Still debating a move to STL.. single software engineer. (St. Louis: 2009, technology jobs)

[arch_genesis]

*cough*Drivel.*cough* *cough* wtf does ice cream have to do w/ cities *cough*

[Eyeam]

Do you need some cough medicine? What does all that coughing have to do with you asking a question? Maybe you have a cold. If you're not feeling well, at least I could understand why a simple analogy (the ice cream) went right over your head.

[VideoEngineerAJS]

St. Louis is indeed a dense city. From my experience, even the entire metro area is pretty dense. I've lived in the Boston metro (Nashua, NH) and it is really dense also, but I've also lived in the Columbus and Dayton, OH and Syracuse, NY metros and St. Louis is a small city in terms of land coverage only.

I love Columbus, but the metro area is really spread out and it can take awhile to get across town even if there isn't traffic. Now that helps a little when it comes to traffic and that's why Columbus traffic is a breeze compared to Boston traffic.

Anyway, back to the main topic. I'm not a software engineer, but I just received a position for a Web Development Analyst in St. Louis and they are offering me $45,000 a year and I've only been out of school since June 2007, so I think it depends on the company. Back here in the Ohio and Northern Kentucky area, I was lucky to find anything over $35,000. I actually went to an interview in Ashland, OH (which is in northeast Ohio) and I asked for $35,000 and they asked me if I was firm on my requirements. I was in shock. I didn't think 35K was too much to ask. Now it's in the Mansfield metro area so the cost of living is a lot lower, but not THAT much lower. Then I had an interview for a programmer position in Florence, KY (about 20 mins south of Cincy) and it was a 6 month contract to hire position and they were going to pay $38,000 for the first 6 months and if they were to keep me then they were going to pay $40,000 and the cost of living in that area is actually a little higher than the St. Louis area.

So anyway, it may also have something to do with the unemployment rates. Missouri's isn't great, but it's still lower than Ohio's and Kentucky's unemployment rate. I just received an e-mail today that said Ohio's rate went up to 11.1 percent and I know Kentucky's is like 10.6 percent. So that's probably why they can pay less because the job market is so bad that people will take less money. Where as Missouri's rate is 9.3 percent. It's still not great and it just went up, but it's still below the national rate.

[Eyeam]

..St. Louis is a small city in terms of land coverage only.

LandCoverage: STL - 8,846 square miles; Boston - 4,674 square miles; Columbus - 3,169 square miles; I can't find numbers for the Syracuse metro area or the Dayton metro area, but I'm quite sure they're smaller than the St. Louis metro. So, the STL metro is actually much larger than the cities used in your examples.

But anyways - 'Grats on your position, and best of luck to you! I'm hoping I can get that lucky and land some sort of analyst position when I finish college also ;P

[Brickmama]

I think you are confused. He is talking about the city limits only which covers 61 sq miles. Which in turns makes the City of St Louis very dense.

[Brickmama]

BTW I dont have a problem comparing STL to any city even if its Tokyo. However its misleading to say STL is a small city.

Compared to Toyko yes it is small. But is it small compared to the large majority of cities in the world? No. Its like saying the Empire State building is small because its not one if the tallest in the world. Does than really mean it is small. No.

To reiterate....STL is smaller than Toyko and NYC however that doesnt neccessarly mean its a small city. Its actually a large city. Instead look at the broader picture and dont just base a city only on its population but instead on a variety of other factors such as density, amenities, transportation, size of economy, etc...

Back to his original question please.

[VideoEngineerAJS]

Originally Posted by Brickmama

I think you are confused. He is talking about the city limits only which covers 61 sq miles. Which in turns makes the City of St Louis very dense.

Exactly. The city of Columbus, Ohio is 210.3 square miles if you don't count water. Like you said St. Louis is 61.9 square miles. Columbus has 754,885 residents in the city limits (which is 210.3 square miles) while St. Louis has 354,361 residents in the city limits (which again is 61.9 square miles).

That means that Columbus has a little over twice as many people as St. Louis while having over three times the land coverage. So that shows that even though St. Louis is a "smaller" city, it still has a big city feel. With Columbus you have to go a LONG ways north and south of the city just to get close to 2 million people in the "metro" area (they call it the Columbus-Marion-Chillicothe CSA). St. Louis on the other hand has a true metro population of close to 3 million. I don't consider that small.

[Eyeam]

Sigh. Syracuse - 25 square miles. Boston - 48.43 square miles. Dayton - 55.7 square miles. St. Louis - 61.9 square miles. Columbus - 210 square miles. St. Louis is still larger than all of those but Columbus. Boston, though slightly smaller, has 2x the density of St. Louis. San Francisco, though slightly smaller, has 3x the density of St. Louis.

Which in turns makes the City of St Louis very dense.

L.A. covers 469 square miles and has a density of over 8,000 per square mile. STL is only 13% the size of L.A. and still has less density. Chicago covers 227 square miles and has a density of 12,649 per square mile. New York City covers 304.8 square miles, and has a density of 27,440 per square mile. Imagine a city that is roughly 5 times as big as St. Louis city, and is nearly 500% more dense. As you can see, being small does not necessarily equate to being dense. A city with a similar density to that of St. Louis is San Jose, CA. They both have roughly the same density, but San Jose covers an area of 175 square miles - almost 3 times as much area as what St. Louis covers. We could go back and forth with this until the cows come home about how we perceive the density here - that's entirely subjective, and neither one of us can be right in that case. If it feels dense to you - fine, if it doesn't, well that's fine too. But what we can't argue about is the numbers. They exist regardless of how you feel about the density here, or anywhere else. St. Louis just isn't that dense really. I'll note this fact one final time: 18th largest metro in the entire country - that's a good size. 125th most dense. So, as you can see, although the entire St. Louis area is fairly large, it's not very dense - at all. I can't find a list of the city proper by density, sorry.

Brickmama:

However its misleading to say STL is a small city...Instead look at the broader picture

You have that backwards. Looking at the smaller picture is what makes St. Louis a big city. Compared to most of the cities in the region, St. Louis is a good sized city. Compared to the big picture, it's much smaller.

But is it small compared to the large majority of cities in the world? No.

This is actually exactly wrong. As I noted earlier in this thread, I found a list of the top 100 cities in the world. The #100 spot was a city with a population of 3,000,000 people. St. Louis has 355,000 people. Chicago didn't even make that top 100, and Chicago is massive compared to St. Louis. If I was a betting man, I'd be willing to bet that St. Louis may not even be in the top 500. I'm not going to argue with you about how you feel about the size or density or anything else concerning St. Louis, that's entirely up to you. If you are going to try and cite factual information concerning the numbers, however, then you do need to be correct when citing that information.


VideoEngineerAJS:

I don't consider that small.

It's not necessarily small at all, but the discussion was supposed to be about density, and I say that it's not very dense, regardless of it's size. Size isn't the best indicator of density. There is a small town in the NYC metro area that has a density of 56,000 per square mile.

This is really just a discussion - never intended it to turn into an argument of any sort. It hardly matters, really. As someone who's done a lot of traveling and lived in other places, I enjoy talking about this kind of stuff, but some people seem to take offense to it. I'm not saying that St. Louis is any better or worse of a city because of it's size, density or population. It's not my favorite place to be, but I try and make the best of it. I'll be moving again after college. This is where I'm from, and I'll always have family here, so it's not like I hate the place or anything.

When I give what seem to be negative opinions about the city, such as in my original post, I try to be respectful in doing so. If someone is uprooting their life and moving to St. Louis - that's a huge decision. That's usually - at least temporarily - an irreversible decision due to the costs and such. So, if a person is moving here, I intend on giving them my honest opinions of this city because I am a person who's had some perspective on the way some other places work - I haven't been in St. Louis my entire life. The people who have been here their entire lives might be experts on the city - they can tell you all kinds of information about where to go for certain types of foods and entertainment and things of that nature, but that person might have a sort of biased opinion due to the fact that they've never even been out of the city. It's important that someone moving here gets to hear different opinions from different types of people, otherwise that person might be surprised to find out that maybe a certain city is a very bad fit for them even though everyone painted such a rosy picture of the city with nothing but positive opinions. While I agree that some people can be over the top and downright obnoxious with their negativity towards a city, we have to remember that this isn't China or North Korea. We don't have censorship here. Not everyone is going to like your city (I love San Francisco - I know plenty of people that hate it), not everyone is going to have nice things to say about it, and that's just something people are going to have to deal with. I never really understand why certain people get so flustered over someone's opinions anyway. If a person is certain of their beliefs or feelings on a subject (be it a hometown, religion, whatever), why then do they seem to be so shaken up if someone has something bad to say? That, to me, says that particular person isn't secure about their feelings or beliefs, and so they feel the need to argue - but the reality is they're only arguing with themselves and trying to repair the damage that those other opinions caused to the weak foundation of their feeling or belief structure.

But anyways, as Brickmama said:

Back to his original question please.

Sorry for the detour ;P

[hhillstl]

Despite what Eyeam says, many neighborhoods in St. Louis City (in general the only ones I would ever have a reason to visit) are very dense and absolutely do have the feel of a big city. It should be noted that St. Louis City once had 800k+ living in the same area that now holds around 350k, and much of that depopulation has occurred on the north side. In South City, which has been relatively more stable, the massive depopulation just hasn't happened, so if you look at population density by neighborhood you'll find population density that one would expect in a city much larger, leading to a much larger "feel." Just as an example, I live in Holly Hills, which is not by any stretch of the imagination one of the most dense neighborhoods in the city (think Tower Grove East, Central West End, etc.), but even Holly Hills has a respectable population density of 9,245/sq. mi.

[VideoEngineerAJS]

Places like Boston and New York are going to be dense because of the type of cities they are. East coast cities are older and usually more dense.

St. Louis has a density of 5,735 people per square mile if you include just the city proper. Of course not NYC, Boston, LA, or Chicago like, but you can't really compare them in that sense. If you want a place like that, go live there because those are in different leagues. Those are the financial hubs of the country. Columbus has a population density of 3,556 people per square mile and Indianapolis has a population density of 2,152 people per square mile.

If you want to compare cities that are very close to St. Louis in size look at places like Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Cincinnati has a density of 4,273 people per square mile, Cleveland has a density of 6,166 people per square mile, and Pittsburgh has a density of 5,636 people per square mile.

That all being said, St. Louis is an average decent sized city with an average population density.