Introduction

When the US Census Bureau released the 2010 Missouri census results in February, 2011, St. Louis city officials, ward aldermen and community leaders were shocked. The city has been losing population steadily since the 1950’s, but in the last decade St. Louis, like many other post-industrial cities in the Rust Belt, had been pushing an ambitious agenda of growth and development, and many believed that the city was finally on the upswing. But the 2010 census recorded the city’s lowest population in 140 years; after all the public investment and tax incentives intended to spur economic growth, the population of St Louis has fallen to about where it stood just after the Civil War, at 319,294 (Moore, 2011).

The purpose of this exhibit is to examine where St. Louis has been, and where it might be going. In many ways modern St. Louis still lives with the ramifications of national and state trends dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries. A frozen city-boundary disallowing annexation, an industrial shipping base destined for early obsolescence and a longstanding history of institutional racism have all contributed to the struggles of decline the city now faces. But in the last decade the city has also launched new strategies for dealing with its decline.