East St. Louis / Johor Bahru

For every New York,

there is a New Jersey,

For every rich city,

there is a poorer hinterland.

This is St. Louis and East St. Louis,

This is Singapore and Johor Bahru, Malaysia,

St. Louis is split across two states.  Singapore's metro area is split across two countries. 

Most of my friends in St. Louis refuse to acknowledge that the Metro-East is even part of the region.  The east side is just for strip clubs and drinking after hours.  Edwardsville, Collinsville, and Belleville are trying to prove themselves to be more than just labor pools.  East St. Louis remains relatively undeveloped. 

Most of my friends in Singapore think of Johor Bahru (JB) as an empty area with nothing important but its bus terminal that will take them to Kuala Lumpur (KL).  You can go there for bootlegged DVDs, women, etc.  The constant conflict is over immigration, smuggling, and shipping concerns.  Singapore won't give JB a break and won't let ships enter the Strait of Johor.  They hoard all the shipping money closer to their downtown, which is on the opposite side of their island from JB.

National boudaries are a big issue, but when there is a sizable community right up next to a large city center, it is unfair to cut them out of the local identity.  To say that St. Louisans are Missourians is grossly unfair.  To some, an individual from Wildwood or St. Peters could be more of a St. Louisan than someone from East St. Louis who can see the arch from their house. 

While living in Singapore, I visited JB many times in transit.  I only stopped to see it a once.  I visited the palace of the old sultan who ruled all of Johor including Singapore. 
While living in St. Louis, I visited the Metro-East very few times.  I visited Cahokia Mounds where the mound builders once ruled all of the region and St. Louis City was a suburb.

I now live in Seoul and people talk trash on Incheon all the time like the people who live there are second-rate wretches. This is unfair.  Incheon is a major city in its own right.  Incheon is not just in the orbit of Seoul, it is actually the international face of it, as will become clear in the next few years as Incheon's development plans take off.

Singapore has no real natural resources and must bank on their talent and labor alone.  JB is their ticket to food and materials.  What isn't imported from China certainly comes from Malaysia through JB.  Singapore was once part of Malaysia and they are permanently connected.

Just looking at the Metrolink map, it is clear that there are more stations on the Illinois side of the river than the Missouri side.  St. Louis needs help paying for its public transportation, and Missouri isn't helping.  Illinois is.  The Metro-East is the second largest urban area in Illinois.  The first is Chicago, a city several times bigger than St. Louis.  The Metro-East benefits from Illinois state legislation aimed at Chicago's urban problems.  Their benefit is St. Louis's benefit too.

Mississippi River / Han River

This is Seoul,

This is St. Louis,

Both are bisected by huge rivers.  Seoul's Han River is a central recreation area and bike transit corridor.  It is a linear park fed into by a number of tribute stream parks which lead to larger parks like World Cup Park, Olympic Park, and Seoul Forest.

St. Louis has the River Ring which encompasses all of St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County.  In Madison County, they're holding onto a number of future metrolink right of ways in the form of connected greenways connected to bus stops. 

Both rivers have beautiful pedestrian and bike bridges connecting banks.

Both Seoul and St. Louis have a few islands out in the middle of their rivers.  In both cases they are dedicated to bike and pedestrian uses in addition to fishing. 

The fact is that Seoul has just a few more people living in highrises close to both banks.  Seoul also extends to a much wider network of trials, or will soon at any rate.

St. Louis is connected to the Katy Trail and the Mississippi River Trail, which links it to Kansas City, the Quad Cities, and Memphis.

There is just one major difference standing between Seoul and St. Louis that isn't money and population.  Seoul's parks are networked by daylighted streams like Yangjaecheon that look like this,

St. Louis hasn't really made very good spillways, recreational spaces, or purifying wetlands out of its streams.  Note the River des Peres,

My hope for St. Louis is in four parts.

1. All the parks in the city are connected by beautiful greenways.
2. The Gateway Mall connects to the arch grounds and goes right across the river into an bigger park in East St. Louis.
3. Both banks of the Mississippi be made into linear parks and connected by artsy recreation bridges.
4.  The region is anchored with huge greenspaces upstream at the confluence and downstream at the mouth of the Meramec.  This would require Arnold City Park to get significantly bigger.

The River Ring is very noble and important, but the Mississippi deserves the biggest investment.

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This is a steadily developing parent article related to the Mississippi River.  It addresses a larger picture and comes directly from the following entries,

St. Louis Highways / Seoul Highways
Mississippi Tributaries / Han Tributaries
Old Chain of Rocks Bridge / Banpo Dae Gyo
Mississippi River Islands / Han River Islands
Highway 70 / Cheonggyecheon
Edward Jones Dome / Seoul World Cup Stadium

St. Louis Highways / Seoul Highways

Seoul is a megacity with some very large streets.  Their highway network is quite terrifying to non-drivers like myself.  Things have steadily been making progress though.  This highway,

Ran through the middle of the city center.  It now looks like this,

This was a big deal.  The removal of the highway and the daylighting of Cheonggye stream helped get mayor of Seoul elected president of South Korea.  It was a big transition and eminent domain was used to removed a lot of small businesses and families. 

Car traffic has simply had to make due by using alternate routes.  For St. Louisans, imagine a major highway, like I-64, shutting down.  You'd simply have to drive alternate routes permanently.

Seoul is bisected by a very large river, the Han.  On both banks run mighty highways.

In this image, we see the highways on both banks and Seoul Forest, which is a very large park cut in half by a highway.  There is a long pedestrian bridge crossing it which is visible in this image.  The riverfront highways compete for space with the Han River Park, which is a greenway for bikes and pedestrians that runs the length of the river on both banks.  It varies in size and sometimes crosses under or very close to the highway.

In some places, the park is a little wider, and plans are in place to make it wider still.

In many places, it is still hard to get from the city to the park.  There just aren't enough safe bridges and entry points to cross the highway to get to the park.  The city has made efforts to address this with a system of artsy tunnels under the highway,

The many highway and subway bridges crossing the Han River have also been converted for pedestrian and bike use with creative engineering.

As Seoul transitions into the future, they seem to be embracing an urban future where large roads are not walls and boundaries for pedestrians, but just interesting and out of the way landscape features.

Just recently, plans have been tossed around for Seoul's next mega project.  They're going to build six new highways across the city.  It sounds terrifying at first, but not to worry my walking friends, these highways will be underground.  Only the entrance and exit ramps will be visible on the surface.  When complete the surface highways will begin to be repurposed.

Looking into the future, there are plans on the table to build a satellite city on top of a highway development between Incheon and Seoul.  They want to bury the highway and put a city on top of it.  The highway would be many levels down with parking above it, a subway line above that, a mall above that, and the pedestrian friendly city above it all.

Now to the St. Louis part of the article.  It is very hard to cross I-64 to get into Forest Park.  St. Louis has bike and pedestrian tunnels too though,

It is very hard to cross I-64 downtown near Union Station too. 

I-70 isn't needed by the arch and should be removed.

There are plans in the works for a new bridge across the Mississippi to connect to the highway madness over on the east side.  It would send I-70 across the river north of downtown making the old stretch unneeded.  This new bridge should be multi-purpose in an ideal world.  If it crosses the river, it should have a pedestrian and bike component.  Doesn't the Brooklyn Bridge have one of the best views in NYC?  Beautiful bridges should support people as well as cars.

Also, to repeat my great wish for the St. Louis, both banks of the Mississippi should be given over to pedestrians, bikes, picnics, wildlife, flood prevention, and scenic placeness.  Both banks should be very connected to each other with as many links as possible.  Every bridge, new and old, should have a bikeway included. 

Personally, I'd like to see the poplar street bridge rework their cable car into something interesting and publically accessible.



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This article is part of a family of comparisons between the Mississippi and Han rivers.
This post relates to highways.

East St. Louis Riverfront / Parc Guell

I see some relationship between this,

and this,

The first is by Barcelona's Antoni Gaudi, who many claim is not an architect at all.  He was more of a sculptor with a very rich patron.  The second is by St. Louis's Bob Cassilly who is most certainly a sculptor.  Gaudi loved to use catenary arches.  Cassilly lives in a city with the biggest catenary arch in the world.  Cassilly has been doing some work on the St. Louis Riverfront Trail.  I have a secret hope that he might take a future project in East St. Louis.

Compare this,

and this,

The first is the lame attempt at a park in East St. Louis, Illinois.  The second is Gaudi's park in Barcelona, Parc Guell.

The first has this,

The second has this,

From the first you can see this,

From the second, you can see this,

The first has this,

The second has this,

The national park service has plans to maybe extend the arch grounds to East St. Louis.  I'd like to propose that the current observation deck be removed totally or changed so drastically that it cannot be recognized.  I leave these pictures to be considered.

This observation area is accessible on a flat slope from the park behind it.  I would propose that a giant mound be built to cover the Gateway Geiser and the cheap observation platform and that a real observation space be built on top of it.  Indeed, I did say mound.  Like this mound.

St. Louis locals know, this is Monk's Mound.  It is very simple.  Make a big mound, and give Bob Cassilly an amount of money equal to what was spent on the nonsense that is currently occupying the spot.

After this, be sure to make bike and pedestrian connections to the arch grounds and proper riverfront trails on both sides of the river from Alton to Kimmswick.

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This post relates to the Arch Grounds.