St. Louis MO: "If tax subsidies are so necessary to spur development in the Central Corridor, then why did growth happen anyway in the Cherokee Corridor?"

A succinct overview of neighborhood success without subsidies, with three factors cited, including my favorite: Individual initiative, without help or even in defiance of the political leadership in the neighborhood.

The story is very similar in downtown New Albany. Indie operators succeed in spite of City Hall, not because of it -- although to be sure, a few low level subsidies are available, and lamentably, instances of "picking winners" all too often occur.

(edited -- click through for the whole essay)

Why This Street's Success Threatens the Status Quo, by Chris Naffziger (Strong Towns)

The following essay was originally published in St. Louis Magazine and is reprinted here with permission.

Cherokee Street is dangerous.

No, not in the cliché definition we see plastered all over the nightly news. It is dangerous to the status quo in St. Louis politics. Despite very little attention from City Hall, the street has rebounded from absentee landlordship to become a thriving, multicultural community. Scanning through national coverage of St. Louis, places such as the Saint Louis Zoo, Saint Louis Art Museum, the Cardinals, and the Arch get much of the attention, and logically so, as they are large institutions with commensurate budgets. But it's Cherokee Street that should be getting into the headlines despite having a fraction of the finances of those other St. Louis icons.

In addition to being ignored by City Hall, Cherokee Street has rarely been the recipient of tax abatements of the quantity lavished on the Central Corridor. Nonetheless, the street thrives. I began to contemplate why this is; if tax subsidies are so necessary to spur development in the Central Corridor, then why did growth happen anyway in the Cherokee Corridor? Here are my observations, having watched the street mature over the past decade.

Individual initiative, without help or even in defiance of the political leadership in the neighborhood. Mexican Americans moved to Cherokee Street and began to open stores and restaurants, bringing life to a commercial corridor that was largely abandoned. Yet again, as has been shown over the past 250 years, this city has always been nourished with the blood of immigrants, and their contribution has been ignored for just about that length of time as well ...

Hard work, which tax incentives cannot replace. Look at the work required to renovate the Cherokee Brewery. Despite receiving no tax abatements, the Earthbound Beer team transformed a historic brewery building into a modern microbrewery ...

A sense of purpose beyond profit. I'm not arguing that businesses should not worry about being fiscally solvent. Far from it. But I’ve discovered over the years that most people can smell a person who’s only in business for the money ...

New Albany doesn't have the balls for this traffic calming solution.

"Traffic calming measures aren’t just concrete and strategic design: they’re a clear signal that drivers don’t own the roads we live on, and that our streets are where residents live, not just where we drive our cars."
-- Kea Wilson

Read all about it. What to do when driver bots hate traffic calming?

Wilson proposes involving the neighborhood in the decision-making process; beautifying; educating; building incrementally; and celebrating.

When your city hates your traffic calming measures, by Kea Wilson (Strong Towns)

 ... This is the uncomfortable reality of the movement to #slowthecars in our human-scaled neighborhoods; all too often, drivers really, really hate being slowed down. And a lot of them will stay angry, no matter how beautifully you argue that narrowing your road makes your neighborhood immediately safer for all modes of transport — and let’s be clear, it does. There’s no magic wand that will force all your neighbors to be happy about changes to the streets they drive down every day — much less stop them from flooding the alderwoman with calls to get the “hazards” removed, especially when the nightly news is all but telling them to do it.

Does that mean we shouldn’t #slowthecars? Nope. The safety and financial productivity of our cities is far too important.

But it does mean that we can and should get a little better at implementing traffic calming measures each time we attempt them. That’s the essence of the Strong Towns approach.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned from my neighborhood’s Great Concrete Ball saga of 2018 that might help in your town too ...

A theory of river towns, civic assets and underperformance.

It's remarkable how at various points in their lives, New Albanians glance around them and remark, "well, we're just a dirty ol' river town, and things will never change here."

Seems Aaron Renn has heard it, too. Bluegill recommended this essay, and it's a stimulating read. It may actually be less of "it's in the water" than bad habits learned during two hundred years of practice.

On the Riverfront, by Aaron Renn (Urbanophile)

Thursday I took a look at my “Cincinnati conundrum,” namely how it’s possible for a city that has the greatest collection of civic assets of any city its size in America to underperform demographically and economically. In that piece I called out the sprawl angle. But today I want to take a different look at it by panning back the lens to see Cincinnati as simply one example of the river city.

There are four major cities laid out on an east-west corridor along the Ohio River: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis (which is not on the Ohio River, but close enough. I’ll leave Memphis and New Orleans out of it for now). All of these are richly endowed with civic assets like Cincinnati is, having far more than their fair share of great things, yet they’ve all been stagnant to slow growing for decades.