Plans Forming to Treat Growing Region’s Stagnant Population As Urgent Problem
Date Posted: June 23, 2025
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, What we are thinking about,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A growing number of civic and business groups are highlighting the metropolitan area’s stagnant population as an urgent problem, and they’re pushing the region’s planning organization to do something about it.
Backers of the effort say they have so far secured a dozen resolutions from professional associations and civic organizations asking the East-West Gateway Council of Governments to coordinate a plan that both puts population growth at the center of the regional agenda and recommends steps to reverse its stall.
It’s the latest in a long history of efforts here to reverse demographic headwinds that have beset many of the nation’s former industrial powerhouses. The St. Louis metropolitan area, anchored by what once was one of the nation’s largest cities, has grown far slower than many metro areas, and a falling birth rate threatens to tip it into population decline in the near future.
“We are in trouble,” said Chip Casteel, a veteran public policy executive who is working on the latest effort. “We don’t recognize we are in trouble. But we are in trouble.”
Many of the previous attempts to reverse the slide focused on St. Louis city. Now that a declining birth rate threatens to saddle even suburban jurisdictions and businesses with some of the issues the city has grappled with for decades, they’re sounding the alarm.
A lot of the interest in the issue is coming from St. Charles County businesses and governments, Casteel said.
“Their growth has now slowed to a trickle, and they see it coming and they want to do something about it,” he said.
He is working with Joe Blanner, a lawyer and co-founder of industry group Construction Forum, to build support for a push to get East-West Gateway to add a regional plan for population growth to its portfolio of initiatives, similar to how it facilitated the Save Lives Now! regional crime reduction strategy.