Residents of St. Louis County showed their support for the local public transit system this week, voting 63-37 percent in favor of a 1/2-cent sales tax increase.

The increased revenues were needed to ward off major cuts for Metro, the local transit authority. County residents had rejected a similar initiative in 2008, according to the St. Louis American.
A broad coalition came out in support of this measure, including corporate leaders, university chancellors and black clergy.
-AS
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Read about the efforts of young St. Louisans (St. Louis-ites? STLers?) to bring more brain and creative power to their city.
Rust Wire readers will see at least two familiar names in this story– that of Jeff and Randy Vines, frequent contributors to this site! Keep up the good work guys!
-KG
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Thanks to Rust Wire reader Mark Golbach for pointing out this quirky but interesting map from the Floatingsheep blog:

What do those little dots represent? The relative concentration of listings of bowling alleys in the Google Maps directory, the Floatingsheep tells us, which are heavily concentrated in the Rust Belt. The highest index value is in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan.
Like the folks at Floatingsheep, however, I have no idea what this means. Interesting though.
-KG
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From the Atlantic Magazine. An interesting round-up of some Rust Belt stories and trends that have made national news recently.
-KG
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Here’s a good visual on what sprawl looks like – and its economic impact – from the folks at Buffalo Rising.
It’s a bit old but I wanted to link to it anyhow. I can’t say it better than they did – “Three times the stuff – fewer people.”
-KG
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Above: An iconic Erie image
I’d like to share some thought from the “Inside Erie” column written by Erie Times-News columnist Pat Howard- and read by myself and many other Erie natives who no longer live there.
He writes this week about something I’ve observed a number of times – folks from Erie (and a number of other Rust Belt communities) can be pretty negative about their hometowns. And it sometimes seems that the loudest complainers are those who’ve never left.
But people who have lived elsewhere (i.e. Erie natives who’ve lived in …

Rust Wire has previously highlighted Donald Carter, the David Lewis Director of the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. (Take a look at our prior post on Carter’s efforts to trade the term “Rust Belt” for “Water Belt” and change “Sun Belt” into “Drought Belt.”)
Here’s a piece by Carter from Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discussing The Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which took place last month with mayors from Springfield, Illinois; Elkhart, Indiana; Canton, Ohio; Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia; Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin.
See if you agree with …

Why not Detroit? Or Cleveland? Or a more compact, less-sprawled out city like Pittsburgh?
This Reuters story says Houston, the “petro metro” is aiming to be the electric car capital of America.
Stories like this make me so mad.
A city in the Great Lakes region would be much better suited to this, yet some folks in Houston are showing more leadership on this issue. For instance, Houston has signed a deal to build public charging stations. “Such agreements are key to easing skeptical consumers’ fears of running out of juice if their …

Check out the new Metro Matters podcast, from the folks at Next American City magazine and the Brookings Institution.
If you listen to this inaugural edition, you can hear about everything from the stimulus, to US exports, Richard Florida and manufacturing. There’s a good bit of Rust-Belt related discussion as well.
-KG
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Can “branding” a city through a snappy slogan and slick marketing campaign work?
A lot of cities apparently think so, including Dayton and Cleveland, as outlined in this USA Today story.
They point to successful and memorable slogans, like “I love New York,” and “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas.” It’s also interesting to read the comments under the story- on mentions great success North Dakota has had marketing itself as a “Wild West” destination for bicyclists.
The story doesn’t mention less-successful campaigns. (I’m thinking of the Michael Moore movie Roger & …