St. Louis Sidewalks / Korean Sidewalks

I did my undergraduate studies at UMSL.  My freshman year, I stayed at the beautiful Provincial House, which had once belonged to the Daughters of Charity.  They had done some beautiful landscaping.  There were evergreens blocking the winter wind to the north, large shade trees surrounded the other portions, and the grounds as a whole were quite wooded.  I was instantly attached to the place.  Naturally, once under the university's administration, ten to fifteen trees were taken out every year.  If you go there now, you will see great fields of grass.  The same could be said of UMSL's north campus.  In 2001, there were many beautiful trees, and many of those were removed. 

UMSL also had the most irritating habit of pulling up all of its sidewalks every single year, much to the discomfort of the students forced to walk in the mud and to talk over the jackhammering.  When the construction ended, there was generally a sidewalk that looked exactly the same as before with maybe a few missing trees next to it.  My student fees!  Why do the contractors have the same name as the vice-chancellor that ordered the work?  Schuster...  Schuster...  hmm.

While living in the UMSL residence halls, I often took the Metrolink down to the loop.  There were beautiful hickory trees between Delmar Station and Skinker.  At some point, they were all removed, the sidewalk needfully expanded, and very small redbuds planted.  Baby trees everywhere.

I later moved to the loop and greatly enjoyed my time there.

In the spring, the bradford pears would bloom like giant clouds looming over the loop and as the petals fell they'd fly like snow.  If I walked quickly, they would form a beautiful fragrant whirlwind in my wake. 

I went abroad for a time and returned hoping to meet up with old friends, eat plenty of falafel, and loiter in public spaces.  In my absence the bradford pears were removed.  Kelly at Sub Books told me they were dying anyway and irritating to clean up after.  She hoped to instead get some beautiful and local species with a longer lifespan.  I lamented that baby trees always made me sad.  Once planted, they would surely be removed and replaced with similarly small trees in under 5 years.  That just seems to be how planners and developers deal with trees--as temporary shrubs.

Other than the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, old trees are very hard to find in St. Louis.

I left St. Louis again.  I'm back in Seoul now.  Seoul's a funny place.  The trees here are regularly visited and maintained by arborists with medical training,

Trees in Seoul seem to be treated so much better than trees in America.  In Gwanghwamun Plaza, there was a row of ginko trees that were planted by the Japanese almost a hundred years ago.  They're gone now.  Were they cut down?

These trees may be 100 years old and worth saving, but they are not at all alone.  When trees are removed in Seoul, they are almost always carefully dug out, lifted with cranes, put on trucks, and taken to other sites.  When trees are planted, they are often at least 20 years old.  Just down the street from my office, I saw about ten Korean pines being planted today.  Each was about 50 feet tall.

There's more to this as well. 

While UMSL used to dig up the pavement every 6 months, other places in St. Louis look like this,

The ground simply cannot breathe.

In Korea, they often look like this,

Yes, the sidewalks are considerably wider, but there's another trick here.  Sidewalks in Korea are not made of poured concrete, they do not require jackhammers, and they certainly don't need heavy digging equipment.  They're just bricks. 

I was walking with an architect friend the other day and she remarked that trees need at least 5 feet of space around them per 5 inches or something like that.  She seemed bothered that the little squares allocated to them seemed so small.  I immediately calmed her by explaining that the trees could extend their roots under the entire sidewalk easily and were not pinned in by concrete boxes.

It's simple really.  When tree roots upset the bricks, they just relay the bricks with a bit more dirt.  When the bricks get too dirty, they change them.  When they decide they want a new sidewalk design for the neighborhood, they change the bricks.  When they want to widen the sidewalk, they add a second median, fill it with dirt, and add more bricks.

Those yellow bricks, BTW are for blind people,

It is my contention that if a blind person uses these by feel then the color shouldn't matter.  All the same, they are yellow in Korea, Japan, Singapore, and probably many other places I never noticed.

I am pleased to see the increased awareness in the United States for stormwater runoff.  MSD in St. Louis has been doing some excellent work with its rain garden installations all over the region.  I have also heard several calls for research into porous concrete able to soak-up rain water and not let it run off into the sewer system.  Without really trying, Korea's simple bricks accomplish this.  Every time it rains, I see the water steadily seeping between the cracks of the bricks.

Laying bricks is very low-tech, and half the time, the people who do it appear to of retirement age. 


I don't believe Korea has the answers to St. Louis' problems.  St. Louis needs to work to preserve its old trees as well as its old buildings.  Trees are infrastructure and play a vital role in the urban eco-system.  They reduce the heat island effect, store water, reduce electrical consumption for air-conditioning, increase neighborhood walkability, have an effect on retail volume, increase property value, and produce waste that can be converted to compost or burned for fuel. 

Depending on the season, most of the trees in Seoul bear fruit of one kind or another, and there are always people out willing to collect what they can.  When you see food on the trees, you'll certainly see it a few days later for sale on street corners.  Persimmons like these in the picture will be dried and packaged together or maybe made into a drink.  In September there were a lot of chestnuts to be found.  In October, the smelly gingko berries start falling and the locals start collecting.  They steam them with rice in lotus leaves.  In this way, the trees in the city connect the people to the changing of seasons.  Food is local and in season. 

In the spring, Japanese meterologists track what they call the Sakura Front as blooming cherry blossoms move up the country.  In Seoul, cherry blossoms are not as big of a deal, but there is still a festival to enjoy.

It reminds me of bradford pears long dead in University City.