Filmed on Sunday, April 23, 2023, I drive around the city East St. Louis, Illinois to see what's going on.
East St. Louis is directly across the Mississippi River from Downtown St. Louis, Missouri and the Gateway Arch National Park.
Once a bustling industrial center, East St. Louis was severely affected by the loss of jobs due to industrial restructuring during the second half of the 20th century.
In 1950, East St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in Illinois when its population peaked at 82,366. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 18,469, less than one-quarter of the 1950 census and a decline of almost one third since 2010.
Through the 1950s and later, the city's musicians were an integral creative force in blues, rock and roll and jazz. Some left and achieved national recognition, such as Ike & Tina Turner. The jazz great Miles Davis was born in nearby Alton and grew up in East St. Louis.
As a number of local factories began to close because of changes in industry, the railroad and meatpacking industries also were cutting back and moving jobs out of the region. This led to a precipitous loss of working and middle-class jobs. The city's financial conditions deteriorated.
More businesses closed as workers left the area to seek jobs in other regions, and street gangs appeared in the city's neighborhoods. Like other cities with endemic problems by the 1960s, violence added to residential mistrust and adversely affected the downtown retail base and the city's income.
Middle-class citizens continued to leave the city. People who could get jobs moved to places with work and a decent quality of life. Lacking sufficient tax revenues, the city cut back on maintenance, sewers failed, and garbage pickup ceased. Police cars and radios stopped working. The East St. Louis Fire Department went on strike in the 1970s.
Structure fires destroyed such a significant number of consecutive blocks that much of the post-Armageddon film Escape from New York was filmed in East St. Louis.
In 1990 the state legislature approved riverboat gambling in an effort to increase state revenues. The opening of the Casino Queen riverboat casino generated the first new source of income for the city in nearly 30 years.
Because of depopulation, the city has many abandoned properties and extensive urban blight. Sections of "urban prairie" can be found where vacant buildings were demolished and whole blocks have become overgrown with vegetation.
Much of the territory surrounding the city remains undeveloped, bypassed by developers who chose more affluent suburban areas. Many old, "inner city" neighborhoods abut large swaths of corn and soybean fields or otherwise vacant land. In addition to agricultural uses, a number of truck stops, strip clubs, and semi-rural businesses surround blighted areas in the city.
A 2007 study in the journal Homicide Studies noted that "East St. Louis has consistently experienced a high violent crime rate and continues to report a substantial number of annual homicides."
In 2013, the per capita homicide rate in East St. Louis was about 18 times the national average, and had the highest homicide rate of any city in the United States.
As of the census of 2000, the racial makeup of the city was 97.74% Black or African-American, 1.23% White, 0.19% Native American, 0.08% Asian-American, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 0.19% from other races, and 0.55% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.73% of the population.
The per capita income for the city was $11,169. About 31.8% of families and 35.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 48.6% of those under the age of 18 and 25.2% of those ages 65 and older. #driving #travel #drivingtour