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Most posts in this thread are not worth a response, but yours are consistently level-headed and mature.
Though your perspective seems broader and more thoughtful, you nonetheless still seem to share a tendency with the hard-core "urbanites"....that of placing an intrinsic value on downtown, urban areas that no longer exists for most people and hasn't for more than a half-century. My question is why?
You use the term "graduating" to describe a general movement from suburban life to spending more time downtown. You do realize, don't you, that the typical Overland Park resident's immediate ancestors "graduated" to a far superior life quality with a move in the opposite direction many years ago?
For most, I believe today's pro-urban evangelism is knee-jerk and a direct result of the social programming that they have been subjected to from birth. In other words, it's a fad. And would be completely unsustainable in the absence of a constant drum-beat of PC peer pressure that attempts to turn the reality of the suburban/urban life quality comparison on its head. That PC peer pressure peaked a few years ago and is on a steady decline as people have had enough.
The suburban/urban debate ended long ago and most are not going back....save for some feeling an obligation for a few youthful years to play the urban game expected of them in "progressive" circles.
I think your perspective is broad enough to understand this, so you're one of the few to whom I would direct the question why? Why even pay lip-service to a pointless upstream push against people's innate desires?
Then explain why other cities have very successful urban cores and downtowns. Denver is one of those cities, and it's not all young people living in the urban core to be part of some "fad". YOU personally seem to have a strong dislike of urban environments, but there are also people who prefer an urban environment.
Interesting that people like KC_Sleuth, Garethe and denverian are able to discuss this topic, compare the difference (positives and negatives) of KC to other cities, while others, generally locals just pull out the trolling card and have little else to say.
LOL. Interesting you only like the people that agree with you.
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In KC you have to go clear out to freaking Shawnee Mission Park to get even a taste of what an active park is like. I can’t think of a city that doesn’t have such a park “in the city”.
??? Loose Park and Mill Creek Park both seem way more busy than SM Park to me, maybe I'm in the wrong part of SM Park when I visit? I get what you're saying, there should be a large urban park that is busy, like Forest Park. I put that on the Parks Board, for letting PV Park fester and not doing enough to promote development around it and keep the riff-raff out. We really need to set up a "Friends of Penn Valley Park" like they did with Loose Park, to make the park all that it could be. Crown Center and Union Station would have a vested interest in making that a great place. So I agree, that is a laudable goal to work towards.
See? I'm trying to come up with solutions. I think you probably have a few kernels of truth in your ramblings, but it just reads like a laundry list of "why you Kansas Citians suck, signed, out-of-towner", which is why you're getting so much blowback. How bout acknowledging what is working, the progress we have made, pointing out where more could be done, and helping us find solutions to these problems? I mean like the conservative developers, what the hell are we supposed to do about that? We already have one of the most lavish incentive programs for development. You can't force people to spend money. I wish I had that kind of clout to influence developers, but I don't. We've fortunately elected a mayor who is a great cheerleader for the city, and many mid-sized projects have taken root. I think once you build up population with residential developments, the companies will come. And the city has done a great job incubating small businesses so that the NEXT Sprint, or Google may very well already be downtown.
I feel like your entire conversation is just a long way of saying "Kansas sucks, they offer too many incentives and are killing downtown". I don't necessarily disagree, but you are turning off even your allies with your rhetoric.
No, they are not. They are being herded - just like cattle - toward urban environments by "progressive" social forces (PC) that have seized peer-pressure power at a level unprecedented in American society. Today's youth don't dare miss a step in harmony with their peers for fear of instant and brutal ostracization. That is all that drives them....and it remains to be seen if and when they will - for the first time in their lives - consider that their own interests may not align with their mentors and the "progressive" BS that they've been force fed for their entire lives.
If anything, I'm even further from understanding your position. Because below you describe the real graduation from the relentless stress of city life to the elbow-room, peace, and relative safety of the suburban environment.
The desire for those qualities is innate....has not changed and will not change. The push back toward urbanism does not come from desires within individual hearts and souls. It is contrived and it is forced....and a surrender to it puts an end to American freedom as we knew it for more than two centuries.
For every one it is becoming "more attractive" to, there are 100 to whom it is not....and never will.
Johnson County not only complements KCMO, but has supplanted it in importance to the metro and its future.
So, urban living is all part of some liberal conspiracy? lol!
Again, just because YOU don't want to live in a condo in an urban neighborhood doesn't mean that others don't want to. I don't want "elbow room", or sleepy, quiet neighborhoods. The only reason I live in a single family house is because I have kids. But I'm still near downtown, and my next door neighbors are 10' away. I like human interaction and activity.
The point is that in a balanced metro area, you can have a great urban environment AND great suburbs. Everyone gets what they want. KC does not have that.
Hmmmm, sounds like KC isn't the only city with with divisive suburbs...but kcmo would never admit to that. This only happens in KC, even though the article doesn't even mention KC.
Interesting commentary in that blog regarding "being in love with your own story." I get where the author is going with it...but, IMO, KC could stand to be a bit more in love with its own story, frankly...in the sense that when you're in love with your own story, it's important to you to continue writing new chapters. I know the blogger meant something slightly different with that phrase, but those are the thoughts that sprang to my mind.
The problem I have with the transit center is the impression it gives off. Yes, thousands of people legitimately use the place on a daily basis. But that is not what future investors and tourists will see. Instead, they will see the skinheads from the half-way house parked there on a daily basis during the warmer months, loitering, selling and actively using dope. I realize it needs to be centrally located, but neither of the max lines stop there so I don't get the purpose of that particular, highly visible location.
My "off" feeling the first few times I experienced downtown KC was the lack of the big city hustle/bustle vibe that I have felt almost everywhere else I've been to. There was no electricity in the air. It was just dead, even around P/L, the convention center, or River Market, all places I would expect to see throngs of people which define thriving downtowns in most peoples minds. Rain or shine. Weekend or weekday. Day or night. Nothing seemed to influence the volume of people.
Maybe it is just the experience we grow up with as some of the posters have shared. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, so to me going downtown was an exciting and special time because we didn't get to do it every day. The tall buildings, State St, Michigan Ave, Lake Shore Drive, it filled me with awe and wonder from the very first time I set eyes on it.
I don't necessarily have anything against suburbs either, my chief complaint is the car centric mindset. The burbs would attract more big city dwellers if they made it easier for city folk to transition to them. And vice versa for that matter.
I'm not sure the city size is a factor because as I was working the previous paragraph my experience in Dallas came to mind. Their downtown had a dead feel too, and it's probably 2 or 3 times larger than KC, plenty of hotels, and room to spread out. But unless it's state fair time, I never heard of any suburbanites express the desire to go there. This was also the only time car owners wanted to use light rail it seemed.
Interesting commentary in that blog regarding "being in love with your own story." I get where the author is going with it...but, IMO, KC could stand to be a bit more in love with its own story, frankly...in the sense that when you're in love with your own story, it's important to you to continue writing new chapters. I know the blogger meant something slightly different with that phrase, but those are the thoughts that sprang to my mind.
They are certainly not "in love with their own story" in Cincinnati. Maybe vis-a-vis Columbus, which they kind of invariably dump on as being bland and suburban, kind of forgetting the fact that there a swath of urban Columbus which is denser than anything in Cincy, and there's really good infill there, to say nothing of the blandness of the Cincy suburbs, but I just chalk that up to intra-state rivalry.
My experience in Cincy is that there a lot of the same anti-urban, anti-transit, anti-neighborhoods, anti-core city sentiment there is in KC (and most other places) , and there is certainly a large segment (like the overwhelming majority of the city) of the Cincy that is fairly suburban development-wise, very single family, very, very autocentric, fairly anti-development, and basically content with things exactly how they are (in Hyde Park, or Mount Lookout or Columbia-Tusculum). Which is more or less pleasant. Cincy is quaint, charming, sleepy, not at all bustling, family-oreinted, and quite simply, not very big. Its a small midwestern city. So is KC. So are Indy, and Columbus. And that's just how small-ish midwestern cities are. Fairly conservative (culturally, not politically), slow-paced, and modest. There are boosters in Cincy, but they are a small minority. Most Cincinnatians tend to have the same everything sucks, nothing to do, Cincy is so boring, I got to get out of here, mentality as people in KC. There is slightly more swagger and bluster in St Louis and Cleveland, but its still the minority voice. Most people there complain about how boring and slow-paced they are. The grass is always greener...
I'm pretty sure there a lot of people in Ann Arundel County that don't think its the hippest, most happening place on earth either.
You're one of the most insightful, open-minded (albeit blunt) posters on this site. I follow your threads/posts with great interest, mainly because you're patriotic about KC, but also not afraid to express your honest opinions when you feel something isn't right. I know you have a special connection to KC; you even stated you were born and raised here and have family that go back generations here.
But this thread (and its title) just sound way too cynical and not like you at all. It's as if you gave up and are now painting with broad brush strokes when referring to "those typical KC people" and how "anti-urban, anti-city" they are. You've talked this way about JoCo a lot, but now you're lumping the entire metro population into this category? Sometimes it breaks my heart when people tear into KC like this.
Don't get me wrong -- criticism can be good, especially if it's constructive. But I think you need to look more at the big picture and not marginalize this city based on what it lacks. It's always good to address our city's shortcomings every once in a while (especially when it's warranted). But you shouldn't do it too much, because then you run the risk of stepping on toes and getting more negative reactions from people.
Please don't feel like you need to leave this forum altogether; I personally would really hate to see you go. You may think people here hate you, but if you really think about it, that's not true at all. I've read a lot of your posts and most people on the KC forum (whether they agree with you or not) are civil and are not cold or mean-spirited.
Ignore the trolls, but don't ignore all KC residents.
For the record, there are more pro-urban/pro-city types in the KC metro than you realize (sometimes it depends on the age group). I would agree that there's not enough VOCAL people on the scene, but I wouldn't completely abandon all hope for our city's civic pride. You may think it doesn't exist, but it does.
Thanks for the post and you are right. But, people don’t realize that for every negative post I post about kc, there are probably 50 positive ones on the internet promoting the great things about KC. People in KC seem ultra-sensitive though. I post what I think are negatives about other cities in other forums and it generally leads to discussion about why and what can be done or what is being done to address such issues.
I have always been this way. People hated me when I said downtown was a joke in the 90’s and I was one of the most vocal people in the entire metro area to get something done with it (pre P&L District etc). "But we have the City Market and Quality Hill" they said. I'm like great, now lets address the rest of downtown. I was in constant contact with people like Mayor Barnes, Wayne Cauthen and Kevin Gray of the sports commission (who sadly passed away suddenly due to cancer recently). These are the types of people that KC needed. Then I was just as vocal about electing Funkhouser predicting it would be one of the worst decisions ever made in KC and it was. KC lost at least four years of proactive economic development by electing him.
I was extremely vocal about replacing Kemper and moving the Ballpark downtown, just as I am now about KCI’s terminal needing replacement. I was part of the initial team that started pushing for the renovation of Union Station when nobody thought it was worth the effort. I pushed for the restoration of Liberty Memorial, when all anybody ever said was “why? It’s just a hang-out for gay sex”. I was a member of the FOTZ when it sucked and even though it sucked, I was vocal about making it better and comparing it to other zoos all the time, yet we went many times a year and I always pushed others to join FOTZ. While I’m a bit burnt out on transit in KC, I was probably one of the biggest vocal pioneers about getting something going with that putting tons of time into all the community studies, city backed plans and even supporting the Chastain plans. Regardless of your opinion of Clay Chastain, he got a city wide vote to pass and that should have been used as leverage to get voters to modify his plan rather than scrapping it. KC will NEVER get a city wide vote for transit again.
I don’t get why the city has spent nearly half billion dollars on the convention center and pays 15 million a year in debt service to support the P&L district yet won’t build the one thing that would help justify and reduce the city’s cost of both while bringing in new eco revenue (a modern convention center hotel). If you are going to spend a billion dollars to make your city an attractive convention destination, spend the last 100-200 million to build the hotels needed to land the conventions and drive traffic to the P&L district reducing debt service to that.
I'm very supportive of neighborhoods and have pushed for the abolishment of the KCMO school district and brought up all the racial issues tied to that and all the risks as well (pushing all families to Kansas schools which have always been safe from MO side school issues). South KC should not be ghetto and I hate it when projects like Prarie Fire in Kansas get massive incentives while Bannister Mall gets no attention. The Cerner office park going in there is nice, but man, the city could have gotten so much more from such a major project if people in KC would just stand up and make it happen. With a billion in incentives, that should be more than offices and surface parking. Yet if I say that, I'm a troll. But I will say it many times and people will eventually seen in ten years what a wasted opportunity that project was for South KC by not making it more mixed use and tying it to the surrounding community.
At the same time, I pushed for KCMO to get its suburban northland going. The northland was KCMO's answer to Johnson County and gave it a way to compete for suburban residents and office parks, yet the city didn't use it as a way to compete with Kansas and didn't even really start putting in proper infrastructure up there till the 90's. Now they have a nice suburban area rather than farmland and those residents up north while still might be anti urban, they will be FAR more likely to support urban KCMO than suburban Kansas or even suburban Jackson County. The Northland was a desperately needed double edged sword.
So there is some method to my madness, it’s just very aggressive and blunt and people don’t like that. Personally as passive as KC residents can be, I think you have to be blunt or nothing ever changes.
Finally, I was not painting a broad brush that all people in KC are anti-urban. I fully understand that KC has plenty of passionate pro urban residents and I know many of them. As you mentioned, my family is multi generational urban KCMo (a rarity). But the region as a whole most definitely leans suburban. Even most that live in the city limits of KCMO will lean more suburban than urban due the geography of the city. I stand by my personal opinion that KC has more anti city aggression than most cities. Sure you can bring a few other cities up like St Louis that have similar problems, but does that mean that KC should ignore its problems? I have lived in St Louis. I actually think St Louis has a more regional connection to urban StLouis than KC despite StL having just as much suburban bigotry. Hard to explain, but there is a regional “city” pride in StL that doesn’t exist at that level in KC. But yea, there are lots of people in KC that want to see urban KC thrive. I just think they have a lot more resistance and hills to climb than you find in most cities today.
And the corporate community in KC sucks. No way around that. The city has leaned on Hallmark about as long as it can and Hallmark has been great. American Century does what it can. But by far and large the corporate community of KC has completely turned its back on urban KC compared to what you see in just about any other major city. Sorry, but that’s the truth. KC’s companies love the cheap suburbs and it has had a pretty dramatic impact on KC’s ability to bring back downtown (and the entire urban core) at a faster pace.
I wouldn’t post here if I hated KC. Yes, lots of great things are happening and it had turned from mostly crap to something pretty cool with pockets of great urban activity. But it’s all relative. You can’t become complacent, you should never think you are peaking because compared to most cities (except a few rustbelt ones), KC has not even reached a normal level of urban revival yet.
Most people are quiet about KC’s shortcomings. I’m not, never have been, probably never will be. I’m the same way now with DC and Baltimore and I come to love both of those cities as well.
Hope that makes sense, but digress and will stand down on KC's negatives for a while. Lots of great things happening right now.
I know what you mean about people "graduating" to the suburbs. That's no doubt true, but that was a long time ago! There's simply renewed interest in urban areas and a lot of the problems (civil rights, race riots, crack epidemic, etc.) are in the past now. Now, people are "graduating" back into urban environments. A lot of people don't know anything about urban environments and are afraid of them and what I meant by my comment earlier is that familiarity (stuff you find in the suburbs) might help people be more comfortable and adjust to an urban environment, at which point they could start exploring and taking more advantage of that an urban-specific environment has to offer. I think a lot of people would like the choice of an urban environment, but just don't realize it until they see what can be. I also think college and college towns are a huge experience that creates a desire for an urban, lively environment. I mean, when you experience something like Mass St in Lawrence on a regular basis and all of the energy of going to a big university, going from that to living in a quiet suburb can be kind of depressing in a way.
One major obstacle for KC with this urbanist trend (and I'll set aside the argument whether it's a cyclical or permanent trend) is its core school district.
Until there are open-to-the-public, locally-funded, locally-managed, suburban-quality high schools, you will exclude a huge part of the urban renewal experience from Kansas City. Even the pockets of substantial wealth that still exist in Kansas City's urban core must utilize private schools, and the middle class simply cannot afford that.
If each of these pockets of urbanism -- Downtown/ Crossroads; Volker/ Roanoke; Westport/ Plaza; Brookside/ Waldo became its own school district, with its own high school, the city would absolutely take off.
One major obstacle for KC with this urbanist trend (and I'll set aside the argument whether it's a cyclical or permanent trend) is its core school district.
Until there are open-to-the-public, locally-funded, locally-managed, suburban-quality high schools, you will exclude a huge part of the urban renewal experience from Kansas City. Even the pockets of substantial wealth that still exist in Kansas City's urban core must utilize private schools, and the middle class simply cannot afford that.
If each of these pockets of urbanism -- Downtown/ Crossroads; Volker/ Roanoke; Westport/ Plaza; Brookside/ Waldo became its own school district, with its own high school, the city would absolutely take off.
Although I would point out that there are several viable charter school and independent school options that do not fall under the private/parochial level, I agree very much with this point. At this point, urban living in the portion of the core that is under KCMO District jurisdiction is limited to those who don't have kids, those who do have kids and the means to go the private school route, those who do have kids and happened to be able to gain charter school access through a lottery system, those who can and will homeschool, and those whose primary option is to take the school district as it is.
People can't deny that having an unaccredited school system serving the heart of urban KCMO is a major hindrance in ability for growth. To do so would be just plain silly. All urban areas have public schools that struggle. NOT all urban areas have public schools that have been stripped of accreditation and seen half their facilities shuttered in one fell swoop.
Plus I can't believe that since I left KC in 1986, the downtown skyline really hasn't changed.
Well, there really is no need. Kansas City is not growing as fast as many other cities, particularly those cities out west. I remember when Wichita built that brownish, pointy sky scraper downtown that is the tallest building in the city. It was completely unnecessary and now sits half empty.
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You do realize, don't you, that the typical Overland Park resident's immediate ancestors "graduated" to a far superior life quality with a move in the opposite direction many years ago?
