As the title says.
I know Chicago had similar issues with white flight/suburbanisation/white no-go areas, but St Louis has failed even more than that...
It's surprisingly hard to find articles explaining exactly what the fuck happened. Is it just a combination of white flight/de-industrialisation and really fucking poor governance/forward planning..? I honestly don't understand how at least the majority white parts have still continued to decline as they have...
We don't have cities like this, in this part of the world. Frankly, I don't think many cities like this exist (where population has declined more than 60%, since 1950!!), outside North America, so it's an interesting test case.
It reads like a failed state. I guess, in a sense, it is. But how the fuck has it done worse than Detroit..?
St Louis's problem is the reputation of East St Louis.
If we just focus on East St Louis...
The interstates caused property values to tank. Dropping tax income caused budget cuts, driving the fire department to go on strike.
Dissatisfied with the police and fire situation, many large employers petitioned the state to let them secede from the city and negotiate police and fire services directly from St Clair County, further deepening the city's tax problems, causing maintenance deferral to spread into basic infrastructure maintenance.