Lara Kelland and her students created a walking tour over Mill Creek, St. Louis.

To inform of the history of African Americans and the damage of the renewal project to Mill Creek. It also describes in a few stories about poverty for African Americans in the St. Louis area. During this point there was segregation and racism. Safe to say it was hard for most African Americans to get by.

Anybody could potentially be the intended audience.

What are the project’s conclusions? In other words, what did the researchers learn after all their hard work?

It concludes that the renewal project did more harm than good. It masqueraded as a project designed to help the neighborhood rather than subjecting its residents to poverty or displacement. This was quite the opposite effect.

The site used is called Clio. Clio is an educational website used to guide users to historical and/or cultural sites in the United States. It used a geographic map of the area to give a walking tour.

It’s hard to determine for sure how long this project took, but we could assume at least a couple months long of a project considering this was recently updated on Clio not that long ago. Lara’s account was made also quite recently.

This project is well informed and holds well with its text. It also uses pictures to give an idea of the conditions or people before 1960s. What buildings and streets they lived in, etc.

This project goes over many places in Mill Creek, and each one had been special to the black community in various ways. However, each site was demolished or replaced. For example, the Pine Street YMCA was not only used for young men to relax using their facilities, but for children to camp outside for an hour every day. Mill Creek had over 20,000 residents displaced or kicked out from their homes. 5,600 housing units, 800 businesses, and 4 churches were also demolished. It is implied that they were kicked from their homes not to improve housing but to demolish these facilities and buildings. This project added context to me as I had never heard of Mill Creek prior to my reading. Probably because I don’t live in the St. Louis area.

-Isaac G.

Introduction

St. Louis has always had a strong soccer culture, but the arrival of St. Louis City SC has transformed the way the city connects with the sport. The creation of CITYPARK brought new energy, investment, and attention to the downtown area. This project explores how the club influences local identity, community engagement, and economic development.

1: Soccer Culture in St. Louis

• St. Louis has a long history with soccer (youth clubs, college success, fan base).
• Before MLS, the city already had a deep connection to the sport.
• The team builds on this identity and brings it to a national level.

2: Community and Identity

• The club promotes inclusivity and community pride.
• Matchdays create a shared experience for fans across different backgrounds.
• The team strengthens the city’s identity as a “soccer city.”

3: Economic and Urban Impact

• Development around CITYPARK (restaurants, businesses, jobs).
• Increased tourism and local spending during games.
• Debate: Are these benefits long-term or temporary?

Section 4: Critical Perspective

• Not all communities benefit equally.
• Cost of stadiums and public funding debates.
• Question of whether sports investments are always worth it.

Conclusion

While economic impacts can be debated, St. Louis City SC clearly plays a major role in shaping community identity and bringing people together through soccer.

Technical Component (Prototype Description)

For this project, I am using ArcGIS StoryMap.

Current:

Created the StoryMap structure, added an introduction slide, and included a map showing the location of CITYPARK

Planned additions:

• Images of the stadium and fan atmosphere
• Map layers showing nearby businesses and development
• Short text sections for each part of the argument

Bibliography

Primary Source:
St. Louis City SC. “About CITY SC.” Official Website, 2023.

Secondary Sources:
Zimbalist, Andrew. “Sports Facilities and Urban Development.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1996.

Coates, Dennis, and Brad Humphreys. “The Economic Impact of Professional Sports.” Journal of Sports Economics, 2008.

Reflection on Progress

So far, I have a clear direction for both the written and technical parts of my project. The biggest challenge is organizing the StoryMap in a way that clearly shows the connection between location and impact. Moving forward, I will focus on adding more detailed visuals and strengthening my argument with additional sources.

Data might seem like simple facts that just exist, but people actually build and shape it. For this post, I looked at the Illinois Landcover in the Early 1800s data set. This data set tries to show what the land in Illinois looked like before big cities, modern roads, and industrial farms changed everything.

Data Set Profile

• Creators: This was made by the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS). They are scientists who study the plants and animals of Illinois.
• Sources: They used old government land maps from the 1800s made by the General Land Office.
• Why it was made: To help scientists see what nature was like originally so they can try to fix or protect it today.
• How it is used: People use it to see how much forest or prairie has been lost over time.
• Format: It is mostly found as digital map files called GIS Shapefiles.

Data Set Evaluation

The way this data is set up is very simple. It puts land into categories like Prairie, Forest, or Wetland. The problem is that nature is not usually that neat. By using these strict labels, the data makes it look like there were clear lines between different areas, even though they actually blended together in real life. This structure makes it easy for a computer to read, but it might oversimplify how the environment really worked.

The creators had to clean up the data because the old 1800s maps were sometimes messy or did not agree with each other. This means the modern scientists had to make their own guesses. For example, what one person back then called a swamp, another person might have called a wet prairie. These choices change how the final map looks today. If the scientists chose one label over another, it might hide some of the small, important details of the original land.

We also have to think about who made the original maps. The surveyors in the 1800s were not scientists; they were government workers trying to divide the land so it could be sold. They mostly cared about what the land could be used for, like farming or finding wood for building houses. Because of this, they probably ignored how Indigenous people managed the land with things like controlled fires.

This makes the data set a map of what the government wanted to use, not just a map of pure nature. I would use this data to compare how much the state has changed since the 1800s, but I would remember that it is just one point of view. It is a helpful tool for class, but it shows the land through the eyes of people who saw it as property to be owned.

How do we define “community” across a river and a state line? I use Voyant Tools, to perform a distant reading of two distinct locations in our region: St. Louis, MO and Edwardsville, IL.

By shifting from a close reading to a quantitative view ), we can see the skeletons of how these places are described in historical and modern encyclopedic entries.

The Texts & The Question

For this analysis, I compared two comprehensive overview texts:

1. Text A: History of St. Louis
2. Text B: Edwardsville, Illinois

My Research Question: Does the language used to describe “community” in a major urban center like St. Louis differ fundamentally from the language used for a smaller, satellite city like Edwardsville?

The Hypothesis

After skimming the texts, I noticed St. Louis is often framed through global spectacle and social friction (the World’s Fair, segregation, industrial power), while Edwardsville is framed through foundational lineage and institutional growth (settlers, the University, local industry).

Hypothesis: When compared in Voyant, the St. Louis corpus will show a higher frequency of words related to power, spectacle, and social division, whereas the Edwardsville corpus will emphasize stability, education, and individual pioneers.

The Results:

I uploaded both texts into Voyant. To test the hypothesis, I primarily used the Summary and Bubblelines tools.

1. Word Cloud (Cirrus)

In the St. Louis text, terms like world, fair, city, and exposition dominated. Interestingly, words like segregation and space appeared with high density, supporting the idea of social friction. In the Edwardsville text, the dominant terms were county, university, settlers, and industry.

2. Comparison

The Bubblelines tool allows us to see where specific terms appear across the timeline of the text.

• Industry vs. Education: In Edwardsville, education and university (SIUE) appear as a massive bubble toward the end of the text, signifying it as a modern community anchor. In St. Louis, industry and spectacle are concentrated in the middle (the Fair era).
• People vs. Names: Edwardsville’s text is heavily populated with specific surnames (Edwards, Stephenson, Kirkpatrick), suggesting a community built on biographical lineage. St. Louis’s text uses more collective or abstract terms like visitors, organizers, or groups.

Conclusions

The data largely supports the hypothesis. Distant reading reveals that the identity of St. Louis in these texts is one of transformation and tension—a city trying to prove itself on a global stage. Conversely, Edwardsville’s identity is portrayed as incremental and institutional, defined by its transition from a settler outpost to a regional educational hub.

Through Voyant, we can see that community isn’t just a feeling; it’s a specific vocabulary. For St. Louis, community is often defined by how it manages (or fails to manage) its masses. For Edwardsville, community is defined by the names on its street signs and the growth of its local institutions.