Citizen Space
Eve Blau, Heather Woofter, Michael Allen
This project examines the role of government influence on the formation and division of public spaces within St. Louis. The city has a longstanding history of government intervention and disinvestment leading to inequity and challenges in sponsoring economic growth while respectfully considering local citizenry potential. Our Divided City submission proposed a seminar at Washington University in St. Louis followed by publication of our analysis on contemporary conditions and historical perspectives. A copy of the seminar’s syllabus is available here.
We collected information and examined the evolving plans of our local and national government in the north St. Louis neighborhood of St. Louis Place, we also gathered documentation of existing ownership and citizen groups active in the area. Eve Blau visited several times during the semester in order to focus our research on the exploration of political infrastructures and ideologies that shape the urban fabric. This dialogue contributes to the complex narrative of inequality, segregation and zones of division that continue to underlie north side conditions. The topic is both contemporary and historical and involves both large-scale urban projects (the National Geospatial Agency, Pruitt-Igoe,) and work programs (Tech Hire*, WPA).
We plan to conduct research at the St. Louis based NPRC (National Personnel Records Center), the National Archive in Washington D.C. and Missouri Historical agencies, in addition to conducting local fieldwork. We anticipate offering this course to graduate and undergraduate students of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, as well as students from Arts and Sciences.
The National Geospatial Agency and Pruitt-Igoe
The National Geospatial Agency plans to expand. The Agency is currently located opposite Anheuser-Busch and adjacent to the Mississippi River in the Kosciusko neighborhood and 7th Ward of St. Louis. The federal government is considering several sites for the new facilities, with two candidates dominating the field–Pruitt-Igoe, a pivotal urban site in St. Louis, and Andrews Air Force base, a suburban site in Illinois. Both states are providing incentives to encourage the NGA to move to their area. St. Louis stands to loose approximately 3,000 jobs and an estimated 2.4 million dollars in annual revenue if the facility moves out of state. Today, however, high security facilities such as the NGA are rarely located in urban locations. The security requirements and sensitive nature of the work, combined with a massive footprint, encourage a remote campus-like atmosphere with heavy infrastructure for traffic and growth. The move to Pruitt-Igoe seems counterintuitive; the NGA facility is too large to fit on the footprint of Pruitt-Igoe and would need to claim an additional 16 blocks to the north of the site.
Consider also the current condition of Pruitt-Igoe and the surrounding North St. Louis neighborhoods. The federal and local government actions that exacerbated segregation in North St. Louis in the mid-twentieth century are well documented. The abandoned downtown site in St. Louis mythologizes the failings of social housing in the 1960s, with existing neighborhoods emblematic of ongoing social divides. Katherine Bristol writes in the Pruitt-Igoe Myth about the symbolic death of modern architecture, and the recent film of the same title produced by Paul Fehler (directed by Chad Freidrichs) tells personal stories of residents and police officers, and also describes the optimistic planning and subsequent disinvestment in the first federally subsidized housing project.
Michael Allen, St. Louis historian and co-author of the 2012 Pruitt-Igoe design competition, The Unmentioned Modern Landscape, recognizes the significant historical buildings and neighborhoods that were originally demolished through the St. Louis Land Clearance and Redevelopment Authority. In a recent move (February 2015), the city of St. Louis initiated and passed an eminent domain bill to claim property adjacent to the Pruitt-Igoe site in the 3rd and 5th Wards. While the Board of Aldermen will need to approve each property under review for eminent domain, this bill could dramatically affect an area whose residents would like to see a continuation of residential zoning but have little economic power to be heard.
Government buildings like the National Geospatial Intelligence Center of the NGA represent critical cultural spaces tied obliquely to civic space. Yet the design of these spaces negates the possibility of public interaction, creating an island between the interior and freely accessed environments. At a time when individual identity and equality are in crisis, large public agencies are also at risk of separating themselves from the people they are sworn to protect. We are facing a dislocation between individuals and agencies. The greatest risk to national security may arguably be inequity and ruptures from within our community.
Findings from Course Materials
The students examined a series of different political and infrastructural narratives surrounding the NGA move to Cass Avenue, north of Pruitt-Igoe.
One group examined the relocation of citizens impacted by the NGA development. Through data and interviews, students absorbed the qualitative human impact, and mapped dispersal of people to their new addresses in an attempt to better understand family loss and available resources for relocation. While almost all vacancy was well established prior to the course of our study, the students developed an understanding of the personal stories highlighting the difficulty of abandoning a neighborhood that for some, represent multi-generation homes. This part of the students’ investigation was unveiled through site tours coupled with reading personal narratives and interviews. They were present to document the final closing of Grace Baptist Church, once Keller’s Supermarket and built in 1956. Utility demolition was already underway in other parts of the site as Reverend Jonathan Davis and others removed the pews and organ from their home of forty-five years. This prompted an examination of the mechanisms behind the eminent domain action, the general disinvestment in adjacent property, and the political narrative that made this urban plan possible. Political action was taken through Federal policy, Missouri State policy, St. Louis City and County policy, and the Mayor’s appeal to the NGA in the Next NGA West Briefing Book that included extraordinary support from institutions like the NAACP and Washington University.
Examples of Federal policy include the Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Policies Act, the Federal Administration community-based initiatives including Promise Zones, Strong Cities, Strong Communities, and the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative: Choice Neighborhoods. The Missouri State policies supported the project through the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Law (revised August 2016). St. Louis City and County action included Resolution No. 72 (City of St. Louis Board of Aldermen requesting the NGA to keep jobs in St. Louis by moving north of Pruitt Igoe), the Blighting Study and Redevelopment Plan for the Cass Ave., Jefferson Ave., Parnell St., Montgomery St., North 22nd Redevelopment Area, the Board Bill No. 263FS, City of St. Louis Ordinance No. 69977 (approving the redevelopment plan), and the Resolution No. 142AA, Authorizing LCRA Acquisition of Property Under Ordinance 69977 (authorizing eminent domain proceedings).
Another Citizen Space group looked at the National Geospatial Agency operation to better understand the incentives, benefits and challenges of moving the Agency from their home at Arsenal Street, to their new site off Cass Avenue. They interviewed NGA representative Jim Mohan, visited NGA geospatial events occurring in Cortex to recruit new talent to their industry, attended local citizen events organized through Project Connect, and examined the structure of the NGA as part of government institutions working in military intelligence, including their social impact in sharing fluid information on the environment used in many disaster relief efforts. In addition to attempting to document a well-hidden organization, the students wanted to better understand the nuances and differences surrounding the NGA acquisition by interviewing leaders in the community and comparing their understanding of the process. They assembled narratives from interviews and public statements that included perspectives from Gustavo Rendon (resident), Julia Collins (spokeswoman for NGA), Otis Williams (Director of St. Louis Development Corporation), Jim Mohan (representative and historian at NGA), Hank Webber (Executive Vice Chancellor at Washington University and President of Cortex), Mayor Francis Slay (St. Louis City mayor), Antonio French (Alderman), Larry Chapman (resident), Sheila Rendon (resident), Robert Green (resident), Jessica Payne (Old North St. Louis Restoration Group). Their comparative assembly of these texts reveals different planning visions for NGA’s future home, and different points of view regarding the impact this move will have on the neighborhood and St. Louis at large.
The class also examined the Northside Regeneration plans, shifting programmatic goals for the area, and an account of Paul McKee’s political action and investment in the area. Students created a series of maps documenting different phases of planning and strategic land use (2009-2016), TIF districts and Tax Abatement zones, and a timeline indicating how events unfolded as well as future benchmarks (2003-2020). The narrative includes documenting partnerships between Northside Regeneration St. Louis, Telesis Corporation, Civitas, Project Connect and real estate development team CRG. Students in this group also examined race, gender and income statistics to better understand populations affected by these various plans. The area surrounding the NGA site contains a small number of businesses. As part of our research on the ecology of this part of the city, we examined industries including Trojan Iron Works, Sensient Colors, Hopmann Cornice Company, Home Improvement Outlet and Faultless Healthcare Linen. These companies varied between family-owned with less than a million dollars in annual revenue to worldwide corporations with 470 billion dollars in annual revenue.
Lastly, students examined Cortex Innovation Community, the new technology corridor located in the Central West End and Forest Park Southeast. This development was cited as a counter-example of planning techniques and neighborhood participation found in the NGA move to the North side. Cortex aims to attract a population of technology expertise (an innovation hub) and provide economic stimulus to the city, similar to the NGA. To better understand the structure by which this complex project was constructed, students outlined the Board of Directors structure, Cortex partnerships, timelines and building and grounds initiatives. The key narratives were: bringing jobs to St. Louis, St. Louis’ competitive edge in a global market and principles of inclusion in neighborhood expansion. With a projected 2.5 billion dollar investment, 4.5 million square feet of space, and 12,000 anticipated jobs, part of the role of Cortex lies in transitioning St. Louis from a manufacturing economy to one of intellectual property. The NGA hopes to create connections with Cortex on public unclassified projects, and direct jobs from the local University populations.
Through the course of this seminar we scratched the wide surface of a complex narrative, revealing ambition and optimism paralleled with a story of division and forgotten populations. Course work supports this project’s assumption that the NGA site’s history is an opening to larger structural patterns in federal urban policy. This NGA relocation project embodies relocation patterns found in the historical research of authors such as Colin Gordon and the history of public housing policies as described by Edward Goetz. Yet the NGA site’s intersection with federal surveillance and security policy transcends much published research that examines federal political impact on urbanism since World War II, which largely has left untreated the less visible interventions occurring today. The congruent local and federal political apparatuses demonstrate a distinct contemporary era in which federal funds are no longer causal in reshaping cities, because of neoliberal dismantling of centralized national policy and earlier urban resistance to large-scale plans. The new relationship of available federal funds and land uses to local policies emergent, and this project could provide a strong frame for examination of epochal strategies and constraints. In future research we hope to better clarify these divisions and make our findings visible through exhibition and publication.
Eve Blau is an adjunct professor of the History and Theory of Urban Form and Design at Harvard University.
Heather Woofter is professor of Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis.
Michael Allen is the University College coordinator in American Culture Studies Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and the director of the Preservation Research Office.