Do you consider Overland Park a suburb of KCMO or KCK? (Kansas City: condo, high school)
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OP is a KCK suburb. That is one of the problems with this forum. The Kansas side suburbs should be in the Kansas forum, not the Missouri. The two sides have very little in common.
KCK itself is historically a suburb of KCMO. The only non-kcmo municipality in the region that can really stand on its own, historically speaking, is Independence. So it's named very appropriately.
If you want to argue that suburbs can have suburbs, fine. Perhaps all the suburban developments in western Wyandotte and northwestern Johnson Counties can be suburbs of KCK. And by that token, Blue Springs can be a suburb of Independence. I'm sure Olathe is much bigger as a result of Overland Park's job growth, and you could infer a similar relationship there. But that doesn't mean these exurbs aren't suburbs of KCMO. It just means there's an extra step in between them.
Literally everything in the Kansas City metropolitan statistical area that is not KCMO is a suburb of KCMO. Like I said, the only possible exceptions are old town Independence, and a few other historical little towns that were either annexed by KCMO, or blew up into huge suburbs as a result of KCMO.
Literally everything in the Kansas City metropolitan statistical area that is not KCMO is a suburb of KCMO. Like I said, the only possible exceptions are old town Independence, and a few other historical little towns that were either annexed by KCMO, or blew up into huge suburbs as a result of KCMO.
I think more than a few towns fall into that second category.
In fact, Independence itself does, as most of the territory of that city where addresses follow the metropolitan instead of the Independence city grid developed in response to growth in Kansas City, Mo.
Olathe, Lee's Summit, Grandview ditto.
And, of course, Westport, the community the Town of Kansas was established to supply as a river port in 1839 and which Kansas City annexed in 1898.
But I would quibble a bit with your putting all of Kansas City, Kansas, in the category "suburb of Kansas City, Mo."
The geography of the West Bottoms ignores the state line, and the stockyards and meatpacking houses did as well. Thus "old" Kansas City, Kansas, which was incorporated into the community that took that name along with Wyandotte, Armourdale, Armstrong and Argentine when the five cities consolidated in 1885, was part of the urban "core city" along with the Missouri side of the West Bottoms.
Not to mention that thanks to the Kansas (now Union) Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads, two of those other four communities - Argentine and Wyandotte - had already become "industrial centers" in their own right because of railroad employment. Granted, it wasn't the sort of industry that developed along the Kansas City Suburban Belt (now Kansas City Southern) Railroad's path through the Blue River valley; that wouldn't come to the Kansas city until it developed Fairfax as an industrial park in the 1920s. But Fairfax is only about a decade younger than the old Ford assembly plant (the company's first outside Detroit, opened in 1912 at 1200 Winchester Avenue) and the Sheffield (later Armco) Steel plant next to it, the first two major heavy industrial facilities in the Blue River valley.
There are communities that we call "industrial suburbs," true. Chester, Pa., is one such. But these communities DID have "suburbs" of their own. Chester and Upland townships and Parkside, Trainer and Brookhaven boroughs surrounding Chester City housed workers who commuted to Chester City's shipyards and Ford assembly plant (which opened a year or two after the one in Kansas City).
Western KCK developed largely to house people who worked in its industrial precincts in the floodplains. Hence I'd consider it a "suburb of KCK." Don't forget that it lay completely outside the Kansas City, Kansas city limits until the early 1970s.
The two sides have different cultures. If you don't think so, you have not lived there.
I was born and raised there, and I wouldn't deny that there are plenty of differences between the Kansas and Missouri sides of the region.
That does not mean they're separate entities, however. "Intertwined" doesn't mean "one and the same."
The two halves of a married couple are likewise distinct and different yet form one whole.
Edited to add: And your argument that there is no intercourse between the two halves of the area is indeed total BS. The private school I attended is located right on State Line Road; its upper school buildings and its football field are on the Missouri side of the street, while the parking lots and soccer fields are across the street in Kansas.
In the late 1970s, I was one of four upper school students who resided in ZIP code 64130. Two more lived in 64128. One of my closer friends in my class lived in the Northland. And there were a few classmates whose home addresses ended in ZIP codes beginning with 661. The largest contingent of students lived in these two ZIP codes, in this order: 66208, 64112. If you drive through the most affluent parts of these two ZIP codes - the Country Club District in Missouri and Mission Hills in Kansas - you'd be hard pressed to say for sure that you were in one state or the other without little clues like the color of the street name signs.
My father's family prided themselves on being Missourians since the state was a territory. Mom was a Jayhawk.
Next error you want to posit as truth?
Last edited by MarketStEl; 05-21-2017 at 09:35 AM..
OP is a KCK suburb. That is one of the problems with this forum. The Kansas side suburbs should be in the Kansas forum, not the Missouri. The two sides have very little in common.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bluefox
Ridiculous. I have to assume for your sake that you're joking. JoCo suburbs literally border KCMO. You really think Roeland Park or Prairie Village has more in common with Garden City Kansas than Kansas City Missouri?
I can't put it any better than Bluefox did. The rest of the state had little in common with JoCo/WyCo and a lot of people out here and even in Wichita believe that the states tax dollars for economic development, roads, and other projects are unfairly used in JoCo rather than spread around the state. Even Wichita gets the short end of the short end of the stick when it comes to priority of funding and scheduling on road projects. Basically JoCo, WyCo, and even Leavenworth and Miami County topics definitely belong in the KC form with the MO suburbs. The only gray areas when it comes to what cities do and don't belong lie within Lawrence and St. Joeseph since they're technically in separate metro areas, but are close enough to see a decent number of commuters, especially now that Lawrence is only 30 minutes away from the vast majority of of JoCo and WyCo thanks to the K-10 expansion opening up a faster and safer route into Olathe. Lawrence also benefits as a more desirable bedroom community for Topeka, which is shown by the Payless executives, Washburn faculty, and higher wages government employees choosing to live there, but that's off topic. St. Joe isn't horribly far from the airport area and there have been plenty of posts about people who commute between St. Joe and KCMO as well when the city comes up in discussions.
I was born and raised there, and I wouldn't deny that there are plenty of differences between the Kansas and Missouri sides of the region.
That does not mean they're separate entities, however. "Intertwined" doesn't mean "one and the same."
The two halves of a married couple are likewise distinct and different yet form one whole.
Edited to add: And your argument that there is no intercourse between the two halves of the area is indeed total BS. The private school I attended is located right on State Line Road; its upper school buildings and its football field are on the Missouri side of the street, while the parking lots and soccer fields are across the street in Kansas.
In the late 1970s, I was one of four upper school students who resided in ZIP code 64130. Two more lived in 64128. One of my closer friends in my class lived in the Northland. And there were a few classmates whose home addresses ended in ZIP codes beginning with 661. The largest contingent of students lived in these two ZIP codes, in this order: 66208, 64112. If you drive through the most affluent parts of these two ZIP codes - the Country Club District in Missouri and Mission Hills in Kansas - you'd be hard pressed to say for sure that you were in one state or the other without little clues like the color of the street name signs.
My father's family prided themselves on being Missourians since the state was a territory. Mom was a Jayhawk.
Next error you want to posit as truth?
I worked all across the metro. People on the KS and Mo sides were different as night and day.
I worked all across the metro. People on the KS and Mo sides were different as night and day.
That STILL doesn't mean that Overland Park residents are KCK suburbanites.
They're not. If they're not working in the College Boulevard edge city and thus not intercounty commuters, they're more likely working somewhere in KCMo than they are anywhere in KCK.
That STILL doesn't mean that Overland Park residents are KCK suburbanites.
They're not. If they're not working in the College Boulevard edge city and thus not intercounty commuters, they're more likely working somewhere in KCMo than they are anywhere in KCK.
Right on!! I mean, sure...many residents of Overland Park, Lenexa, Shawnee, and Merriam might have formerly been from KCK, but it's not like KCK once had a population of 350,000. In fact, from 1970 to 2010, KCK only lost less than 25,000 residents. True, quite a bit of the population shifted from inside the I-635 loop to further west out to The Legends and beyond, but still, compared to KCMO, the drop wasn't that great. I'll admit however, I'm not sure what KCK's borders were prior to 1950. KCMO was pretty packed in at that time, and didn't expand until the late 50s and 60s. Their central city was decimated... almost as bad as St. Louis, but if you looked at the population figures, you wouldn't have known, because of all the annexation in the northland and the south.
I guess the point I'm trying to make, is that quite a bit of Overland Park's population likely came from Kansas City MO. But, from 1950 to 2010, the core of the KC Metro Area, doubled from 829,330 to 1,687,103. By the core, I mean the five major counties: Jackson, Clay, Platte, Wyandotte, and Johnson. While Wyandotte lost some population since 1950, and Jackson gained about 130K since 1950, Johnson, Clay, and Platte's population exploded. It also means, that while likely quite a bit of population did flow from Wyandotte and Jackson, quite a bit of that population immigrated from outside the area.
I think more than a few towns fall into that second category.
In fact, Independence itself does, as most of the territory of that city where addresses follow the metropolitan instead of the Independence city grid developed in response to growth in Kansas City, Mo.
Olathe, Lee's Summit, Grandview ditto.
And, of course, Westport, the community the Town of Kansas was established to supply as a river port in 1839 and which Kansas City annexed in 1898.
But I would quibble a bit with your putting all of Kansas City, Kansas, in the category "suburb of Kansas City, Mo."
The geography of the West Bottoms ignores the state line, and the stockyards and meatpacking houses did as well. Thus "old" Kansas City, Kansas, which was incorporated into the community that took that name along with Wyandotte, Armourdale, Armstrong and Argentine when the five cities consolidated in 1885, was part of the urban "core city" along with the Missouri side of the West Bottoms.
Not to mention that thanks to the Kansas (now Union) Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads, two of those other four communities - Argentine and Wyandotte - had already become "industrial centers" in their own right because of railroad employment. Granted, it wasn't the sort of industry that developed along the Kansas City Suburban Belt (now Kansas City Southern) Railroad's path through the Blue River valley; that wouldn't come to the Kansas city until it developed Fairfax as an industrial park in the 1920s. But Fairfax is only about a decade younger than the old Ford assembly plant (the company's first outside Detroit, opened in 1912 at 1200 Winchester Avenue) and the Sheffield (later Armco) Steel plant next to it, the first two major heavy industrial facilities in the Blue River valley.
There are communities that we call "industrial suburbs," true. Chester, Pa., is one such. But these communities DID have "suburbs" of their own. Chester and Upland townships and Parkside, Trainer and Brookhaven boroughs surrounding Chester City housed workers who commuted to Chester City's shipyards and Ford assembly plant (which opened a year or two after the one in Kansas City).
Western KCK developed largely to house people who worked in its industrial precincts in the floodplains. Hence I'd consider it a "suburb of KCK." Don't forget that it lay completely outside the Kansas City, Kansas city limits until the early 1970s.
If you read my comment more carefully, you'll see that I'm allowing for the existence of lots of small towns in the metro that were not originally dependent on KCMO. My point was that all of those towns would likely have stayed small, without KCMO.
Likewise, it's hard to make a case for KCK getting big if not for KCMO. This is borne out by the fact that they chose to copy the big city's name when the four small villages merged to form one municipality. KCMO was already booming, and they wanted to take advantage of that. Therefore, KCK is (despite its industrial nature) one of the original suburbs of KCMO.
KCK itself is historically a suburb of KCMO. The only non-kcmo municipality in the region that can really stand on its own, historically speaking, is Independence. So it's named very appropriately.
If you want to argue that suburbs can have suburbs, fine. Perhaps all the suburban developments in western Wyandotte and northwestern Johnson Counties can be suburbs of KCK. And by that token, Blue Springs can be a suburb of Independence. I'm sure Olathe is much bigger as a result of Overland Park's job growth, and you could infer a similar relationship there. But that doesn't mean these exurbs aren't suburbs of KCMO. It just means there's an extra step in between them.
Literally everything in the Kansas City metropolitan statistical area that is not KCMO is a suburb of KCMO. Like I said, the only possible exceptions are old town Independence, and a few other historical little towns that were either annexed by KCMO, or blew up into huge suburbs as a result of KCMO.
So true!
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