What I'm Reading Now

I recently finished Ray Suarez's book and started reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. I'm only a little ways in and I'm already blown away by this book. It's pretty clear why it's regarded as a classic, and it will certainly be influencing this blog in the future.

Quote of the Day

"Were China and India to increase their rates of car ownership to the point where per-capita oil consumption reached just half of American levels, the two countries would burn through a hundred million additional barrels a day. (Currently, total global use is eighty six million barrels a day.) Were they to match U.S. consumption levels, they would require an extra two hundred million barrels a day."
-Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 11/05/07

Quote of the Day

"Today we look back on it all in hurt and wonder. How did this happen? Where did that good life go? When an accidental detour or missed expressway exit brings us into contact with the world we left behind, we can still place all the blame firmly and squarely elsewhere. The shuttered factories and collapsing row houses, the cavant storefronts and rutted streets are regarded with the same awe reserved for scenes of natural disasters. We look out on a world that somehow, in the American collective memory, destroyed itself."
Ray Suarez: The Old Neighborhood (1999)

Quote of the Day

"We're not going back to 2005. What was built then is not going to come back, and this is not a bad thing. What we were building was so unsustainable, and it didn't really meet our needs."
-Marianne Cusato (designer of the "Home for a New Economy"), The New York Times Magazine, 10/17/10).

Great Column from Post-Dispacth: St. Louis Needs More Immigrants

I completely agree with this column from the Post-Dispatch:

http://www.stltoday.com/business/columns/david-nicklaus/article_61ec7841-e0a9-5f90-9654-0aa2f91d5e88.html

Clearly, St. Louis has some assets it can leverage. The International Institute, which provides a variety of services to immigrants, sponsored 6,000 Bosnian refugees in the 1990s. They spread the word to friends and relatives, and now an estimated 70,000 Bosnians call St. Louis home.
They have bought homes and started businesses. They stabilized a broad swath of the city and have begun to move to the suburbs. In short, they've done what waves of German, Irish and Italian immigrants did before them.
But for at least 60 years, from the 1920s to the 1980s, St. Louis had no noticeable influx of foreign-born residents. It's no coincidence that the city lost population and, during the latter half of that period, the region's economy stagnated.

I recommend you read the whole column. While it focuses on the entrepreneurial aspects that immigration brings, I'd add another as well: adding cultural diversity. The reason South City is my favorite part of St. Louis is because the presence of Latin American, Asian, and Middle Eastern immigrants bring a little more variety - especially in terms of restaurants and grocery stores - to the world of St. Louis. Attracting immigrants to St. Louis would be a great thing for the city to pursue.

Quote of the Day

"The fruits of the multiplicity of local governments in metropolitan areas are inadequate, expensive, and inefficient services mixed helter-skelter with adequate urban services."
-George M. Smerk: Urban Transportation: The Federal Role (1965)

What I'm Reading Now

I'm currently reading The Old Neighborhood (1999) by PBS's Ray Suarez. It's a pretty fascinating look at what was lost when Americans left "the old neighborhood" for suburbia between the 1950s and 1980s. A lot of it focuses on the issue of "white flight." It's full of great information, and great quotes.