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St. Louis Anthropocene: displacement & replacement

JJP

A brief essay about St. Louis' notorious eminent domain history--

--along with 2 recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles about "urban renewal" projects that are scheduled to reoccupy the Mill Flats area, which hosted the most notorious episode of displacement of African-American communities: the Chouteau Greenway project (will it serve or displace low-income St. Louisans?); and SLU's Mill Creek Flats high-rise project, which certainly will, and whose name seems to me an especially tone-deaf if gutsy move...

https://humanities.wustl.edu/features/Margaret-Garb-St-Louis-Eminent-Domain

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/steelcote-developer-plans-more-apartments-brewery-space-in-million-midtown/article_811eaf96-76e1-5c20-a870-1e79abd3f06e.html

https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/chouteau-greenway-project-aims-to-knit-st-louis-neighborhoods-together/article_55fea4e6-6829-5c80-9168-313305b4e3bb.html

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erin_tuttle

The article mentioned a database the Times was using to track the location of firefighters throughout the incident, I looked at that system. It is not publicly available but was interesting in that it entirely depended on the news footage, personal videos and eyewitness accounts.

The article mentioned helicopters were being considered for rooftop evacuation, which surprised me due to the smoke. I looked into the visibility in the airspace directly surrounding the World Trade Center, while the smoke was so severe as to be captured by the International Space Station the wind did clear the smoke sufficiently for a clear line of sight between the helicopters and portions of the towers.

The firefighters were climbing the stairs, and reportedly would take hours to reach the top. The article also mentioned several groups of resting firefighters, so I researched the weight each firefighter would have been carrying which added up to 45 pounds of gear and at least an additional 20-30 pounds of tools.

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erin_tuttle
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The technical aspects of the site are quite complex, as the system has over 1,000 active data sites to compile in addition to the reports and reviews stored. The data collection software is the main function that the software supports as it relieves the users from needing their own data bank to work off of.  The publication functions are also supported by the storage system of the app allowing all users to access all publications.