STL Rising doesn't write alot about the St. Louis suburbs, but something arrived in my in-box today that is pretty impressive.
A postcard advertising a shopping center for sale along Manchester Road included demographic information. People love comparing St. Louis to other regions, and these numbers make St. Louis look pretty good.
The stats below refer to population and income information for a radius centered on Manchester Road between Clarkson and 141. (According to the flier, the source of the following is the US Census.)
1 mile radius
Population - 9,114
Households - 3,374
Average household income - $76,871
3 mile radius
Population - 76,242
Households - 26,870
Average household income - $101,462
5 mile radius
Population - 150,397
Households - 55,013
Average household income - $109,612
With the low cost of living in the St. Louis metro, a lot of people are living a good lifestyle.
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11 comments:
Median household income for St Louis City is $29,156, for St Louis County as a whole it is $50,532... for the stretch of Manchester you describe the higher numbers don't really surprise me.
Not surprised here either. The money is in West County.
This map makes the St. Louis region look to be a decent concentration of overall regional wealth compared to the rest of the country.
People who leave St. Louis in search of a better lifestyle usually find comparable incomes and a higher cost of living.
You might be interested in this page on Radical Cartography called income donuts. It shows the income distribution of most U.S. cities, including St. Louis. It clearly shows our metro's favored quarter extends due west from downtown.
Thanks Herbie for the post. It's interesting to compare St. Louis to the other regions around the country.
If I'm reading the maps right, they all appear to be on the same 10 mile per ring scale.
By comparison, the St. Louis area looks fairly compact compared to the other regions.
Is that how it looks to everyone else?
If so, I think that would be a surprise to most people in St. Louis.
It shouldn't be particularly surprising that St. Louis is considerably smaller than the metropolitan area of LA (which consumes almost a third of the state of California) or the three state reach on the New York MSA. What is startling, as Herbie pointed out, is the narrowness and linearity o the band of affluence. This stark contrast is simply not present in the more vibrant and successful cities on the list. Looking at the range of cities indexed there are only four comparable cities: Washington D.C., Baltimore, Cleveland and St. Louis. We are witnessing the cartographic confirmation of the segregational effect of decades of investment policy.
Andrew,
All the cities show concentrations of the affluent. That's not just a St. Louis thing.
In St. Louis, the urban core tends to look pretty economically balanced. It's all blue.
Coming from the Bay Area, I'm reminded how it's over 100 miles from one end of that region to the other.
Yes, the incomes there are high, but it's a bummer when you want to travel from somewhere in the North Bay, say Napa, to a concert at the Bayshore Amphitheater in San Mateo, or a Sharks game in San Jose.
With traffic, you could be driving till 2:00 am to get home.
I'll take the Blues or a rock show in downtown St. Louis, 30 minutes from just about anywhere in the region.
The slice of affluence centered around Manchester Road is also the most bland strip of the St. Louis region: boring strip commercial and McMansion subdivisions.
The places with charm and lots of character are mostly in the blue areas. Who goes to West County for charm?
It would be interesting to learn whether other regions have lots of blandness in their affluent areas? There should be maps of regional blandness and charm as well as income.
In this region, affluence is represented by McMansions surrounded by acres of grass and connected by large and ugly roadways. In prosperous cities, affluence is represented by a wide variety of shops, restaurants, homes, condos, townhouses, all within an enjoyable and entertaining walk of each other along tree lined boulevards and neighborhood streets.
In the first sentence, Anonymous at 5:29 am sounds like he/she is describing sections of the far flung St. Louis area suburbs.
In the second sentence, Anonymous is describing Clayton, Kirkwood, Webster Groves, the Central West End, DeMun, Tower Grove Heights, Soulard, Lafayette Square, St. Louis Hills, the Hill, and increasingly so, downtown St. Louis.
I think that would be a surprise to most people in St. Louis.
thanks ,,
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