Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Right, these kinds of secondary cores were quite common in the older interior cities. They appeared to be top-down promotions, intended to relieve core congestion. Sort of a new model compared to Europe or the Eastern seaboard. It's very common to have the main library, the main art museum, the flagship university and the big medical campus, in some in-town but not core-adjacent geography, usually next to the most affluent households.
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For whatever reason, Chicago never developed a true secondary eds/meds/culture node.
Sure, we got universities and hospitals sprinkled across various neighborhoods, but that's just it, they're "sprinkled" about, not coalesced into a single secondary node that rivals downtown.
And all of the most significant high culture stuff (art museum, main library, major theaters, symphony, ballet, opera, etc.) all stayed in the loop, where such things can be most easily accessed by the greatest number of Chicagoans due to the ridiculously hub n' spoke set up of the L and Metra.
Anyway, back to St. Louis, I think the piece you may be missing here is specifically about major commercial office development in secondary urban nodes.
Yeah, many cities have significant eds/meds/culture centers in secondary urban nodes, but Clayton is a bit different in that it also brings significant office development into the equation too.
Consider this: downtown St. Louis has not seen the construction of a significant class A office building (10+ floors) for over
three decades!!
Meanwhile, roughly half a dozen such buildings have been built in downtown Clayton so far this century.
Clayton seems to be a leech on downtown St. Louis to a much greater degree than most of the other eds & meds secondary nodes being talked about here.