It would be foolish to say that North St. Louis has never been discriminated against in the allocation of economic development funds. Yes, discrimination did and does exist, and there is no reason to think that this would be an exception.
But the idea of the Team Four Plan is different. Has there been discrimination so calculated so and effective that it should be recognized as a conspiracy? Was there some kind of formal or informal plan to harm North St. Louis? If the conspiracy is true, the harm is obvious. If it’s not, the existence of an urban legend to this affect may be just as harmful.
The idea of a plan, the Team Four Plan, to empty out North St. Louis – to let it die off – began in the early 1970s.
Team Four, planning and design consultants, wrote several technical memos for the 1975 St. Louis Draft Comprehensive Plan. Memorandum 6B became known as the Team Four Plan.
Memo 6B
Memorandum 6B suggested strategies for three types of areas. It called one condition Redevelopment Areas and another Conservation Areas. A third type was called Depletion Areas, where population and building stock were experiencing severe problems requiring redevelopment but where reinvestment had not yet begun. It said that spreading scarce redevelopment funds thinly across all depletion areas would not work; that the City should make commitments to specific locations before turning them into redevelopment areas.
The policies in 6B were not secret. They were intended for public discussion as part of the Draft Comprehensive Plan. The choice of the words “Depletion Area” was unfortunate, but the policies were not so much severe as they were realistic. Their objectives were to find ways of improving the city – all of the city.
North St. Louis and ‘Depletion’
In 1975 there was deterioration of various degrees in many parts of St. Louis. Much of it was on the north side of the City. However, Memorandum 6B discussed strategies for general conditions, not specific areas. Its purpose was not to map any of these conditions. That would have come later in the planning process.
Memorandum 6B had no map and there was no intent to apply a single policy to any large section of the city. Depletion Areas were considered as varying in size and location but not the size of neighborhoods or large parts of the city.
However, an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch led to the idea that much of North St. Louis had been categorized as a depletion area. It did this by linking Memorandum 6B with an unrelated map from another plan. That map showed a large part of North St. Louis as “rehabilitation and reconstruction.” These are not the same things as depletion.
The conditions in North St. Louis in 1975 were not such that it could reasonably have been considered as depleted across the board. For this reason, the reaction of African Americans to this idea was understandable, but this was not the content or intent of Memorandum 6B.
Conspiracy theory
Part of the conspiracy included Board Bills 19 and 20. These two City ordinances proposed in 1974 would have increased building code enforcement in areas with solid building stock. Their language guarded against the misuse of enforcement, but they were still said to be detrimental to the North Side. Others said that they would harm the North Side by the reverse, by not enforcing the codes.
Many extremely derogatory things have been said about these ordinances. They may not have been right for St. Louis, but they were simply proposing that the City attempt the use of an occupancy permit system. And they were not adopted.
The words of Memorandum 6B, the unrelated map and the language of the ordinances were twisted into the idea of a conspiracy to destroy North St. Louis. It gave a simple, diabolical reason for a complex social and economic situation. It made a good urban legend. It was easy to understand and pass on. It explained the degradation on the North Side. It played to our cynicism and pessimism. It still does.
The misrepresentation of Memorandum 6B was used by some for political gain at the expense of a city already divided by race. It was labeled the Team Four Plan, and it was used to deflect attention from real problems and to excuse failure to deal with them. It reinforced divisions between citizens and government, between blacks and whites and between those with less power and those with more. Over the years it has done all these things as well as creating suspicion about sincere attempts to improve North St. Louis.
North Side now
Efforts to improve the city, such as the work being done in Old North St. Louis and the Ville Business District, are encouraging. Focusing redevelopment this way can create a critical mass of investment that will improve the surrounding neighborhood. This is what Memorandum 6B meant when it said that development should not be spread thinly but should be focused to achieve the most benefit.
Unfortunately, these efforts will not be sufficient to improve large areas of the city. Recently, U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay said, “I represent areas that are long overdue for a plan to address the erosion and decay.” He is correct, but this kind of plan will require significant, enthusiastic and consistent public support and private participation. As long as the legend of a plan to reduce services and to promote disinvestment and decay in North St. Louis continues, it hampers this support and participation.
Decay and abandonment are St. Louis is unfortunate and undeniable, but the reason is not a plan or a conspiracy. The forces causing deterioration in American cities are as complex as they are frustrating. Perpetuating the idea of a conspiracy to empty out North St. Louis distracts us from fighting those forces, from healing the social and economic pain of people victimized by them, and from preventing the loss of more residents and buildings.
Our city seems at times to be as racially divided now as it was in 1975. But there is a choice. Will we continue to reinforce that division with notions of conspiracy and powerlessness – or will we face the issues, opportunities and problems with a real plan to deal with them?
William Albinson is a principal of Team Four, the architectural and planning firm that prepared Memorandum 6B. It has been located in the City of St. Louis for 35 years.