Why is St. Louis shrinking?

[Direckshun]

Was doing some reading of America’s demographics this morning.

Apparently our population growth slowed this decade — by 31%.

Yyyyyyyikes.

But! The population of America did grow nonetheless — by 19.5m people, or an entirely new state of New York.

Over the decade, America’s population grew 6.3%, with almost all major cities seeing their population either tick upward (New York City) or explode (Denver).

A number of major cities saw their population plummet, however. Jackson, Mississippi, is the worst, at 7.4% population shrinkage, followed by Detroit at 6.1%.

St. Louis, however, is 4th in shrinkage at 5.8%, or 19,000 people since 2010.

What is happening in STL?

For further context, Missouri is the 18th most populous state, but only 35th in population growth (+2.5%).

Here’s how other Missouri cities have fared in the last decade:

Columbia: +13.54% population growth
Kansas City: +7.73% population growth
Springfield: +5.26% population growth
Independence: -0.14% population shrinkage

[BigBeauford]

If I had to relocate or choose to live in a midwestern city with no natural wonders like mountains or oceans and shitty weather, why in the hell would I chose to spend it in St. Louis over KC?

[bsp4444]

Water’s cold?

[Direckshun]

If I had to relocate or choose to live in a midwestern city with no natural wonders like mountains or oceans and shitty weather, why in the hell would I chose to spend it in St. Louis over KC?

I haven’t researched this, but I imagine most people don’t shop for new cities like they do cereal in a supermarket.

They typically follow jobs or family. Few are like “welp what new city looks good” like they’re ordering from a menu.

[C3HIEF3S]

The biggest attraction of the city is a symbol to keep going west.

[BigBeauford]

I haven’t researched this, but I imagine most people don’t shop for new cities like they do cereal in a supermarket.

They typically follow jobs or family. Few are like “welp what new city looks good” like they’re ordering from a menu.

I've avoided numerous California jobs because they are based out of California. I agree with you that family ties is probably #1 for keeping people in a city. But a city's ability to expand relies not just on people not leaving, but enticing people to come.

[Sofa King]

St. Louis is one of the sex trafficking capitols of the US. Maybe the kids are being taken at such a fast rate it's actually decreasing the overall city growth.

[Rams Fan]

I could write paragraphs on this, but I'll be concise.

Are you referring to the City of St. Louis specifically? If so, there's a bunch of reasons:
-The city is separate from the county, meaning that the county doesn't deal with the political craziness of the city. This also prevents economic development and expansion.
-Majority of businesses in the area are moving out to the suburbs (Chesterfield, Clayton, etc.) Feel free to fact check me, but the St. Louis metro area is growing as a whole while the city is shrinking.
-The city govt. doesn't have its shit together.
-Crime is still problematic.
-As someone who grew up there, and has family still there, why would you move to St. Louis aside from a job, family, or school? Cost of living for the most part is dirt cheap, but there's nothing "sexy" about the area.
-Companies have moved out of the area or making new offices elsewhere to delegate more business elsewhere because of the regional/political BS(see:Centene).

STL won't progress until the county and city come together as one. Which isn't going to happen.

[Discuss Thrower]

Seeing redditors bitch about county citizens vote against joining the city last year was entertaining.

[Pablo]

Because it's a shithole?

[Rams Fan]

Because it's a shithole?

It really isn't.

Seeing redditors bitch about county citizens vote against joining the city last year was entertaining.

Yeah, I'm pro-city(and am still registered as a Missouri voter), but the county will never re-marry with the city.

[Rain Man]

My hunch is that cities that were built on classic industrial manufacturing, and which haven't become tech hubs, and which aren't in great climates, are in long-term decline.

Places with tech industry jobs and good climates boom. Places with one of those things do okay. Places with neither of those things struggle.

With the strong tech places becoming ridiculously expensive and with the remote working boom being accelerated by Covid, one might wonder if a reverse exodus is possible, but it's not going to happen in big cities. If I'm in the Silicon Valley and they tell me I can work remotely, I'm not going to go to a big city in the midwest. I might go to a small town with low cost of living, but I'm more likely to find a small town in a good climate.

Big midwestern cities are dinosaurs unless they can somehow catch up to economic trends.

[Rams Fan]

If I had to relocate or choose to live in a midwestern city with no natural wonders like mountains or oceans and shitty weather, why in the hell would I chose to spend it in St. Louis over KC?

The St. Louis metro area is much larger than KC metro.

KC has a larger "city" area and population.

STL metro area is super spread out.

[Hammock Parties]

*partisan post*

*sneering derision*

*spicy meme*

[Rain Man]

I haven’t researched this, but I imagine most people don’t shop for new cities like they do cereal in a supermarket.

They typically follow jobs or family. Few are like “welp what new city looks good” like they’re ordering from a menu.

I think this is happening far more than it has in the past, but if you set that aside, then your theory would conclude that St. Louis isn't creating new jobs.

[Discuss Thrower]

My hunch is that cities that were built on classic industrial manufacturing, and which haven't become tech hubs, and which aren't in great climates, are in long-term decline.

Places with tech industry jobs and good climates boom. Places with one of those things do okay. Places with neither of those things struggle.

With the strong tech places becoming ridiculously expensive and with the remote working boom being accelerated by Covid, one might wonder if a reverse exodus is possible, but it's not going to happen in big cities. If I'm in the Silicon Valley and they tell me I can work remotely, I'm not going to go to a big city in the midwest. I might go to a small town with low cost of living, but I'm more likely to find a small town in a good climate.

Big midwestern cities are dinosaurs unless they can somehow change their prevailing weather patterns.

FYP.

[Rams Fan]

I think this is happening far more than it has in the past, but if you set that aside, then your theory would conclude that St. Louis isn't creating new jobs.

Job creation is happening predominantly in the suburbs, not the city.

City and county are separate entities.

[Rain Man]

FYP.

That too.

I'm just one person, but in my "retirement relocation" series last month, I included almost no locations in the midwest. Why? Because my wife said that no way, no how, was she going to move back to midwest weather. And I'm okay with that.

[siberian khatru]

Water’s cold?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfsZ7k2XoAAwEm-?format=jpg&name=900x900

[ping2000]

Because it's a shithole?This times fifty billion.

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[Sassy Squatch]

Because it's unseasonably cold

[wazu]

No more Rams groupies?

[Basileus777]

Don't worry other cities are joining them as COVID has triggered an exodus from cities.

[tatorhog]

The hockey team apparently was named after a person's state of mind after being in that city for a few days.

[Rain Man]

Okay, here's what's happening in St. Louis. It's interesting. For the purpose of analysis, I'm diving the metro area into four parts:

City of St. Louis
St. Louis County
Missouri Burbs (excluding the above)
Illinois Burb

First, let's look at overall population. We'll compare 2010 (first number) to 2019 estimates (second number) to see overall change (third number) and annualized growth rate (fourth number).

What we see is that the city is losing population fast, as are the Illinois Burbs. St. Louis County is losing population at a slow rate, while the Missouri Burbs are growing at a healthy rate.

IL Burbs 703664 682715 -20949 -0.3%
Mo Burbs 765789 825732 59943 0.76%
StL City 319294 300576 -18718 -0.6%
StL County 998954 994205 -4749 -0.05%
Grand Total 2787701 2803228 15527 0.06%

[Jenson71]

Because it's a shithole?

I loved visiting it recently. Seems a bit rougher than KC, but has more entertainment (NFL aside) options in the city.

[jd1020]

What we see is that the city is losing population fast, as are the Illinois Burbs. St. Louis County is losing population at a slow rate, while the Missouri Burbs are growing at a healthy rate.

IL Burbs 703664 682715 -20949 -0.3%
Mo Burbs 765789 825732 59943 0.76%
StL City 319294 300576 -18718 -0.6%
StL County 998954 994205 -4749 -0.05%
Grand Total 2787701 2803228 15527 0.06%

No real surprise that Illinois is losing population. Previous governor, who's previous job was to liquidate companies, held the state hostage for nearly 3 years. Illinois was losing 1 population every few seconds.

[ptlyon]

Because of all the fags?

[Rain Man]

So what's causing these population changes? We can examine three major components of population change:

Natural growth (births minus deaths). This would be the population change if you put a big fence up and never let anyone in or out.

International migration. People climbing over Trump's wall or boating into Ellis Island.

Domestic migration. People moving around within the United States.

IL Burbs - Natural: 9339
Mo Burbs - Natural: 28801
StL City - Natural: 13918
StL County - Natural: 16331
Grand Total - Natural: 68389

IL Burbs - International Migration: 2253
Mo Burbs - International Migration: 5126
StL City - International Migration: 7776
StL County - International Migration: 17717
Grand Total - International Migration: 32872

IL Burbs - Domestic Migration: -32624
Mo Burbs - Domestic Migration: 26493
StL City - Domestic Migration: -40319
StL County - Domestic Migration: -38553
Grand Total - Domestic Migration: -85003

Overall, what we see is that there's net domestic population change in the metro area: 68,000 net gain due to births (minus deaths), but 85,000 people are moving out. The reason that we still see very modest overall population growth is the addition of 33,000 international immigrants.

With the metro area, things are different in different areas.

In the Illinois Burbs and St. Louis City, you have a very large net domestic population change. Far more people are moving out than being born. You also don't see a lot of immigration from internationals, so those places are declining overall.

In St. Louis County, we have a very different phenomenon. They're experiencing the same negative domestic population growth, but that area is very attractive to international immigrants. Enough of those folks are moving in to keep the population relatively stable, though it's losing ground in the long run.

And finally, the Missouri Burbs are exactly the opposite. They're getting lots of domestic migration, lots of net births, and that area is not drawing international immigrants.

We don't know for sure that the migration to the Missouri Burbs is from the rest of the metro area, but I bet the builk of it is. So what's happening is that people who grow up in other parts of the metro area are growing up, moving to the outer Missouri suburbs to buy houses and have kids, and their parents are staying in the other areas and eventually selling their houses to immigrant families.


(Methodology note: the numbers won't sum up exactly within this post and across to my previous post because I'm comparing an estimate in 2019 to a census count in 2010. But they should be really close.)

[crispystl]

The biggest attraction of the city is a symbol to keep going west.

The Rams took it literally...

[Rain Man]

No real surprise that Illinois is losing population. Previous governor, who's previous job was to liquidate companies, held the state hostage for nearly 3 years. Illinois was losing 1 population every few seconds.

I'm actually kind of surprised by that, given that the MO Burbs are growing. But people are savvy, and if you have a metro area that straddles a state boundary and one state is more tax-friendly or job-friendly or transit-friendly, people are going to make the rational decision.

If you're Illinois, you should look at these numbers and figure out that you're doing something wrong.

[Dante84]

I haven’t researched this, but I imagine most people don’t shop for new cities like they do cereal in a supermarket.

They typically follow jobs or family. Few are like “welp what new city looks good” like they’re ordering from a menu.

They do when they are in their early twenties.

[Deberg_1990]

St Louie hasn’t been the same since Nelly slipped off the charts and the Rams went downhill.

[jd1020]

I'm actually kind of surprised by that, given that the MO Burbs are growing. But people are savvy, and if you have a metro area that straddles a state boundary and one state is more tax-friendly or job-friendly or transit-friendly, people are going to make the rational decision.

If you're Illinois, you should look at these numbers and figure out that you're doing something wrong.

Well, it doesn't help the East St. Louis is also one of the most dangerous areas in the country. Not exactly a nice place to settle down with a family.

[Rain Man]

Well, it doesn't help the East St. Louis is also one of the most dangerous areas in the country. Not exactly a nice place to settle down with a family.

Yeah, but that's a tiny part of the Illinois Burbs. Less than 5 percent of their population. Regardless of how desirable the area is, though, people are choosing to move out of it, and that says something. An area that's declining will inhibit the growth of wealth because home values won't rise (for the most part). You never want to live in an area with a declining population.

I've mentioned this in the past, but if I was a savvy 20 year-old, I'd move to an area that's growing and then find a job from there. If you can then scrape together the money to buy a house, you're going to get a lot more wealth accumulation in the long run than getting a job in an area that's growing slowly or not at all.

[KCUnited]

IL saw the nations worst population decline from 2010-2019, most of which were prime working age adults. Turns out people expect more from insane taxation. They'll be losing me within the next 3-5 years.

[ChiefsCountry]

Most smart people in the St Louis metro move to St Charles County.

[jd1020]

IL saw the nations worst population decline from 2010-2019, most of which were prime working age adults. Turns out people expect more from insane taxation. They'll be losing me within the next 3-5 years.

Just wait til they start charging us for the mileage we drive a year on top of one of the highest plate renewal fees in the country.

Anytime someone wants to kick the dude out of the house thats been there since 1983 I'm ready.

[Third Eye]

Most smart people in the St Louis metro move to St Charles County.

Why anyone would ever intentionally choose to live in St. Charles or O’Fallon is an absolute mystery to me. I was forced to live out in St. Peters for two years and it was awful. The smart people in St. Louis live in Webster/Kirkwood/Clayton/Ladue.

[Third Eye]

The St. Louis metro area is much larger than KC metro.

KC has a larger "city" area and population.

STL metro area is super spread out.

I’m not sure that 30% constitutes “much larger”, especially since we are comparing tier 3 cities.

[Prison Bitch]

Was doing some reading of America’s demographics this morning.

Apparently our population growth slowed this decade — by 31%.

Yyyyyyyikes.

e



Our population growth is slowing. Yikes.


But overpopulating leads to global climate crisis. Yikes.

[KCUnited]

Just wait til they start charging us for the mileage we drive a year on top of one of the highest plate renewal fees in the country.

Anytime someone wants to kick the dude out of the house thats been there since 1983 I'm ready.

Now that you mentioned it, just got my renewal notice at the beginning of the month and didn't pay much attention to it.

Just went and looked and it went up from $101 to $151 from last year LMAO

[jd1020]

Now that you mentioned it, just got my renewal notice at the beginning of the month and didn't pay much attention to it.

Just went and looked and it went up from $101 to $151 from last year LMAO

Yep. I renew in January so that was a fun little surprise.

Only state among our neighbors that charges over $100.

At least it's paying for the roads, though. Not like I've seen the same potholes for 2 years and the highways aren't blocked off every year repairing the same god damn bridges/overpasses.

[Megatron96]

STL was shrinking 30 years ago when I moved away for work.

STL has always been a city in decline as long as I can remember, which is unfortunate, because there's a lot to like about STL as well.

Oh, sorry the question was why is STL shrinking.

Just guessing, but the city hasn't been terribly friendly to big business, plus the city's infrastructure is outdated, so businesses have been inclined to leave, taking a large percentage of their employees with them. In fact, didn't this exact scenario play out just a couple years ago? Some aviation company or something?

[kstater]

Being a shithole prolly doesn't help

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[Iowanian]

When I look for a city in which to relocate, it will not be a city with high taxes, high crime rates, and isn't the scene of a recent riot.

What I've seen of recent crime maps of the KC area, I'm not thinking I'd be excited to move there either.

https://www.cityprotect.com/map/list/agencies?toDate=2020-08-20T23:59:59.999Z&fromDate=2020-08-17T00:00:00.000Z&pageSize=2000&parentIncidentTypeIds=149,150,148,8,97,104,165,98,100,179,178,180,101,99,103,163,168,166,12,161,14,1 6,15&zoomLevel=5&latitude=36.823106499999376&longitude=-95.84553739999838&days=1,2,3,4,5,6,7&startHour=0&endHour=24&timezone=%2B00:00&relativeDate=custom

[Rain Man]

When I look for a city in which to relocate, it will not be a city with high taxes, high crime rates, and isn't the scene of a recent riot.

What I've seen of recent crime maps of the KC area, I'm not thinking I'd be excited to move there either.

The weird thing about big cities, though, is how compressed and insular neighborhoods are. Denver has numbered streets from north to south, so it's really easy to tell distances. I never see serious crimes in my neighborhood that's near Xth Street, but I'll hear about a shooting on X+35th Street and it's not a concern at all. X+35 is less than four miles from me, but it's a different world. I never go there and I don't think their residents ever come to X Street. So happiness is just a matter of finding the right neighborhood.

[Iowanian]

The weird thing about big cities, though, is how compressed and insular neighborhoods are. Denver has numbered streets from north to south, so it's really easy to tell distances. I never see serious crimes in my neighborhood that's near Xth Street, but I'll hear about a shooting on X+35th Street and it's not a concern at all. X+35 is less than four miles from me, but it's a different world. I never go there and I don't think their residents ever come to X Street. So happiness is just a matter of finding the right neighborhood.


I should go into a life of crime given that information. How much would it throw police off if I choose my targets 3-4 neighborhoods away....that said I've seen enough examples of how they use technology, bus routes etc to locate potential criminals....what threw me off on the KC crimes/shootings/murders map was how distributed it was across the metro area, as it didn't appear to be confined to certain areas. That's new.

I was working in a larger urban area that experienced a significant natural disaster and was all over it. I was amazed how many times I was in a neighborhood with $M homes and then a couple of blocks away, abject poverty, even on the same "street"...I guess if you're not counting the lanes and culdesacs.

[Megatron96]

The weird thing about big cities, though, is how compressed and insular neighborhoods are. Denver has numbered streets from north to south, so it's really easy to tell distances. I never see serious crimes in my neighborhood that's near Xth Street, but I'll hear about a shooting on X+35th Street and it's not a concern at all. X+35 is less than four miles from me, but it's a different world. I never go there and I don't think their residents ever come to X Street. So happiness is just a matter of finding the right neighborhood.

This describes STL to a T. I lived in CWE in STL for a few years, and the neighborhood I lived in was decent, the homes were nice, relatively low crime, etc. But go just two blocks north and it was a basic shithole. Two blocks. Same deal just a mile and a half south.

Same thing when I lived in South STL. My neighborhood was decent, but you could walk a few blocks and be in a pretty bad neighborhood. And then a few blocks past that you'd be in a high-end upper middle-class kind of neighborhood.

[wazu]

The weird thing about big cities, though, is how compressed and insular neighborhoods are. Denver has numbered streets from north to south, so it's really easy to tell distances. I never see serious crimes in my neighborhood that's near Xth Street, but I'll hear about a shooting on X+35th Street and it's not a concern at all. X+35 is less than four miles from me, but it's a different world. I never go there and I don't think their residents ever come to X Street. So happiness is just a matter of finding the right neighborhood.

KC has a clear divide as well. Saw an interesting short video recently about how this evolved, dubbing it the "Troost Wall". I imagine it's a similar tale for a lot of cities.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/98-oHmcYwFg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Rams Fan]

Most smart people in the St Louis metro move to St Charles County.

Why?

It’s so far from everything.

Clayton/Webster Groves/Kirkwood/UCity/Ladue are way better.

[MTG#10]

As others have mentioned, crime-ridden shithole. The fact that anyone is surprised by this is mind-boggling.

[Titty Meat]

Because people who share your political beliefs OP are destroying it

[DJ's left nut]

They refuse to incorporate and it's crippling their ability to renew their city.

Relatively well-off people don't want to live in City - they move to homes in County and the tax base leaves with them. And County leaders don't want to incorporate city because it's pretty much a boat anchor.

It's a supercharged version of the urban flight that many major cities are seeing because most of those cities still have suburbs in the same county and as such, county revenues don't drop off. But when people leave City to go to County, that money is just gone.

City leadership needs to swallow their pride and County leadership needs to take some civic pride and they need to incorporate City into County. And it really needed to be done 20 years ago.

EDIT: Mostly what Rams Fan said. I didn't live there but I cut my teeth practicing there and it takes maybe 6 months of being there any appreciable period of time to figure out the major problem.

[DJ's left nut]

Seeing redditors bitch about county citizens vote against joining the city last year was entertaining.

Not sure how City can weaponize the Cardinals, but they should try to figure it out.

The Cardinals, the Blues and a handful of bars/restaurants are about all anyone in the County gives a damn about in the City. Otherwise county leaders wouldn't care if City decided to join Illinois.

I understand City's frustration though - when people outside of Missouri think of St. Louis, they think of City. The arch, the sports teams, the history; that's all City stuff. And County largely freeloads off it. But if City continues to crater and decline, the reputation of County will suffer accordingly and eventually the jobs that have allowed for the surrounding suburbs to thrive will start heading elsewhere.

It's an awfully short-sighted approach. Though I will say, if City wanted to do anything about it, they'd need to make some odd sort of gerrymandering concessions to allow County more influence than their population would dictate. That might encourage County to go ahead and incorporate city - if they felt that they could be largely responsible for its governance. If I were County leaders, I'd be pretty reluctant to incorporate City and have more people like the Hubbard family start running shit at a County level.

The political families like the Hubbards that have had an outsized influence in City politics for a long time are a huge impediment to incorporation. You don't want to let those foxes into the henhouse if you're County - they're as crooked as anyone you'll find outside of Chicago.