: 14, 24 and 25 in the south part of the city, and 18 on the north. Wards 3, 4 and 22 on the north side had the largest number of vacant buildings. Altogether, St. Louis had 5,504 vacant buildings in 2004.”
An increase in vacant buildings is not a good sign. Of course, tearing them down to reduce the number is even worse as that simply increases the number of vacant lots.
– Steve