Pieces of an emerald city
Pieces of an emerald city
Explore the growing greenways of St. Louis
Four years ago, my friend and mentor Jay Heinrichs assigned me one of those stories that make the occupational pitfalls of writing feel like speed bumps. Writing for the Southwest Airlines in-flight magazine, I was dispatched to St. Louis, where I spent several days roaming the city with local Millennials who could speak the food and art scenes, the quality of life, and the creative energy that undergirds “The Lou.” The place charmed me, to the point where an offhand tweet I wrote about how much I enjoyed St. Louis sparked a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about my visit to the city, which excited the publisher and left me with a huge flareup of impostor syndrome.
But there was one element of St. Louis that eluded me—something I had heard about in passing from my contacts there, but never got to explore firsthand.
St. Louis has joined the list of U.S. cities making themselves friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists by investing in green transit space. Bike lanes and crosswalk expansions are two of the most common ways in which these infrastructure remixes manifest. But St. Louis is upping the ante by planning and building a network of greenways that will allow you to walk, bike, scooter, or pogo stick from one neighborhood to the next.
What is a greenway? It’s a multi-use paved path flanked with greenery that can range from shrubs planted around an industrial zone to a thick forest swimming with ferns, vines, and deciduous trees. Frederick Law Olmsted pioneered the idea with his linear park systems in Buffalo and Boston, but before it could really take off in more cities, the automobile arrived and took center stage among city planners.
St. Louis is one of many American cities where cars have long reigned supreme and the greenway project—which is being managed by Great River Greenways—aspires to restore some pre-automotive peace, safety, and balance to intercity mobility. More than 128 miles of greenways have already been built in the St. Louis region and over the next few years, some of them will be connected with the addition of new paths.
Nearly half a decade since my first Lou layover, I was finally headed back to the city to attend the wedding of two dear friends. But before putting on my suit, I had to go and hike one of these St. Louis greenways. Poring over the Great River Greenways project maps—which show finished and mid-construction paths—the menu of local greenways felt kind of like a scattered pile of emerald Legos, waiting to be clicked together into something grandiose. I wanted to experience what it might be like to hike from one St. Louis destination to another, even if it required street walking from the end of one completed greenway segment to the beginning of the next segment.