Yesterday, I was riding the elevator, when a long-time acquaintance stepped on at about the twelfth floor. I mentioned to him how I'd enjoyed reading his occasional comments over at Urban Review and we chatted about how the city seems to be getting comfortable with its middling urban status.
He mentioned how no longer are we the city which aimed to be the top city in the United States, or even home to the US capitol as some had hoped. How we're not the place all those dreamers imagined at the time of the St. Louis World's Fair.
Instead we're a modest, mid-sized city with great potential, interesting neighborhoods, solid opportunity, and really nice people.
We're not a Chicago, San Francisco, or New York. Maybe that' s one of our advantages?
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3 comments:
Population measures quantity, but not quality. Many of the world's supercities lack the cultural importance of some of the smaller ones.
There are some ways inw hich St. Louis is ahead of bigger cities. Take historic rehabilitation. The oft-debated St. Louis/Chicago question here shows that St. Louis is doing much more historic rehab at a more advanced level than the supposedly more sophisticated city to the north. Chicago definitely has historic rehab, but not on the level of refinement as St. Louis, where even the newbie rehabber can tell you a lot of details about muntin profiles that many rehab contractors in Chicago don't even know.
I think Michael Allen sums it up in his comment. I couldn't agree more that: 'Population measures quantity, but not quality. Many of the world's supercities lack the cultural importance of some of the smaller ones.'
Every been to Dallas or Houston? They are huge in population, but STL is way cooler with way more architecture and substance.
Oh yeah, I forgot, we could use a little quantity to complement our quality....
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