The Decline Has Only Begun for This Cluster of St. Louis Suburbs 

St. Louis Suburbs Playlist: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tEgCX0CKg6c.html Missouri Playlist: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tEgCX0CKg6c.html Help me grow my 2nd channel! RU-vid.com/@ChrisHardenArchives ==================================================================== EVERYTHING THAT I USE IN THE FIELD: Main Camera: amzn.to/3iS4vvF Side Cameras: amzn.to/2WuCYIs Media Mod for Camera: amzn.to/3j7CMGF Lav Mic: amzn.to/3lsMkz9 Drone: amzn.to/3ITcKBV SD Cards: amzn.to/3C2co9O Camera Mounts: amzn.to/2UXVR6p Cables Required for Longer Recordings: amzn.to/3BYnr3Q Computer: amzn.to/3787b2j External Hard Drive: amzn.to/3lb23Tf WHAT I USE AT HOME: Computer: amzn.to/3rKIdiN Sound Mixer: amzn.to/3C15Ubx Microphone: amzn.to/2VaCjvo Microphone Accessories: amzn.to/3v7A35Z INTERACTIVE MAP that shows you all of the places that I've made videos on: (Doesn't always work on mobile devices. Will always work on PC.) www.google.com/maps/d/u/2/edit?hl=en&mid=1Lhzf04ocimPu-ROkg4cfXEYEvKMNnlI5&ll=40.27103227298287%2C-85.79817104256944&z=7 SOCIAL MEDIA & CONTACT INFO: Email: ChrisHardenYT@Gmail.com On Twitter: twitter.com/Chris_Harden55 On Instagram: instagram.com/c_harden7 On Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisHardenYT DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you. As an Amazon Associate I do earn a small commission on qualifying purchases. As always, thank you for supporting my channel!

Pasadena hills is gorgeous. Hello from New Zealand.

The money and population went to St Charles, South County, Edwardsville, St Peter's and Wentzville.

Everybody, afraid to say what all these areas have in common.

My mom grew up in Wellston. It started going downhill in the very early 1960s. When I would go spend the night at my grandmothers, it never failed to see a burning house or two. Owners would burn them down for the insurance. I hated going to Wellston, who, by the way, had its own high school until the population and horrible ratings for the district forced it to close.

Nice older homes in Pasadena Hills. Not surprised they are on the historical register. TY for the tour Chris!👍

OMG this expert video and commentary evaluated an extremely complex place in under 30 minutes! I know very little about the St. Louis metro, now at least I know something very interesting. I really have to salute you Chris for integrating all these places into a coherent whole. What an incredible eye and mind you have.

Your expertise is always appreciated. Thanks for your continual hard work and effort put into your videos.

Great way to cap off my week! Thanks Chris and hope things are going well for you guys, always appreciate a new episode!

Thank you for starting this video with my alma mater!! I graduated in 1986 and the sports teams were known as the Rivermen and Riverwomen back then. Great memories of my 4 years there! Sad, however, what's happened to most of the cities nearby. Keep up the great work, Chris!

Viewing your work just makes my day. I love the ride along. well, that's what It feels like to me. Being able to see places I wouldn't see on my own. In this video I really like the first part with the nicer houses. Keep up the great work. I'll be waiting for more of your work and Thanks again.

I remember this area well. In the late 1970's and early 1980's my wife taught and coached women's Sports at UMSL and we lived across the street in some Apt Complex in Normandy and I drove those streets. I was working at Norwest Plaza at the time. It has really gone down hill since then.

Very nice Thank you so much!!

Great video!

Pasadena Hills used to be home to quite a few Cardinal baseball players.

Having worked at Normandy high school doing repair work I can say that every morning on the loud speaker they speak about victimhood and division. It’s a real shithole.

I'm a famous Normandy alum 😂, ok maybe not famous but I did go to Normandy all four years of HS. I lived in a little unincorporated city just south of Bel-Ridge and North of the Rock Road..I walked a lot of the area you drove. Going to Normandy was so unfortunate, we had so few resources. We have so many cemeteries in Normandy and that just doesn't bring in a lot of tax revenue. We only got yearbooks our senior year. We never had home football games or track events because our field and track were shit. We used to have a building with a pool in it. When I had gym class my freshman year and had swimming, I was the only one who knew how to swim, so my teacher taught me diving and flipping off the diving board. We used to have barb-wire on top of the fence that surrounded the campus. One day the principal came and visited with the excellerated classes to get feedback from us on school improvements. We wanted the barb-wire gone and it did come down. I have heard that metal detectors were installed a few years after I graduated, so I'm surprised to see it is still gone. It may have been a rough school with few resources but I have fond memories, there were plenty of good students!

Thanks much Chris.

I enjoy your videos Chris but lumping Pasadena Hills in with the other communities under “the decline has just begun” does a disservice to a wonderful and historic community with great people. I’ve been there several times visiting from Boston and it’s a really great collection of homes in a park like setting. Very unique. Deserves its own video feature!

It was a great place to grow up in the 50s and 60s. Moved away in 1972. Last time I went there in 1994, my car was surrounded by some rough looking teenagers. I told them I was scouting g a location for a movie and if they wanted to be in it as extras to leave me their names and numbers. Some actually did. Hahaha

I grew up in Wellston, I loved it. Went to Spensmar grade school, and Wellston Jr. High( the old high school). We moved in 1963. Back then it was a great place to grow up!

The "Decline" has begun in St. Charles and St. Peters as well. Try exposing the etiology of it all as this has already been calculated and documented.

Bad? I expected Detroit, Baltimore or LA. They look like bombed out Zombie land. These 'bad' homes are clean, well manicured and well maintained. The streets are clean as are the cars. There's no graffiti. I only saw one home that was boarded up. Just from the visuals I would live there.

All these tiny cities! The first few cities you showed were quite nice actually.

The population has been in decline, as crime has increased. Grew up in St Louis, UMSL and SLCC Florissant became more and more daunting to attend

I went to UMSL from 2010-2012. The campus is about the extent of my knowledge of this area. I currently live south of the city in the county. I believe you e already covered my area I grew up in and live in now.

That entire area is to be avoided, unless you want to be carjacked.

What was the song you played in the video when you went through Northwoods?

Nice looking homes and lawns tho.

Wow Pasadena Hills is nice. It reminds me of parts of U. City..

This area looks really pretty

Thanks. Today, Normandy School District is essentially babysitting with two free meals a day. People move out to get to "better" schools, and think they will be accomodated more than others due to historic racism. When they finally reach the Pattonville School District, they discover that Pattonville students represent 57 countries and 42 languages, but some still demand special treatment above the rest of the students. Pattonville is not a magic building with magic students and teachers. It's hard work and achievement. That's what the Normandy School District needs, but if they can't do it, then the Normandy District suburbs will loose population that should move across the U.S. for easy assimilation.

My old stumping grounds.I left in 96 for hazelwood then moved to GA in 2016 never been better. I'll never return to this dilapidated depressed city.

Used to attend church in pine lawn when i was little. Have you ever traveled down goodfellow and rosevelt

Interesting video. The use of AAVE at 22:34 and change to a hip hop styled beat really rubbed me the wrong way.

Can you do Maryland heights next!!

Hello Chris, where is the location of the photo that you used as your thumbnail?

I wouldn’t in a million years live in any neighborhood in the Normandy school district. The crime in those areas, and near by areas, is way too bad for me. Those areas are turning into real shit holes.

I don't know when. But the only option that I see for the long-term future is for Saint Louis City and Saint Louis County to be merged into a single municipality

Pasadena Hills, like you said. has some outstanding looking homes. I bet because of their age, a 2x4 is really a 2x4 and not 1.5″ x 3.5″ when they were built. The image at 7:11 could be a postcard. It's time to start voting for people who will work at getting jobs back and putting the voters/taxpayers ahead of themselves. Thanks for posting, have a great day.

Have you considered doing a piece on the overall number of individually governed cities in St.L.County? I read somewhere, years ago, that the number of cities is quite high. I don't think most people know there are so many! I'm curious as to how the area broke up into so many separate towns!

Don't see the decline. The area looks good.

Beyond Housing, Inc. which is actually in this video, and services this region needs your help in improving these areas with our 24:1 initiatives!

Nice work. I wonder where it is that all these people go?

Interesting how we've let the blight of the city just keep expanding out. Now that can be said about Saint Louis Detroit Kansas City and a whole host of other cities. Just not concern as a whole was what's going on until it comes up and bites us. Eventually it does because the blight continues to expand outward. Ironically had chance to go to UMSL. Basically live free. It was little bit far away from home but your relatives nearby at the time. One of them had passed on and I was fond of them and they were fond of me. Freehouse and property and it was little bit farther out but I could pretend I'm so been in district and everything else. But how good of a spill do you think I'm so really was? We can let other people answer that. But I went to a better school far away. They had left her home to me with one stipulation that I live in it for five years. Otherwise it was to be sold and the proceeds go to there more immediate relatives. Well they got the money 💰. There's not a lot to be said good about St Louis Kansas City Springfield Missouri. Crime and blight. Pretty much takes care of the major cities in Missouri except for maybe Columbia. I don't know a lot about it.

Top it all off with a good ole' heapin' helpin' of horribly over-enforced road ordinances, and speed traps through ALL of these suburbs,... and I don't even like driving through those places feel like I'm constantly on edge waiting for a cop to come bust out my taillight.

Some good, some bad. Would I like to live there? Not a chance!

It's sad that these suburbs are declining and Pasadena Park and Hills are just hanging on, the same for Normandy and Northwoods (decent working class communities), while the rest the decline seems to have accelerated. Why is it that in the Midwest the blight is allowed to spread out into the suburbs instead of being solved in the center city? The more the suburbs fall to blight, the more likely the whole metro area will fail.

I grew up in jennings moved there in1965 when i was 5 back then it was a nice place, it had RIVER ROADS MALL, NORTHLAND MALL then the white flight hit, now i live in FLORISSANT watching the white flite again,OH WELL😢

I live in Raleigh NC and was going to move to St Louis back in 1999.I heard it is a strong union area for construction.

At one time, the Normandy school district was one of the best in the St. Louis area.

There ought to be a law against naming a public structure (school, highway) after a present day politician.

There are subdivisions that are larger than these cities.

I miss Pasadena hills. The insides of the homes are amazing. Dated a woman from there, lost her to suicide. 😢

Hate to be truthful.. Its white flight.. everyone went to st Charles and west.. And its happening again...

Hopefully like the dying shopping malls they fostered suburbia is on a steep decline. Suburbia is unsustainable, completely auto and truck centered and dependent and a very poor use of land. Like shopping malls I have no sympathy for suburbia!

I was born & raised in St. Louis county in the 50s. In the 70s & 80s Wellston was run by the Black Panthers at gun point. If you were white, you were as good as dead in any part of Wellston or Kinlock, & Robenson and you knew better then to go there. They killed off many of their own population and even up into the early 2000s Wellston was always very dangerous. When NAFTA hit this country in 76 the St. Louis area lost much of it's tax base as industry & the population closed up and left. By the mid 80s it was a ghost town. They still have no industry there and the last time I went up there to visit my parents grave in 2007, I had my own armed guards watching my back side as the gangs are still in charge in St. Louis and well remain so for as long as I live. Bottom line, St. Louis is dead, STAY OUT is the waring.

There's a common denominator with all these communities' downfall

White flighters will find this video a convenient reference. Fat cats passed their country club off on the state of Missouri. That was the transaction by wealthy people to abandon north county in favor of west county.

Good one! I lived on Wabada for a short time in 1953. By 1965 gangs had taken over Wellston and the few remaining white folks were persecuted out. It may as well be North St Louis.

Sad to see the US has given up on whole regions

This is depressing. 😢

I drove through pinelawn not too long ago and drove the other way. Not looking goo at all.

Normandy was a slum by 1980. Pasadena Hills was still beautiful, but the rest here, like Wellston, were the pits in the 1970s. All the north suburbs of that city were very deteriorated and dropping in value rapidly ere I left St Louis in 1987.

we know why.

Lots of brick homes. If the New Madrid fault lets go, they're rubble. I once drove west od St Louis. I noticed upthrusts or whatever they call them. The land looks torn in places.

Shooting straight oops maybe poor choice of word 100 percent agree

Sad. Needs lots of help..

Why does no one want to admit the obvious that the demographic change occurred after the closing of the projects in the late 60s and the moved all section 8 houses to north county

Bring back the old hood music!

America seems to be in serious decline. They are lowering standards for all occupations to accommodate the decline.

I see lots of empty store fronts

It baffles me. Even tho Society is struggling, We are yet to even attempt to implement: "The concept around: The better off the lowest income living people are doing; The better the entire rest of our countries economy could be doing." -Think of it like a ecosystem in nature. The least important little things might seem meaningless and insignificant yet, if they crumbled away, the entire ecosystem would crumble. The last things remaining would be the top diverse predators that eat everything else.. until they eat each other.. leaving just a few top sharks in the ecosystem.. the whales would all be gone once the plankton crumble away, the sharks would eat the whales. Then once all that's left is sharks, the sharks would eat the sharks. *(Think of this but as a analogy for our economy and our modern day society..) If we instead decided to support the lowest people in the ecosystem, there would be a beneficial systematic dispersion towards other aspects of society benefiting. All because the lowest people would be flourishing. I say flourish but I really just mean, able to obtain the most basic essential living standards... Yet even that would Vastly improve our current state of our economy & society *Also imagine this analogy in our economy. The more help we invest in the lowest level people, the more it would trickle into every facet of our economy. If poor people can pay their rent & not go homeless: landlords would get $, businesses would get $, banks would get $, local small shops would get $, mortgages & bills could be paid, insurance companies would get $, Taxes would get $, So essentially that $ would go out & filter right back in to improve our Country while simultaneously improving our quality of Life. Every bit of the economy would somehow find a way to benefit off of this situation... I don't get why we haven't even Given it a chance?? If it doesn't help? Then by all means stop it and figure out what problems we could be facing might be one's that run way deeper than expected and that would take drastic changes to improve that situation... (I hope we TRY something soon, before things get any more unstable. The worst thing we could do is continue on doing exactly what we are currently doing. It might get to a point where overcoming our struggles could simply become a pipedream. I don't want it to get to that)

Yeah, you don't hang around on Goodfellow.

Almost all suburbs will decline. Damn near every one of them is fiscally unsustainable and do not even bring on enough revenue for basic infrastructure maintenance. It is the ugly secret no one wants to admit b/c so many folks love living in suburbia.

Check out East St. Louis. East of the river lol

Nothing is basically in STL limits you silly goose.

I dunno... I think we as Americans are going to have to learn to live with this; all the new Up & Coming developments will price most of us out. They say there's a housing shortage, 'Inventory is low', yada, yada, yada. There's no housing shortage... they're all over the place! What there is a shortage of is Vision. These towns die because of the hurney-hurney and derpity-derp, on their hands and knees, offering a tax-free pass for that Amazon warehouse.

Normandy still looks like it is a decent enough area on the video. Let me guess, the majority population remaining is a certain minority that those who have moved away, don’t want to be around. I wonder why that is?

“Mean Streetz” is better than “Evil Streets.”

I did'nt want to complain but maybe the music could not be so ominous

There are some beautiful homes in that area, it fell victim to the segregation of the St Louis area. All of those suburbs are 90%+ African American. Schools there lost their accreditation a few years ago, a lot of those little towns have had corruption for years. I really don't know of any other metro area in the country as segregated as St Louis; of course there are African Americans and other minorities across the area, but the poor ones seem to be mostly lumped into North StL City and North StL County - especially the far north parts bordering the City of StL.

annoying music. but i liked the tour of houses, it was interesting

You skipped over some of the prettiest houses in Pasadena hills

"Welcome to the jungle It get's worse here everyday Ya learn to live like an animal In the jungle where we play If you got a hunger for what you see You'll take it eventually You can have anything you want But you better not take it from me"

Get in line...its all over the country.

Glad im not the only one who can see this city dying

With those crime rates, wow. I see another callibozo coming on. The one guy that backed his car out in front of the video? By the barry obozo school. They acted like a criminal there didn’t they? I mean you can see how a police officer would follow them around, call in the plates, so on.

Your response to violent crime is to drink shakes, work out, and take boxing lessons? Are you joking? How about buying a gun, seeing as anyone breaking in is likely to be packing. What good is a nice left jab when the perp is ten feet away from you and holding a pistol?

Coming to an American city near you. Just wait till they get the A.I. thingy perfect People just don't study history.

15:42 The name of this school says it all.

St Louis is in the middle of the country on a greatest river, what happened ?

It's crazy how many suburbs are over there🤡

One word sums it all up.... "Demographics"

Something feels off with the hood song. 🤔

24:1 C🤬MMUNITY IS STR8 UP TRASH

These towns are very Democratic.

Are you trying to get shot?

st louis is a dumpster

Drop the annoying 'music' please.