ST. LOUIS, Missouri — The problem with growing cities is that they use optimism to build stuff a shrinking city can’t afford.
The number of people living in St. Louis hasn’t been growing for a long time now, but the list of water pipe repairs sure has been.
The pipes are old. Some of them have been in the ground since Grover Cleveland was in the White House. They run for 1,300 miles under the streets of St. Louis. The city that was once home to 800,000 people now holds fewer than 300,000. It’s that kind of shrinkage math that keeps Niraj Patel up at night…