ST dereLictOUIS

St Louis, you overwhelm me.  Between the gorgeous Forest Park, French Colonial mansions, beautiful brick town houses, artsy hipster bars, farmers markers, green suburbs and the up market streets of Clayton there is a mess.  A huge mess.  A mess that I can't help but fixate on whenever driving around the city.  I've grown up and worked around the East End of London which has many of it's own problems and higher than desired rate of crime, but i've never seen anything like the city of St Louis before.  There are streets upon streets of derelict houses. factories, schools, hospitals and unmaintained roads.

One minute you are driving past a gated, far above upper class community, the next you are smack bang in the middle of a ghetto in the adjacent street.  It is awful to see how segregated the city is between the poor and the wealthy. The city comes across as segregated in other ways too.  At home everyone mixes together like a multicultural soup in London.  We all ride the tube, we all take the bus, we all have a freedom to walk into a place and not be made to feel unwelcome.

The cause:  The population of St Louis hit its peak in the 1950's with an estimated 856,796 people living within its borders.  In 2011 there was an estimated population of 318,069.  Over half the population of St Louis packed their bags in the past 60 years. It's incredibly sad to imagine exactly how many of the existing buildings must be entirely vacant now.  The people that could leave appeared to have along with their business's and jobs and the people that couldn't were likely left behind without much to keep them out of trouble. Crime statistics sky rocketed with St Louis winning an award for being the most dangerous city in the country for several years in row now.

If you look past the damage and despair you can see that there was once something quite special about this city.  Unfortunately, no importance is placed upon preserving the architecture of the past and too often you see buildings torn down after years of being left in wreck and ruin.  The most unfortunate part of it all is that I find it difficult to imagine that things will improve until he city is populated again and i'm not convinced there is a big enough draw to the city to encourage that to happen any time soon.