St. Louis on the Rillito River

A recent article in City Journal on the travails of St. Louis got me thinking about the similarities between that city, where I was born and raised, and Tucson, where I’ve been living for the last seven years.

I’m not referring to the fact that both are on rivers: the dry Rillito River for Tucson, and the key shipping artery of the Mississippi River for St. Louis.

I’m referring to the fact that both cities suffer immensely from years of one-party rule: 75 years of Democrat rule in the case of the City of St. Louis, and a couple of decades of Democrat rule for the City of Tucson.

The suffering includes nearly identical poverty rates between the two cities, along with everything that comes with poverty, such as crime, low test scores, crumbling infrastructure, and seediness.

Noodle that for a moment. A Sunbelt city has the same poverty rate and similar problems as a Frostbelt city that has a reputation as a hellhole.

Of course, the two cities are quite different in flora, fauna, topography, and climate. But a more relevant difference is that St. Louisans have been able to easily escape the rundown, poorly governed city by moving to one of the scores of municipalities in the surrounding county, a county where the opposition party of the GOP has tended to dominate but shares power with Democrats. Whites were first to escape, but middle-class blacks have joined the exodus.

The five interstates that converge in St. Louis have made the escape easier. Also making it easier is the fact that the St. Louis region, unlike Tucson, has a highly diverse economy, a relatively low cost of housing, two private universities, two medical schools, and many K-12 options, including a longstanding network of parochial schools. Escapees from the city can live in a working-class suburb, a middle-class suburb, or a highfalutin suburb like Ladue, where the median household income is over $250,000.

Executives at the downtown Federal Reserve building or at the downtown headquarters of Wells Fargo Advisors can be at their homes in leafy Ladue in 15 to 20 minutes via a freeway. Alternatively, they can live in a brownstone in the revitalized West End of the city, near Washington University and bucolic Forest Park, which has been returned to its original beauty, due to county residents voting to impose a special tax on themselves to pay for the renovation and maintenance of the park, although it is in the city.

The park is much larger than Central Park and includes museums, an outdoor opera, a lagoon where boats can be rented, a tennis stadium, ball fields, a golf course, a skating rink, a planetarium, a science center, walking and cycling paths, and a world-class zoo, where admission is free.

As a result of people leaving the city for the suburbs, the City of St. Louis has gone from being the third- or fourth-largest city in the nation and the host of the 1904 World’s Fair, to having a population of 281,754, which is only about 10 percent of the region’s population.

By contrast, the City of Tucson’s population of 547,239 accounts for 50 percent of the population of the Tucson region. Unincorporated Pima County accounts for another 36 percent of the region’s population, and, again, is governed by the same political monopoly as the city. This means that 86 percent of metro Tucson has no political diversity. It also has little economic diversity and is largely dependent on government jobs or low-wage jobs in tourism and hospitality.

The escape options are much more limited in Tucson. There is one freeway out of town and few towns to escape to. The incorporated town of South Tucson has much higher poverty than the City of Tucson, and the incorporated suburbs of Oro Valley, Marana and Sahuarita are small and have little industry.

Ironically, Tucson markets itself as a tourist attraction, but St. Louis has a far higher number of visitors, drawn to sporting events, the Arch, Forest Park, the cuisine and charm of the Italian neighborhood, and the world-class zoo and botanical gardens.

Enough of the differences between Tucson and St. Louis. Let me return to similarities, and one in particular.

Like many other cities, the City of St. Louis has spent hundreds of millions on revitalizing its downtown, in the hope that it would lead to a rebirth of the city. Rebirth hasn’t happened, however. Tucson has also redeveloped its downtown, but since it did so much more recently, the jury is out on whether this will benefit the rest of the city.

For sure, it will benefit the political monopoly.

Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.