In writing the blog I’ve come to learn a tremendous amount about Kirkwood, St. Louis, housing, transportation, and urbanism from the work of others. It also often takes a lot of time surfing the internet before you can find that work. In an effort to speed up that process of discovery, here are some sources I’ve found tremendously helpful over the years.
Blogs
These three blogs have been especially beneficial for me and my understanding of walkability and related concepts. Pedestrian Observations (left) by Alon Levy is probably the most important and prolific transit blog in the world today while NextSTL (middle) and CityScene STL (right) have great stories (and tweets)about St. louis development, urbanism, and public policy. While little of this specifically concerns Kirkwood, almost all of it can be applied to Kirkwood.
Books
These four(-ish) books have taught me about half the things I know about housing, urbanism and walkability. Beyond that, they’re also just enjoyable to read. Walkable City Rules (more of a handbook of how to put walkability into action) and its predecessor, Walkable City itself, give a toolkit of simple ways to make cities better from a planning perspective (and, perhaps more importantly, does an excellent job of explaining how). The Life and Death of Great American Cities is the foundational text on which walkability was built. Although Jacobs has gained her fair share of detractors in the years since she was duking it out with Robert Moses for the streets of New York, I still think American Cities does a great job of explaining all the counterintuitive ways cities fundamentally work (or don’t). Finally, Golden Gates gives the origin story of the YIMBY, pro-housing movement as well as how we got into the housing crisis in the first place in a way that is incredibly colorful and about as close to a page turner as a non-fiction book can be. Kirkwood unfortunately does not have an independent book store I can recommend but I would trust Left Bank Books in the Central West End with my life (and certainly with the responsibility of procuring my books).
Kirkwood Masterplans, Budgets, and Studies
Kirkwood has, for better or worse, spent a tremendous amount of resources on studies conducted by some of the top planners in the industry. For all that money you might as well have access to them. The city’s website hosts downloadable versions of all the recent plans here. Some of these plans overlap (and in some cases contradict) one another and some are better than others but for my money the “Downtown Master Plan and Parking Study” conducted by DPZ and the Housing Study are probably the most focused, progressive, and important. The city budgets can be found here.
Kirkwood History
If you’re interested in the history of Kirkwood there are a couple really cool resources that fly under the radar. For some really cool old pictures of the buildings that used to comprise downtown and the ones that remain checkout the Kirkwood Area Facebook Page. More academic resources can be found at both the Kirkwood Historical Society and Kirkwood Public Library where you can learn just about anything that you’ve ever wanted to know about Kirkwood.
Residents have also led an extraordinary efforts to compile a history of the southern portion of Kirkwood from pre-history all the way to present day that you can read here. And a similarly in-depth account of the history of Meacham Park can be found here.
If you know of any other great resources that you think should be added here, please do let me know!