St. Louis as a city in the next 100 years is currently on pace to be doomed by failure, or a shell of its old self..see Flint, MI. St. Louis the city won't exist in 100 years. This can change though. I present the case for high speed rail between St. Louis and Chicago.
Society today is moving rapidly towards a system where major cities control the world societies and economies. St. Louis is by no means a major city. At best it may be able to bill itself as a major metropolitan area with the inclusion of its extended periphery (south to Farmington, north to Alton, East to Mount Vernon and west to Warrenton). In reality St. Louis is a small city.
Small cities in the future will only survive by being able to thrive as back-end suppliers to major cities. In the Midwest this is a serious challenge that would need to be overcome with all of the land separating cities from each other. This issue doesn’t exist on our more dense coasts. Cities of similar size in coastal America are close enough to their major regional powerhouses that traditional means of connectivity are available (while high speed rail for them would still be beneficial too, it's not as great of an additive). Baltimore has Washington, D.C., Wilmington has Philadelphia, Hartford has New York City, Providence has Boston, Jacksonville/Huntsville have Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale has Miami, San Jose/Oakland have San Francisco, San Diego has Los Angeles and so on and so on. These cities already reap the benefits of being located so close to their larger partners. Cities such as Oakland and Baltimore increasingly see their residents utilize traditional rail to commute on a daily basis for employment in their larger neighbors. As well as business utilizing regional associativity to attract talent and new business while avoiding the expense it would take to actually be located in downtown proper (see Panasonic in Newark).
High speed rail has allowed the revitalization of Chinese cities. Take Tianjin and Hangzhou (who's major regional cities are respectively Beijing and Shanghai). High speed rail has virtually connected these cities even though geographically their American equivalents are the likes of Washington, D.C. to Richmond, V.A. (111mi from Hangzhou to Shanghai vs. 108mi from D.C. to Richmond). At a design speed of about 217mph the Shanghai-Hangzhou passenger Railway can allow passengers to commute between the two cities in as little as 45 minutes. Theses speeds would allow travel between St. Louis and Chicago in under 90 minutes.
Cities like St. Louis could become the American Tianjin and Hangzhou's and all it would take is a little investment in high speed rail…get to it Midwest
