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Disparities In St. Louis City

Decent Essays

A number of reports from the Saint Louis Globe-Democrat and Saint Louis Post-Dispatch showed that St. Louis city, specifically the areas near Lafayette Park, were struggling (Wiitsruck 2015). According to “The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, “The long delay [in building the Distributor] has caused the neighborhood to deteriorate.” Many homeowners were speculating on the City buying their property from them for the use of the expressway; now property values were plummeting as the threat of development dissuaded new buyers from purchasing homes.” (Wittstruck 2015). In addition to failing housing markets near the proposed Distributor, there were delays in other highways and an increase in racial and political tensions (Wittstruck 2015). One individual argued, “this [expressway] passes through the heart of the black area all the way… the reason they chose this route is because the land is cheaper. But nobody cares what this may do to us. How many more people is this going to uproot? (Wittstruck 2015). An important note is at the time of these tensions, racial tensions were present in all of the United States as two champions of racial equality, Martin …show more content…

The advantages listed provided two main advantages to the University City area, those advantages include: a decrease in travel time and traffic congestion relief (Lovelace 1952, 2-3). Consequently, the expressway would have created six major disadvantages to University City (Lovelace 1952, 3). The disadvantages include: depreciating the nearby residential area greatly, depreciate the Delmar business district, local traffic issues, unreasonable costs, removal of the street car system in University city and increase traffic complications in downtown St. Louis” (Lovelace 1952,

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