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St. Louis need to redevelop their River front to make it a true river city. Access to the river front and recreational activities on river are very limited
St Louis is a great city with a lot to offer. HOWEVER. New Orleans vs any city is never really a contest, is it? New Orleans (for those who care to look beyond Bourbon St) is a national treasure. It is a place so wholly authentic and soulful and irreplaceable and it is without equal.
St. Louis is a fine city. I visited once and enjoyed my brief stay. However, IMO New Orleans runs away with this one. New Orleans is one of the most culturally rich cities in the entire country. Beautiful architecture, lively music, and wonderful food.
St. Louis is significantly larger, but the only thing I can think of that it has that is missing from New Orleans is major league baseball.
Of the two, I would rather visit New Orleans and I would rather live in New Orleans.
depends on what you're voting for. I think the STL metro area is better to live in, but New Orleans metro area is better to visit. I know a lot of people flock there to party and have a good time, but how many of those people actually want to live there?..
I can't say I see what the hype about St. Louis is at all. I recently spent four days there and explored Downtown and a number of the adjacent and outer neighborhoods. It was a fine city, as someone earlier said, but nothing really stuck out about it. Had I not been there to visit friends, I wouldve been ready to leave after a couple of days. Downtown is really not impressive at all - I'd say cities like Portland (OR) and Milwaukee have better downtowns, but some of the nearby neighborhoods, particularly Soulard, have some cool areas. I don't know, maybe because I had just come from Chicago - which is one of my favorite cities in the world - but St. Louis was pretty underwhelming.
Meanwhile, New Orleans is a truly amazing place for so many reasons. Great food, architecture, cocktail culture, just overall vibe - it is a truly special place. Along with San Francisco, it is probably the most distinct American city.
I'm not really sure why people on this forum constantly equate blandness with being a better place to live.
It's all personal opinion. I don't think St. Louis is bland at all. To me, bland describes most Sunbelt cities; new, not much character or unique architecture. St. Louis is the exact opposite. It's old, it has loads of nice architecture and unique neighborhoods. Even many of the suburbs have character.
New Orleans obviously wins in the architecture & entertainment categories, so I won't get into those. But to me, Greater St. Louis is a better place to live because:
-It's bigger, and therefore has more amenities, but it's not too big. There's also a ton of free stuff. Practically this whole park is free (including the zoo, art museum, history museum, science center, etc)
-I like that the climate includes 4 distinct, equal seasons. It's makes things more interesting. If you're getting tired of the season you're in, another one is coming soon enough.
-The metro crime rate is much lower. From the 2009 metro area crime rankings, the New Orleans metro area ranked 5th for crime, Greater St. Louis ranked 103rd. http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2009...9_Rank_Rev.pdf I used 2009 because both St. Louis & New Orleans had no data on the 2010 list.
-The population of Greater St. Louis continues to grow, while the metro area population for New Orleans continues to decrease. While I wouldn't want to live in a metro that's full of transplants (like the Sunbelt) I also wouldn't want to live in a metro that is losing population.
-St. Louis has more than twice the density of New Orleans, so it has more of an urban, city-feel. This even spills over into neighboring suburbs. So you have suburbs that are still very urban:
-The topography is interesting to me because I'm from Memphis where it's very flat. I like that the Ozarks start just outside the city. Many of the suburbs are in the Ozarks. St. Louis could market itself as a gateway to the outdoors, but it doesn't. Some areas in St. Louis County:
View from our Window this morning | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/hexblock/307294181/in/set-72157594394807710 - broken link)
All sizes | Six Flags, St. Louis | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/christykilgorehadley/2826657984/sizes/z/in/photostream/ - broken link)
No, it's not mountainous, but when you come from a flat place like Memphis, it's really nice to see. Living in St. Louis, you can have a nice balance of urban life and outdoors life.
So those are some of the reasons why I'd personally rather live in St. Louis. In case you were wondering.
anyone who calls st. louis "bland" has simply never visited st. louis. the entire city is full of dense 19th century red brick buildings that resemble cities of the east coast and in some ways even europe.
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