The Improvement of St. Louis Downtown: After a hundred years, since the World’s Fair, St. Louis downtown has been deteriorating and disappointing. The city has many abandoned, unattractive buildings, very limited public transportation, and other factors that result in visitors to re-evaluate St. Louis’s expectations. Organizations that can contribute to the rebuilding of St. Louis downtown are North Grand Neighborhood Services and Rainbow Village, a non-profit organization that can provide safe and affordable homes for people in the St. Louis Area. In addition, I have read multiple articles on “Framing a Modern Masterpiece: The City + the Arch + the River;” this is an international design competition organized by national park supporters and design community from both Missouri and Illinois. This was a 10-month competition that allowed architects and designers to create new ideas for the city as well as maintaining the “character-defining” features of specific sites. The winner with the best, logical design has been chosen; the construction of downtown is supposed to complete by 2015.
Check out the finalists designs (pretty neat): http://www.cityarchrivercompetition.org/competition/finalists/
Racial Tension: It is evident that during the 1950s as the minority population increased in St. Louis, the whites moved out of the urban communities to more commuter towns; this is also known as the White Flight. However, now, people are exposed to mixed-race schools, hospitals, and other facilities after passing the Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 and other laws. What shocks me is there is still this racial tension or discomfort between races (specifically white and black); in other words, in some counties and specifically in the St. Louis metropolitan area, there is this sense of separation between races.
Affording Education: After much research, I realized that there are many school districts like St. Charles County school districts that are being closed due to poor educational systems. Also, in these schools, there are cases where families cannot afford for their childrens education or if families cannot fulfill the payment, children are pulled out of the school. I feel children being pulled out of school would increase their chances of falling into the wrong hands because there education would be mostly influenced by the surrounding community (the streets) - without mentors or any role models. Organizations that would help stimulate or challenge the children’s minds are A Better World, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Band Together, and other organizations.