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Anyway, I'm interested to hear your "armchair" takes.
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It’s interesting because I mirror most of the same sentiments as yours but sort of in a geographically reversed order. Maybe just bc I’m an outsider without a personal attachment to the East Side, but I would start by going all in on the Forest Park adjacent neighborhoods, followed by Midtown and then finally the East Side. The Riverfront area grew when it was the center of the Metro and when the Mississippi was a far more crucial transit hub than it is currently. But with very little population left to the North or East, DT isn’t commercially viable on its own at the moment.
The CWE, however is far more central to population centers of the greater metro and developments are clearly seeing a greater ROI. If the city builds up its tax base to the West first, I don’t think it will be swimming upstream for funding projects on the East Side into the future, and maybe more residential projects DT could finally be realized rather than getting stuck in development hell.
In point 4 you mention smaller developments being prioritized and I couldn’t agree more. Both large scale developments and refurbishments are prone to stalling when funding disappears, but smaller projects that require less overhead could be far more viable. Personally I think infill similar to this (which I see all over Chicago) would be quicker to build, more cohesive with the existing neighborhoods and most importantly give people the chance for property ownership which would be a big plus in a country where home ownership is rapidly declining.
Curious, do you think the city should continue pushing projects that try to emulate historical brick architecture or try to do modern styles like this?
As for transit: again, same sentiments but reverse order. Also, as much as I love trains I think Bus Rapid Transit Lines have a way higher chance of getting built right now and could maybe get upgraded to light rail or tram lines in the future once there's proof of ridership. I would first build a BRT line from the Maplewood blue line station, east along Manchester toward Forest Park and then up Kingshighway to at least MLK. I think the area south of Forest Park could be great for some 3-5 story apartments and the Northern end for smaller infill
Next, I would propose a line along Grand from Tower Grove Park to Fairgrounds Park which would tie in the Arts District/SLU. After that, a line along Lindell/Olive from Forest Park to the Arch with maybe 5 stops tops at key high traffic locations. Lastly, I think once the West Side is a bit more tied together, a N/S line along the riverfront would be able to support some larger projects like what is happening around Ballpark Village.
Here’s a VERY crude MS Paint representation of what I’m thinking
As for Point 1, I definitely think it’s necessary but may have to be integrated neighborhood by neighborhood otherwise the pricetag to implement it city wide would be prohibitive. Maybe some of those thoroughfares could be good for transit lines, they definitely have the space for it. Florissant near Crown Candy is huge but had like one car on it at a time.
For Point 2, I’m hardly an expert on property law but I know Detroit implemented something similar and it seemed to have very positive results.
One kind of left field thing I think the city should do is start promoting individual neighborhoods to visitors rather than the whole city. It took me doing serious ‘urbanism nerd’ levels of research to find out that places like Lafayette/Soulard/ CWE existed. I think if these places were promoted without the preconceived feelings people have toward the city as a whole, it would allow people to dip their toe into exploring the city and then maybe come back later to check out more rather than writing off the whole city from the jump.
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