Four years ago East St. Louis officials pinned their hopes for urban renewal on a casino riverboat, following the lead of several other cities along the Mississippi River. A lot, actually. The passengers on the commuter trains bypass East St. Louis itself, and it turns out that prosperity has bypassed the city as well. Both figuratively and literally, the casino is its own world. A tall security fence with two watchtowers separates the boat from the city.
Guards patrol the perimeter.
A similar fate may await Chattanooga and Detroit, Miami and Las Vegas, and several other cities that, like East St. Louis, have spent millions of dollars subsidizing privately operated entertainment attractions. For sure, these glitzy projects can inspire the weary. Yet cities like Detroit may be in for an unpleasant surprise when they discover that the carnival city model requires constant and expensive reinvention just to remain competitive and, thus, economically viable. Although local governments try to disguise public funding for these projects as taxes on tourists or special bond measures, inevitably money spent on these carnival attractions is money not spent on other, more worthy public investments. Boosters justify stadiums in terms of their power to catalyze area business, which benefits the city with increased tax revenue.