The drop so far has been small—an estimated 262 people over the past two years. The city’s rate of decline has lessened, as has the rate of population growth in St. Charles County. Regional stagnation has exposed many other civic issues, such as heavy segregation and jurisdictional fragmentation. Is the City of St. Louis to become a hamlet of empty nesters and young professionals without children? And the rhetoric of growth is a mismatch with reality. Rainford says his quote was meant to address the estimated decline not being statistically significant. In the City of St. Louis, we’re apparently no longer allowed to say that further population decline is bad news. How is that trend going to change? Last decade, investment is some parts of the city created the illusion of growth. The projected savings were almost certainly a mirage. In the City of St. Louis, we’re apparently no longer allowed to say that further population decline is bad news. The Post-Dispatch reports Rainford as “convinced that once the housing market gets back on its feet, the influx of empty nesters who were making their way into the city from the suburbs will begin again.” Yet whatever influx may have been happening—and there certainly are people seeking a more urban lifestyle in St. Louis—was more than offset by those leaving. St. Louis Wants Judges Thinking Beyond Cash Bail, To St. Louis Municipal Bank Accounts, Black Lives Matter, Hackathon Finds Solutions to Food Insecurity. The ‘Airbnb for Returning Citizens’ Gives People More Than Just a Second Chance. We won’t have another official count until 2020, but one computer program estimates a bigger loss: 6,000 since 2010. And unlike mergers in Indianapolis and Nashville, which happened more than 50 years ago, this plan would not combine an older city with growing suburbs, but rather, join an older city to suburbs that are themselves old and stagnant. Nevertheless, merger talk continues. While state and federal investigations found the shooting justified, the resulting attention revealed many serious problems with how St. Louis suburbs were conducting business. A new book argues that modern suburban development is a financial loser for some communities. This piece originally appeared on nextSTL. We’re very nearly at that point now, aren’t we? If initial estimates are to be believed, it appears that St. Louis is in for another decade of population loss. Will you support us in finding the news and information they need? TWA was acquired by American Airlines, which eliminated its hub in St. Louis. New charter schools continue to open, giving parents more options. “It just is,” Jeff Rainford, chief of staff for Mayor Francis Slay told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The county’s problems blew up in Ferguson in 2014, where the police shooting of Michael Brown led to weeks of unrest. To the extent that new suburban growth is occurring in St. Louis, it’s farther out, in places like St. Charles County. “For a long time, our growth motored along based on our growth outward, the sprawl farther into the county,” Powers told the Post-Dispatch. Don’t like them? Unlike in corporate mergers, in government combinations municipal employees rarely lose their jobs or take pay cuts. Many observers believe that reorganizing local government is necessary. While a merger would not be a silver bullet, it might disrupt the status quo in a way that opens new possibilities.