The St. Louis area deserves more respect on a National Level

The city of St. Louis and the surrounding area need to be respected more as a player on a larger national level, the numbers frankly don't lie.

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I have always been fascinated by numbers, numbers don't lie, if you don't like the numbers that's your problem, not the numbers problem, they don't have an agenda. But what you can do with numbers is help to prove or disprove something, and I have some numbers that will help me prove my point that the St. Louis area deserves a little more respect on a national level.

The city of St. Louis has had a rough couple of years with losing their NFL team the Rams and having lost almost 18 thousand people in the city limits between the 2010 and the 2020 census. What most people point out when saying St. Louis isn't that important of a city is the new 2020 census data that says St. Louis has a population of 301,578 people, and that puts STL as the 69th most populated city in the USA right behind cities like Orlando, and Pittsburgh. To give you more context, here in the Quincy/Hannibal region along the Illinois and Missouri border there is a big Cardinals vs Cubs MLB rivalry, well Chicago is the 3rd most populated city with 2.7 Million people NINE TIMES more people than St. Louis (not much of a rivalry there).

Soooooo where does the respect part come in you ask? Yes, St. Louis is overall quite small compared to Chicago, BUT when you look at the Metro Population data from the 2020 census St. Louis goes from the 69th most populated city to the 21st highest Metro Area with a population of over 2.8 million people, which is more than the Orlando area and almost half a million more than the Pittsburgh area. Everyone talks about how amazing Austin, Texas is and how fast it is growing, and yes Austin is up to the 11th most populated city in the country at just under a million people BUT when you add the greater Metro area (which includes the suburbs and surrounding towns that exist because of the larger city) the St. Louis metro area is still considerably larger than the Austin metro area. Even in the state of Missouri Kansas City gets all the love, and even though KC has about 200,000 more people in the city proper, the St. Louis metro area has almost 700,000 more people than the KC Metro area.

I get that people are falling in love with these new cities like Austin, and Nashville, but the St. Louis area is a major population hub that shouldn't be overlooked by any means.