A widely held piece of local wisdom says that St. Louis, not Chicago, could have been the center of Midwestern commerce had civic leaders in the mid-19th century not been so slow to build a railroad bridge across the Mississippi River.

Some years ago, I made this claim in something I wrote about attitudes of early 21st-century civic leaders. The next day I got a call from James Neal Primm, emeritus professor of history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and author of "Lion of the Valley," still the standard history of St. Louis.

Primm, who died two years ago at 91, said he'd spent years trying to stamp out the "we could've been Chicago" claim. Eastern railroad interests always favored Chicago, he said. St. Louis never had a chance.

I bring this up because I'm wondering if St. Louis really has a chance with this whole "aerotropolis" thing. For those who came in late, "aerotropolis" is the awkward word being used as shorthand for the effort to persuade the Missouri Legislature to approve $360 million in tax credits to jump-start an international cargo hub at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

Promoters say the "China Hub" could be as important to Missouri in the 21st century as the completion of the Eads Bridge was in the 19th century. The Legislature, being the Legislature, fumbled the ball and failed to pass the bill this spring. Gov. Jay Nixon has been trying to get consensus on the larger issue of tax credit reform before calling a special legislative session to reconsider the bill .

It could be argued that $360 million is a lot of money to suck out of underfunded state services over eight years, particularly when the business community won't get out in front on tax reform — unless it's cutting business taxes.

It could be argued further that St. Louis is coming a little too late to the aerotropolis rodeo. According to John D. Kasarda, the University of North Carolina professor who consults around the world on the aerotropolis concepts that he pioneered, and Greg Lindsay, who wrote the book about those concepts, St. Louis is behind the eight-ball, aerotropolis-wise.

In March, Kasarda and Lindsay published a fascinating book called "Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next," arguing that the successful cities of the future will reconfigure themselves around huge airports. In a flat world, the argument goes, cities will live or die depending on their access to air cargo hubs. The most successful cities will have both passenger hubs and cargo hubs.

For Lambert Field to become a true aerotropolis, the way Kasarda defines it, it would have to spawn not only warehouses and distribution centers, but also hotels, shopping malls, residential areas, research, industrial and technology parks, a free-trade zone and even some green space.

Right now the aerotropolis crowd in St. Louis would settle for a couple of China Air 747s a week.

South Korea is building a full-tilt aerotropolis from scratch. So are Thailand and Dubai. China may build 50 of them. Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands is up and running. In the United States, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver have a leg up with passenger and corporate headquarters hubs.

On the cargo front, Louisville, Ky., with the UPS hub, and Memphis, Tenn., with the FedEx hub, have a big head start. Many other U.S. airports, including Chicago O'Hare, are landlocked or at capacity.

Ah, grasshopper, where does St. Louis fit in? True, it has plenty of capacity and a central location. But it has no hub airline anymore. It has a famously uncooperative quilt of state and local governments. Compare that with China, where Kasarda once heard a government minister say, "Democracy sacrifices efficiency."

But St. Louis does have Clayton lawyer Steven Stone, whose cousin is Stephen Perry, whose father was Jack Perry, a British dress manufacturer who in 1953 was part of the trade delegation that opened the door to Mao's China.

Stephen Perry is now managing director of the London Export Corp., and he does a lot of business in China. The Chinese, it seems, are very loyal (up to a point) and have given St. Louis its shot at aerotropolicity. But like U.S. capitalists, the government of China socializes risk with tax subsidies whenever possible. Jobs are trump.

If you believe the gospel of John Kasarda, St. Louis has no choice but to become part of China Inc. Once the last manufacturing jobs move overseas and the last retailing jobs get sucked up by the Internet, what else are people going to do for a living? Hey, even Detroit is working on an aerotropolis.

"Aerotropolis" (the book) acknowledges that working in a warehouse or distribution center is actually a pretty cruddy job, but front-office and executive jobs may — may — follow if the freight-forwarding piece works out.

Still, the Labor Department's most recent unemployment statistics for large metro areas showed the rate for St. Louis at 8.6 percent. It was 9.5 percent in Louisville and 10.1 percent in Memphis. Apparently the air cargo hubs for UPS and FedEx are not magic.

Maybe St. Louis will beat Chicago (and Dallas and Detroit and other aerotropoli) this time around. Maybe we should all rush out and buy land in Kinloch and Woodson Terrace.

The big question is whether the average Lambert Aerotropolis worker, having been semi-educated in resource-strapped Missouri schools and unable to afford a Missouri higher education, will be able to afford those flat-screen TVs the Chinese drop off.