I absolutely agree and have loved your past couple of articles. How do these thoughts get in front of the people making decisions for our community?

They have been for years, but the fact that Rollin Stanley would simply walk away, for example, without much resistance nor any apparent need by the city to fill his vacant office, indicates the degree of priority of a complete streets agenda and strategic land use planning principles that is somewhere between penultimate and dead last.

Well said - here's are a couple comments from Rollin from a short interview this January:

What are some of your proudest

accomplishments from your time

in St. Louis?

We have led the country in the use of historic tax credits — the mayor and I were just in London where we won the world leadership award in housing. We have tremendous old warehouse buildings in St. Louis that were just sitting there abandoned, and we created thousands of new housing units in them through historic preservation and using tax credits.

What are some of your goals

for Montgomery County’s planning?

I see the staff wants to be creative, and I hope I can help them do that. It’s not just about building form, it’s about quality of place, creating an environment where people want to live, where they can feel safe and have their needs met — from recreation to shopping to work, etc.

Any similarities between St. Louis and what you think awaits you here?

St. Louis is a very diverse place in both physical form and makeup of the community. Montgomery County has elements of that too. I plan on working with the community to make sure those differences are both preserved and enhanced.

How about differences?

The cost of living is a very big difference.

Well, there is a vacuum of civic leadership in the city of St. Louis. There are plenty of reasons, but it's time we quit analyzing and start acting. If we all care about this city as much as we write about it, then we'll be happy to demand changes in our government, which is disconnected from citizens. Its very purpose is merely to run a bureaucracy and not to craft a better, more urban city. We must all think about becoming involved in meaningful ways to organize citizens toward the goal of making St. Louis more safe, friendly, livable, etc.

We need some people to tackle government head on (i.e., constantly contact alderman, if not running for the position altogether!), but we need even more people to get out there and increase awareness of a presence of people who care. Much of the crap that goes on in St. Louis does so because there is a modus operandi that is never challenged; there are too few truly invested stakeholders. People claim a "St. Louis reality" exists that can't be broken. These words truly do hold us back. We need to return to that naive modern era where "progress" was the buzz word, but at the same time reject the city-destroying principles of that era and replace them with what we have learned makes cities great.

We need a "culture" beyond that of the "downtrodden Rustbelt city". We need to have people come to St. Louis and leave noting something other than the Arch and the Zoo.

On that note, we need residents demanding that our commercial corridors not be poor imitations of Lindbergh Boulevard. No thriving city exists without good street corners and major boulevards where shoppers, diners, neighborhood residents, and tourists gather. And that's just one (albeit major) issue.

We need to be an organized presence, or our government will continue to operate with predetermined, backward-looking goals that don't involve the citizens who care.

Yep. Hopefully City Affair, among other efforts (undoubtedly to be well advertised on St. Louis CAN-DO) will flourish the way we envision, and from this burgeoning think tank we produce visible actions that get the necessary attention that blog posts and comments never will.

Speaking of St. Louis CAN-DO, I am hoping it will take off.

For those who haven't registered yet, it would be great if you could join and post events and happenings across St. Louis (and then attend them)

http://stlcando.ning.com/

Excellent blog, BTW, and of course a welcome addition to the many allied blogs that provide those starved for substance (like me) with the bloody meat.

St. Louis CAN-DO should be the bulletin board at the corner pub (rather than the one in the supermarket entry vestibule advertising free kittens)... good graphics too.

Justin - you can find City Affair on Facebook