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Thanks to the guy who, it appears, joined C-D simply to post that "Johnson County is a world-class city" — which it isn't, despite it having a very high QOL, great school districts and the second-biggest city in Kansas (Overland Park) within its borders; I'll explain why it's not in a minute — I saw this thread for the first time.
Like kcmo (who I met in passing some years back when I was visiting Washington, DC), I am a native Kansas Citian who left to attend college (in 1976) and never moved back. And like him, I've always been fond of my forever hometown, but since 2006, when I came back for a high-school reunion (Pembroke Hill, for those familiar with the local education universe) and discovered just how cool my hometown had become, I've come to love it even more.
Even though I'm not likely to return there to live, were that to happen, I would very much enjoy every aspect of the city, warts and all, save one: It's a drive-everywhere place. Even though the bus system is now unified once again under the management of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, RideKC's bus service has actually gotten much worse since I left 46 years ago. I was disappointed to learn that of the 50-plus routes the KCATA operates, only one — Prospect MAX. the newest, which serves the side of town I grew up on and many of you who are white will likely never set foot in except to visit the Kansas City Zoo in Swope Park — operates at 15-minute intervals. More than half of them operate at frequencies of once an hour or less. Chances are that this won't matter at all to most of you reading this, but IMO good public transportation is as essential to a well-functioning city as attractive parks, affordable housing, decent schools, regular trash pickup, reliable utilities and plenty of things to see and do, all of which KC either has in spades of has enough of that you can find them easily.
(The wildly popular downtown streetcar is operated not by the KCATA but by a separate agency, the Kansas City Streetcar Authority.)
Some things have changed since kcmo first wrote the initial post: That waterpark in KCK with the supertall slide closed permanently after the son of a Kansas state representative got decapitated riding it, touching off a scandal about amusement-park safety. The Harley-Davidson motorcycle plant also closed. And one of the big local family-owned companies, Russell Stover Candies, sold itself to Swiss chocolate-maker Lindt, which at least operates it as a standalone subsidiary much as Belgian brewer Duvel operates Boulevard Brewing Company. (I joke that between Hallmark Cards and Russell Stover Candies, KC owns Valentine's Day.)
I did, however, want to pick one other nit besides the one that prompted me to make this post. In his original post, kcmo refers to Kansas City, Kansas, as a "suburb" of Kansas City, Mo. It really isn't. Even though it has about one-third KCMo's population, it does have a recognizably urban downtown (if small), and it has proportionally more heavy industry than KCMo does thanks to two large railroad yards and the Fairfax Industrial District, the nation's first planned industrial park. Its first component city, Wyandotte, was incorporated a mere eight years after the Town of Kansas to boot. IMO a better term to describe it would be "satellite city." Maybe even "junior partner."
The "city" in Johnson County is an "edge city" — Overland Park, which was home to Sprint before T-Mobile swallowed it. In form, the edge city is highly spread-out and extremely autocentric, even more so than the two well-known Northeast edge cities of Tysons outside DC and King of Prussia near where I live now. Its original downtown is cute, but clearly a small-town prairie downtown that got overrun by the bedrooms of commuters to downtown KCMo.
It is home to the only botanical garden in the KC metro area, but it lacks all the other cultural institutions that make a great city great — those are found in KCMo. Its residents consume the same major media that KCMo residents consume, most of which are located in the latter. (KCK, on the other hand, still has its own daily newspaper, by comparison — or make that had one: looks like it too got gutted by the same rapacious forces that have deprived cities large and small across the country of local news reporting.)
Don't get me wrong: If wnat you want is a suburban community with plenty of employment opportunities within its borders, lots of decent shopping, many good restaurants, and great schools, you will find JoCo hard to beat. You just won't be living in "a world-class city" — you will be living in the suburbs of one.
A lot has changed since you left in 1976. Kcmo has one of the highest murder rates in the country and the power and light district is a failure that drains money from the city’s general fund every year. Basically all the high paying job growth has been in Kansas. Johnson County actually has the largest economy in the area now and is the most densely populated county. Overland Park is actually listed as a principal city according to the Us census website which uses tho OMB. Kcmo is fine if you’re just visiting but I wouldn’t live there.
A lot has changed since you left in 1976. Kcmo has one of the highest murder rates in the country and the power and light district is a failure that drains money from the city’s general fund every year. Basically all the high paying job growth has been in Kansas. Johnson County actually has the largest economy in the area now and is the most densely populated county. Overland Park is actually listed as a principal city according to the Us census website which uses tho OMB. Kcmo is fine if you’re just visiting but I wouldn’t live there.
Actually, I can believe that OP has a higher population density than KCMo. That's because the city has pretty much built out to its limits, while KCMo still has about 100 or so square miles of land within its boundaries still planted in corn and soybeans. I suspect that if just the urbanized part of the city were measured, the densities would be roughly equal, or a little higher for KCMo. And that's even after taking into account the emptying-out of much of the old Black section of the pre-1946 city à la St. Louis' north side.
I also know that the P&L District is a fiscal millstone around the neck of KCMo City Hall. I wrote about the district for Next City back in 2015. But did you see me cite it as one of the reasons KC is still the region's center and OP an edge city? BTW, the population of the Crossroads Arts District immediately to the south of downtown KC rose something like tenfold from 2000 to 2010, and I believe it's grown at a similarly rapid clip since then. And save for the Kauffman Center (does OP have anything like it?), which the city built a parking garage for, the redevelopment there is all privately driven without taxpayer funding — "organic," if you will, and a true success story. (Full disclosure: One of my friends, a 1977 Sunset Hill grad, lives there and is active in the Downtown Council.)
And the other points I made about the city, and about OP's relation to it, remain true. And the murder rate, while concerning, doesn't negate those facts. I wouldn't live in the neighborhood I grew up in, either, because it has gone downhill since I left it in 1976. But remember, I know that because I have been back on several occasions since 2006 (and am planning to return at the end of this month) and have seen it with my own eyes. There are other parts of KC I would still live in, and as others have pointed out elsewhere on the KC board, the violent crime is largely confined to certain parts of the city.
OP may be a "core city" as listed in the OMB's CSA definition (it's still omitted from the MSA name), and it does have a diverse economy with plenty of employment opportunities — as I said in my prior post. But to call it "an up-and-coming world-class city" all by itself and on its own is both to exaggerate its own assets and importance and ignore where it actually fits in the metropolitan ecosystem. It would be like me calling King of Prussia "a world-class city" when it is where it is because it began as a suburban commercial crossroads of Philadelphia and remains interconnected with the core city culturally and economically. The notion some Johnson Countians have that somehow the county's growth is something completely independent of the existence of the core city may be one of the reasons why my cousins still living there refer to the county with a three-word phrase whose middle word begins with F.
Oh, and: If I understand the figures under "Economy" and "Businesses" in this Census Bureau table, the economies of Johnson and Jackson counties are roughly on par with each other, with Johnson having more activity in some areas and Jackson more in others, and KCMo's economy is still bigger than OP's.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 10-02-2022 at 09:39 PM..
Johnson County is a county, not a city.
It's typical American suburbia, nothing world class or unique.
It is nice enough for what it is, but one can live just as well on the MO side somewhere if they choose to do so.
All this does remind me of one thing I really don't miss about living in the KC area: all the petty bickering between different parts of the metro. They all get to play unique roles, and they should embrace that and work together to make it even better.
That childish infighting isn't something you necessarily encounter much in person when you live there, but it does come up a LOT more than it should.
It really hampers basic things like the public transit situation that has been mentioned.
KC has always been high crime. It's no excuse and certainly nothing to brag about, but it's not like things have gotten that much worse since the 70's, when they had car bombs going off in the River Quay (Market).
Things like the Power & Light will be fine. The Royals look to be moving down that way at some point, which can only add to the growth down there. https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news...ontinue-growth
I suppose there are always different angles when looking at something.
You can check the gross domestic product of each county on the bureau of economic analysis county tables here https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/fi.../lagdp1221.pdf Johnson County is at about 45.9 Billion and Jackson County is about 41.7 Billion. The only other place in the country like this is St. Louis County and Oakland County Michigan. Where the highest economy is way out of the original city. Really bad urban decay places. Also Johnson County’s median household income is 91K vs Jackson at only 56K. As far as Johnson county not being a city it’s basically one urban connected area. You can’t tell if you’re in Lenexa or OP or Olathe unless you already know. And the major streets are in perfect grid form
Last edited by Joco a world class city; 10-03-2022 at 03:32 AM..
The only thing the news article was saying is that tourism numbers have risen. A lot of storefronts are still empty and the city’s general fund is still being drained to pay for the P&L.
The only thing the news article was saying is that tourism numbers have risen. A lot of storefronts are still empty and the city’s general fund is still being drained to pay for the P&L.
The last sentence remains true, but no, it also notes that the downtown residential population has risen.
The figure cited in the article is about twice what it was when I was doing the research for my 2015 Next City article on the P&L District.
One of the critics of the district I quoted in the article was R. Crosby Kemper III, scion of one branch of the city's most prominent banking family and chair of the Kansas City Public Library board. (He gave great quote, btw.) I agree with him that the real (or the better) attractions that draw people from both outside the area and within it are the ones that rose organically, specifically, the Crossroads and Westport. (BTW, here's an interesting factoid for you all to chew on: The "First Friday" art gallery crawl is an institution closely associated with Philadelphia's Old City neighborhood, an 18th- and early 19th-century warehouse and commercial district that was transformed by the opening of art galleries in the early 1980s. Kansas City's Crossroads "First Friday" was launched the same year as the Philadelphia one: 1981. And I still remember marveling that it took me something like 15 minutes to find a parking space in the Crossroads when I went there on a First Friday in 2015 and that the streets had plenty of foot traffic on them.)
On a subsequent trip Back Home — my most recent, in 2018 — the crowds that thronged Westport on the weekend had swollen to the point where the city closed the streets feeding its principal intersection, Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue, to car traffic from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and set up police checkpoints where entrants were asked to show ID proving they were of legal drinking age. Kansas City Live! may have the Jumbotron screens to accommodate a horde of Super Bowl-crazed Chiefs (or Series-bound Royals) fans, but it never has had that level of activity, AFAICT.
However, both the visitor numbers and the residential population growth suggest to me that the P&L District can't be called a total failure. An unwise investment, sure; that $295 million could have been spent on something of greater benefit to the city and region as a whole, like decent bus service. But not a total throwing of money down a rathole, at least not if the luxury apartment towers remain filled. OTOH, Kemper's point holds because the city didn't have to spend a dime on Westport, and the Kauffman Center parking garage was a drop in the bucket compared to the pile Cordish Companies got.
To sub's point: One of the things the leaders of Philadelphia's suburbs finally learned sometime in the 1980s was that the fates of metropolitan regions rise and fall in concert with those of their core cities; a poorly performing core city is a drag on its suburbs, and a city in good shape makes its suburbs stronger too. Thus a better Philadelphia was also something that made for a better Montgomery County. "Better Together" has been using this to drive its argument that the 1876 "Great Divorce" between St. Louis City and St. Louis County should be undone, and the 70-some municipalities in St. Louis County haven't bought it so far. Nor has anyone proposed that Montgomery County, Pa., be reattached to the county it was separated from back in 1777. It's not necessary for one government to cover the entire metropolitan area (though David Rusk argues in Cities without Suburbs that such an arrangement would produce a better-functioning and better-performing city government) for city and suburbs to work together for the betterment of all. The three counties you mention haven't learned that lesson yet, Joco is a world class city (and sub is also right here: even if its municipalities are contiguous and uniformly built out, they're still separate, and counties and cities aren't the same unless and until they consolidate, as a slew of cities did in the 19th century and again starting in the 1960s; JoCo's one actual city is Overland Park, with Mission and the county seat of Olathe as satellites; all the rest are still suburbs). And their metropolitan areas are not as strong as they could be as a result. Yes, that includes Kansas City.
I wonder if that still holds true since the 80s and metropolitan areas look a lot difference since then. A lot of the white flight happened in the 80s , I’m not an economist but I would wonder why cities like the phoenix area are booming when Phoenix is a bad core city imo.
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