ABSTRACT
The region as a whole is institutionalized in several ways, among them by the Leadership Council of Southwestern Illinois, which includes the six civil communities plus eastern Madison County, and the Kaskaskia Development District in Madison-St. Clair county which are urbanizing areas pointed away from St. Louis. First of all, as a metropolitan area it has become known as the Southwestern Illinois Metropolitan Region, thus giving no county preference over any other, nor counties preference over other forms of political organization within the four-county area. Edwardsville looks quiet and exurban, not like a suburb but like a little city in its own right, although clearly part of a larger metropolitan region. Across the line in St. Clair County, the three civil communities are East St. Louis, a virtually all-black ghost town at the eastern approaches to St. Louis with a population that had dropped to 41,000 by 1990.
