Can Missouri save its cities?

by Jack Stapleton, Jr.

Each year for the past decade, Missouri’s governors have called for greater and greater state effort to resuscitate its cities. Much of the available funding for economic development goes to the state’s urban areas. Usually these pleas are heeded by a legislature that isn’t blind and knows from just one drive-through that metropolitan regions in Missouri need first-aid. It’s possible to reach the conclusion that even the least blighted areas probably can’t be saved.

But we continue the idea. We spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars annually on numerous projects with the admirable goal of saving large cities, even if we’re seldom provided evidence this state and federal largesse is remedial.

The term “economic development” has such universal appeal that even projects that don’t really qualify are labeled such. Witness the current efforts to build new ballparks, convention centers and other tourist traps in order to enhance the bank accounts of sponsors and developers. Even efforts to rehabilitate useless, dilapidated “historic landmarks” are carelessly labeled economic development. — even though it is virtually impossible to attach real value to them, either before or after state taxpayers are charged for their restoration.

Much of this willingness to invest taxpayer funds in dilapidated urban sections can be attributed to the popular notion that the nation’s metro areas are enjoying an “urban renaissance.” Cities are no longer being written off as hopeless anachronisms, it’s claimed, but are blossoming as never before.

Chambers of commerce can wax poetic about revival of such centers as St. Louis and Kansas City. But in the interest of accuracy, they need to check their facts. Even projects that represent only a drop in the local economic bucket are publicized even when their impact is less than a new Wal-Mart supercenter.

A close examination of population change, job growth figures and real estate data should trigger a more intensive look into the real-life of urban areas. Missouri’s large cities, like their counterparts virtually all over the U.S., have experienced wholesale population declines over the past decade. St. Louis City’s population loss in the past decade was greater than the total population of all but four Show-Me metro areas. Even urban suburbs are beginning to record losses.

It’s important to recognized the reality of the 1990s decline — and the greater forces that are driving people, jobs and wealth away from urban centers. A belief that this is only a temporary setback is a dangerous illusion, leading to the dependence on one or two projects, such as the Cardinal ballpark plan, to rebuild these cities’ capital structures. It won’t work.

The real dose of reality comes from the demographic trends seen in the 2000 Census. In Missouri’s metro areas, for every three households that migrated in, five moved out, which is more or less the pattern of previous decades. This outward migration took place in virtually every age category, but most heavily in the critical 35-44 age group.

Again, looking at Missouri’s cities, for the first time since early in the last century, more whites live in the quasi-rural countryside outside the metro areas than live in the core urban areas.

The same can be said about jobs. Job growth in outlying areas reach 15%, compared to crowded urban areas averaging less than 6%. The corporate economy is following the same path, seeking employment pools from persons who are happy in their environment, not those anxious to leave.

The simple truth about Missouri’s large cities is that most of us prefer the suburbs to the city. Only one in 10 Americans wants to live in a major city. Neither St. Louis nor Kansas City can prosper on either hope or hype. It is ludicrous to suggest that the key to the revival of the state’s largest population area is dependent on the construction of a new ballpark and a few retail outlets adjoining it. The state’s cost-share of this one project will exceed $644 million over the next 30 years, making it the most expensive turkey ever grown in the “Show-Me” state.

Emergency aid to the cities is resulting in a serious financial problem for the vast majority in our state. It’s time to take a closer look at this last-century policy.

[Missouri News & Editorial Service, Inc. Copyright (C) 2002 MNES Corp.]