Journal article
Zoned Out: Creve Coeur, Malcolm Terrace, and the Struggle for Affordable Housing in the St. Louis Suburbs
Journal of affordable housing & community development law, Vol.30(3), pp.403-436
02/05/2022
Abstract
Across the last century, residential development on the urban fringe, deeply subsidized by federal policy, abetted generations of "white flight" and sorted urban populations-by race and class-into durably segregated neighborhoods, subdivisions, and municipalities.1 Exclusion was sustained, across this history, by private discrimination (and violence) and by a succession of legal instruments and public policies, including race-restrictive deed covenants, gerrymandered municipal and school district boundaries, uneven service provision, public housing, and land use zoning.2 Such exclusion was legally and politically nimble; as civil rights jurisprudence closed off one mechanism of segregation, others quickly took their place.3 And such mechanisms reinforced one another: the layering of municipal boundaries, school district boundaries, and exclusive zoning created spatial concentrations of both poverty and wealth, advantage and disadvantage.4 In Greater St. Louis (as elsewhere), the suburban imperative was evident in the pattern of residential development that fanned out from the central city in the decades following World War II. Over the next decade (through 1959), Creve Coeur added 56 new subdivisions and almost 1700 residential parcels; between 1959 and 1969, it added another 76 subdivisions and over 900 residential parcels.6 All of this new development was premised on the large-lot single-family zoning that made Creve Coeur (and its suburban neighbors) a "refuge" from the City of St Louis and its inner suburbs. In the seven decades since, the residents of Malcolm Terrace and the City of Creve Coeur have waged a quiet battle over affordable housing, basic municipal services, and the politics of local zoning. Meacham Park and Elmwood Park offered inexpensive lots and rail access to St. Louis, and some refuge from the City's architecture of segregation and, for these reasons, developed as African American enclaves.10 In the next few years, Meacham added two more subdivisions to his local portfolio, both on rail lines running from St. Louis into South St. Louis County: West End Park, in what is now Frontenac, Missouri; and Malcolm Terrace, in what is now Creve Coeur, Missouri.11 Malcolm Terrace was platted on a 52.5-acre plot of land outside of St. Louis City, on the Missouri Pacific Railway Line (see Map 1).
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Zoned Out: Creve Coeur, Malcolm Terrace, and the Struggle for Affordable Housing in the St. Louis Suburbs
- Creators
- Kennedy GardnerColin Gordon
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of affordable housing & community development law, Vol.30(3), pp.403-436
- ISSN
- 1084-2268
- eISSN
- 2163-0305
- Publisher
- American Bar Association
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 02/05/2022
- Academic Unit
- History; Public Policy Center (Archive)
- Record Identifier
- 9984318360302771
Metrics
226 Record Views