Quote:
Originally Posted by goat314
Honestly, I think Illinois would benefit from making the Metro East (St. Louis area) stronger. That area of the state has a large airport with capacity, an Air Force base, a Unesco World Heritage site (Cahokia mounds), major logistics infrastructure, light rail access to a major city, plenty of developable land etc. It's really a shame that the area is stagnant at best and don't get me started on East St. Louis.
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I'd be down for Illinois annexing the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Just saying.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...i-anymore.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
the metro east has got to be one of the most disjointed and uncentered significant sub-regions of a major MSA in the country.
ESL's nearly 80% population drop from 1950 peak is one of the worst urban implosions in american hostory.
and when they did build a large airport there, they built it 20 miles east of the river, close to absolutely nothing and no one.
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Back in the 1950s and early 60s, it didn't used to be that way. Belleville and Edwardsville were the further out county seats while East St. Louis, Granite City, and Alton were the major population centers right by the river. Now they've experienced decades of population decline, and the population has sprawled further and further east to this very day, leaving a hollowed out core along the river.
As for the airport, its location has everything to do with Scott Air Force Base.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yuri
If Chicago started to grow again, then Gary could get some spillover as well.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
the sprawl would occur in other parts of NWI long before any of that hypothetical growth meaningfully seeped into gary proper.
the huge elephant in the room here (and one that you may not fully appreciate as an outsider) is the racial dynamics at play.
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Steely hit the nail on the head with the bolded bit. Generally speaking, predominantly African American neighborhoods in Chicago don't gentrify. This article is from 2014, but things haven't changed too much:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswi...gentrification
Things aren't very different here in St. Louis either. This is why you have dirt poor neighborhoods separated by one street (Delmar Boulevard) from some of St. Louis' most desirable neighborhoods. This is why you can see the line of historical white flight from north city into north county into St. Charles County as the African American population followed.
In the Metro East, this is why people like to call Belleville (the largest city in Southern Illinois) the next East St. Louis, as people freak out and move further east into O'Fallon and former cornfields because black people are moving up the hill into Belleville from East St. Louis and Cahokia Heights.