Local Politics at Work: Celebrating Cycling in St. Louis

24th Ward Alderman Scott Ogilvie

Around 30 people gathered this past Friday in the new bike shop Spoked in the rapidly changing Cherokee neighborhood. There were two half kegs of Civil Life beer on ice and free pizza from the wine shop next door. One wall is painted a bright, invigorating orange and the silvered tin ceiling looms overhead above bike rims hung up high. I met up with several friends and ran into others I knew from Gateway Greening and CityArchRiver who, like me, had come to bond over cycling, hear about new bike infrastructure and, yes, drink the free beer.

My mom was visiting too, and was by far the oldest person in the room. But she shared stories of biking in Boston almost 40 years ago and how she knew it was too cold to bike to work that day if her nose hairs froze on the way to the bike shed behind her apartment. Everyone was welcome.

Spoked was hosting a happy hour principally to celebrate the huge success of painting buffered bike lanes on Tower Grove Avenue ahead of the closure of the largest north-south thoroughfare in the city, which will divert traffic to Tower Grove and other detours—this effectively preserves my only route for cycling to work.

Scott Ogilvie , the alderman for the 24th ward and an avid cyclist, leapt up on the counter to welcome everyone and entreat us to be active advocates for biking in St. Louis. He introduced Matt Wyczalkowski, the man who led the fight to stripe Tower Grove before the Kingshighway closure. Matt told us how he had used Tower Grove to commute to Washington University for years and felt passionate about this short mile that is so crucial to bike commuters in the city.

Matt Wyczalkowski

When he learned that the planned bike lanes would be postponed until after the construction to allow more car traffic to use the route—essentially closing the street to all but the most diehard cyclists—he gathered a coalition of biking advocates and neighborhood associations. Together they held votes that convinced my alderman, Stephen Conway of the 8th ward, to expedite the bike lanes. It was done days later. Without Matt's intervention, Conway was prepared to let the planned striping lapse for two more years. At the behest of his constituents, persuaded by Matt, this important route is maintained.

I owe Matt two years worth of my biking commute: hundreds of hours worth of both pleasant and difficult exercise that starts and ends my working day.

Matt took questions and I asked him, "What's next for you?" His response was to ask me the same, and to point out how focused determination on a finite problem can lead to real results. His pet project was expediting bike lanes on a short stretch of his local street. If each of us in the room that day found our own tractable issue and pursued it by building coalitions of neighbors and friends, we could accomplish the same.

Rhonda Smythe

Rhonda Smythe, until recently the policy and advocacy manager at Trailnet, closed out the speeches by outlining her goal of including more people in the cycling community by reducing the barriers to biking. Outside of the spandex-wearing road cyclists, Rhonda wanted to get people who bike once a month to start biking four times a month. By creating low-speed, low-traffic routes through neighborhoods, she wanted to encourage families to bike for more of their short trips.

In my former neighborhood of Skinker-DeBaliviere, this takes the form of the Des Peres bicycle boulevard that improves through-access for cyclists over cars and has highly-visible markings to encourage more relaxed biking.

The owners of Spoked, Matt and Shane, also encouraged us to be advocates mainly by getting on our bikes and riding. Improving the visibility of the cycling community, they said, attracts the attention of neighbors and local leaders so they can internalize how vital it is for our city.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this event became the highlight of my week and a resounding lesson in the power of local politics that, I believe, lifted up everyone in attendance and left us all feeling energized and ready to act, alone and together, to make our home better.

Having an Impact: The Appeal of Mid-sized Cities to Millennials

“There is a vibrant bar and restaurant scene, social sports leagues through which hundreds of young people get together to play kickball and other games, even a monthly bike ride – sponsored by a group working to make [the city] less car dependent – in which participants dress up in costume and ride through the city.”

I thought I was reading about St. Louis and wanted to look up this monthly cycling event that sounded like the Naked Bike Ride but more frequent. The city in question is not Portland, either, but rather Baltimore. In a profile of “The New ‘Cool’ Cities for Millennials,” The Christian Science Monitor uses Baltimore as the example of a series of infamously rundown, increasingly vibrant and even hip urban centers that increasingly draw the urban Millennial generation. Cleveland. Detroit. Nashville. St. Louis. Mid-sized cities with cheap rent, storied histories, and surprising economic opportunities for a generation pummeled by the Great Recession but still searching for places to make their mark.

And although New York, San Francisco, and other metropolises draw the lion’s share of young, educated adults, these other, often overlooked cities are beginning to see rapid increases in these populations. Even as St. Louis has continued a six-decade population death spiral, the number of 25-to-34-year-olds with a college degree near the urban core has more than doubled, rising 138% from 2000 to 2010, the largest such surge in the country. Although this relative increase obscures absolute changes, St. Louis attracted more than half the demographic increase Seattle did over this same period (4,227 versus 8,209). St. Louis and other struggling cities have far to go, but they are going, and changing faster than many would have anticipated just a few years ago.

In St. Louis, Downtown, Midtown and other central corridor neighborhoods were the only ones to gain residents from 2000 to 2010, when the city overall saw an 8% drop in population, perhaps a bellwether of a turning tide in the exodus from the city center. These neighborhoods include startup incubators like T-REX and Cortex, revitalized loft apartments, and convenient public transit.

And St. Louis is the fastest-growing city for new technology jobs. ArchGrants, founded in 2011, provides non-equity funding to tech startups—as long as they remain in or move to St. Louis. LaunchCode, which rapidly trains new programmers and places them at area businesses, was recently lauded by President Obama for its successes and is expanding nationally. Tech may not be sufficient to power the city’s economy, but St. Louis’ low cost of living and access to capital make it a top place for starting other businesses as well. 

Although demographers cannot untangle the economic causes from the cultural behind the Millennial move toward cities, The Christian Science Monitor and other sources have identified a self-reported interest in dense, walkable, community-oriented neighborhoods over suburban sprawl among the young. The people profiled in the CSM piece—employees at tech startups and nonprofits—claimed Baltimore as a city where they could have an impact, where a vibrant urban lifestyle coincided with a small enough community to feel absorbed, not “carried along”.

St. Louis offers the same opportunities to contribute to a quirky, very much in progress revitalization of the city. Upstart politicians can win by a mere 90 votes against an entrenched incumbent; individuals can ensure that local representatives listen to their constituents about critical bike infrastructure projects; shuttered corner businesses can be reopened to create a new community space; a brand new brewery can be self-funded.

As a full-time graduate student, I can still find a way to contribute to outreach to the community gardening scene in St. Louis where other cities, San Francisco for example, might have those kinds of niches saturated by individuals who can commit more fully to single projects. In many areas of this city, there is both a need and room for interested individuals and small groups to get their hands dirty in making their communities better—the results are obvious, the actions of individuals visible.

Demographers quibble over whether the Millennial move toward cities is stable, or whether family life, schools, and age will push us back out to the suburbs in the next decade or two. Time will tell. But it may be that the economic forces that favor urban centers only reinforce an intentional return to lively, dense cities. And that St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland or Detroit offer the more civic-minded—and more financially constrained—of our generation an opportunity to help forge the cities we will inhabit for decades to come. 

The Limits of the DOJ Ferguson Report in a Fractured Region

The Department of Justice released the findings of its investigation into civil rights abuses in Ferguson this week. The report is unsparing in its indictment of intentional racial bias within the police department and city government, and the unequal application of the law on black residents without cause. Analysis by people familiar with the DOJ’s involvement with other police forces suggests that the DOJ will forcefully compel their suggested changes, or dissolve the police department entirely.

As striking as this report is—and as clear as it is to dispel the myth that race is not a factor—its effects are inherently limited. Ferguson is home to only 21,000 people, one of 90 municipalities in St. Louis County, which has a total population greater than one million. The independent City of St. Louis houses another 320,000 residents, more than half of whom are non-white. The DOJ may reform the Ferguson police department into an exemplary force, or dissolve it altogether and allow the St. Louis County police to patrol the town. Neither will sufficiently address the widespread problems facing the St. Louis region or the country as a whole.

St. Louis is fragmented, divided intentionally over decades into white and black, rich and poor. Many other cities are similarly fractured. Forceful reform of a single police department, representing barely one percent of the region’s population, is nearly meaningless. The divisions that have contributed to St. Louis’ problems must be addressed alongside raking the Ferguson police department over the coals. Unnecessary police forces should be dissolved, and many of their cities absorbed into larger municipalities. The City of St. Louis and the County should be reunited in order to work together, not compete. 

Only a region so strengthened will be poised to lead the nation in meaningful reforms. Only if we heal these longstanding divisions can we turn a conversation into action. Bust open Ferguson, break it down and build it up into a city and a police force that serves its residents proudly and well. But to stop at Ferguson would fail St. Louis to an extent we cannot afford. 

Reaching Across the Gap with Curiosity

"I think there is nothing so exciting as listening to someone think on the radio." — Jad Abumrad

On Wednesday, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich of Radiolab fame presented at Washington University’s first Ampersand Week, a series of events celebrating the ‘and’ of Arts and Sciences, or the value of liberal arts education over exclusive specialization. A perfect choice for such a purpose, Radiolab draws on the composing background of Jad and the inventive science journalism of Robert to explore scientific topics with a humanistic lens. The event took place in Graham Chapel, the pews filled with students, faculty, staff, and the public for the free event.

I was not sure what this presentation would entail. Would they present a live version of Radiolab? Or just introduce a series of archived podcast segments? The experience was somewhere between those two. Relying on existing tape, Jad and Robert discussed the production of Radiolab, the task of distilling technical knowledge from experts for a lay audience, and the musicality and intimacy of radio over other mediums.

Jad opened by acknowledging his mother, sitting in the front row, an obesity researcher here at Washington University, a professor in my program no less. I had no idea. On the large screen behind them, Jad put up a picture of his mother’s protein, what she studies every day, which helps bring fats into the cell. In fact, Jad grew up in a scientific home, with a medical doctor father and scientist mother, an environment that clearly influences his work to bridge the sciences and the arts.

The first segment began by peeling back the curtain on how a formal interview with a scientist becomes radio drama. Robert spoke with Cynthia Kenyon, a C. elegans researcher at UCSF, about two genes that control aging in the tiny worms. One is a hormone receptor, which, when activated, represses the activity of a transcription factor. When the transcription factor is allowed to function, it controls the expression of many separate genes that work together to increase the lifespan of the worms several fold. Jad played the unedited interview, demonstrating how even a media-savvy researcher stumbled to translate the molecular action of genes into something a non-scientist could grasp, and even care about. It was awkward and difficult to keep track of.

 

But as Jad pointed out, Cynthia’s explanation naturally gravitated to exciting, narrative verbs. Spring. Inhibit. Leap into action. The nouns suffered from alphabet soup—scientists rely heavily on acronyms and jargon for naming genes—and specialized phrases. Receptor. Transcription factor. DAF-2. Radiolab’s job, then, was what Jad called “noun replacement therapy.” Keep the substance, but swap technical language with vernacular.

The translated version: The Grim Reaper Gene (hormone receptor) cue evil laugh battles it out with the Fountain of Youth Gene (transcription factor) cue toddler giggles for control of the aging process. Beat up on the Grim Reaper (mutate it) painful groans and the baby is free to keep cells, and the animal, youthful, blowing spit bubbles as it does.

To some scientists, this kind of translation may seem simplistic. (Cynthia produced the gene nicknames, it was not a liberty taken by Radiolab.) Robert even phrased it as having to ask, “How stupid do you want to be?” Always there is a trade-off between accuracy and understandability. Always. “You’re somehow trying to find a way to stay in the middle,” Robert said. Choosing that point, and then finding that point, is the challenge a show like Radiolab contends with for every topic. But to avoid any kind of simplifying is to wall off scientific research to the ivory tower, something far more damaging than “noun replacement therapy.”

This translation is not foreign to most of us, maybe just lost. Jad recalled trying to bridge the gap with his mom to explain her work when he was a kid, dinner plates standing in for cells and the salt shaker for her protein, the iterative process of trying to get closer to the truth one curious question after another. Our interest in understanding something new, something difficult, is dampened by a culture that discourages looking stupid, but it can be encouraged as well. Jad and Robert try to use the power of stupid questions asked with genuine curiosity to recapture that sense of wonder. “Yes, but why?”

Robert said that if they approach a scientist with sincere curiosity, about 60 percent will spend the time to tell them what they need to know. I wish that number were higher, but I am surprised it is that high. I think they may have a self-selecting group of scientists more inclined to work with the media than most. But I could not say for sure.

Beyond translation, the hour-long presentation delved into the frenetic production of the show, with layers of music and noise and swirling audio energy, a style that aims for a composer’s musicality and an authentic struggle for new knowledge. As a technically naïve but huge fan of radio, I appreciated seeing the depth of production at the software level that goes into making one of my favorite shows. Although hard to miss in a show like Radiolab, I know that most audio production is successful when it goes unnoticed, but it is good to be reminded of the work that goes into these programs.

The floor open to questions, I waited in line at the mic to ask: How can scientists help reach back out to the journalists, or the public, who have reached toward us to help bridge these gaps? I did not get an answer to my question, but I did get a good answer to a good question.

Robert instead answered the why. Why should scientists care about communicating their work? He couched it in militaristic, epic terms—scientific inquiry is the product of intellectual freedom, a resource that is constantly endangered. To tell a story of the science we do is an enchantment, one that can draw people in and convince them that the freedom required for this kind of work is worth demanding and worth preserving. No less than the ability to perform honest work is at stake in the communication of our research.

Jad again put on screen the structure of his mother’s protein, her life’s work, to help illustrate his partner’s answer on the value of free inquiry. He then answered a question closer to my own. “The story of science is in most cases the story of ceaseless failure, which is really the story of everyone who walks the earth,” he said. Tell that human story of vulnerability, confusion, failure, and occasional bright points of insight and success, and anyone can be reached.