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As should the patronizing attitude by out-of-towners.
So this is all you have to say about that post? Interesting. I guess if you ignore things, they don't exist.
Myself, I always wonder. Why does the KC area, a city and metro area smaller than Seattle or Denver have twice the blight and crime? That will be something I will always try to answer and something I will always take seriously. KC is not an old rustbelt city that is not growing and is losing more than average jobs. It's a been a relatively fast growing metro with a diverse employment base. So why does KC have problems that compare to Cleveland or Pittsburgh when it has the economy and growth that is more like a Denver or Minneapolis? It always comes full circle to race and sprawl/blight.
As many cities as I have visited, only Detroit has more overall blight and just massive entire areas of the metro that are just failing due to sprawl. How can a 4 million sq ft shopping area can go away in KC overnight. That's not even possible in most metros because there is no place for that 4 million sq ft to go. You can't just open a new mall every five years five miles down the road or in some new field further and further out. So in Seattle, and Denver and yes, DC, they continue to redevelop areas rather than run from them.
Why do you almost never see black people in areas like the plaza, crown center, brookside, crossroads and downtown (other than near bus stops and city hall) in a city that has a high percent of blacks?
My dad went to Ruskin in the late 50's. Back then, it was a highly thought-of suburban school much like Lee's Summit or Blue Valley is now, if I'm not mistaken. Thier band even went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade one year. I've had several family members go there since. Sounds like the decline happened over a span of 2-3 decades. Very sad how people just give up and move out.
Ruskin was quite well regarded up to the late 1970's. After the high rise public housing of Wayne Miner was demolished and much of the public housing population was moved to single family housing in the Hickman Mills/Ruskin/Bannister areas the public schools in those areas went rapidly downhill, rapidly.
True. Moving so much of the HUD housing to that area in the 70's-80's also had a lot to do with the decline of SKC.
But I wish somebody would do some serious research as to "why" it may have had such devastating results, if in fact it did play a huge role in the decline of the area or was it just a reason "after the fact" to justify white flight.
From what I know the KCMO Housing department is (was) as corrupt as they come. They were mismanaged and really had no idea what they were doing outside of embezzlement and other troubles that eventually led to a federal takeover.
First off, I don't think mass section 8 can work in single family housing because there is no way to control and maintain the property to the extent that you can with multi-family housing. It would be too expensive and nearly impossible to force every renter to properly maintain each of the hundreds of homes scattered thourougt SKC. While in multifamily situations, you can more easily maintain common grounds and monitor tenant activity. Now I'm not talking about the "projects" like Wayne Miner or any of the other original public housing projects in KC, most of which are now gone and replaced.
The new "projects" could be done with town homes, row houses, smaller apartment buildings and garden apartments to provide housing for the poor in more suburban areas without simply buying single family homes and giving them to section 8 families with little to no oversight which will ultimately destroy a neighborhood all for the PC benefit of "everybody deserves a house". I do think the city has learned some as they are now replacing projects with town homes like Guinotte Manor rather than buying single family homes in the Northland.
The Bannister area should be studied to death and then a book published about the results should be given to every city planner or student studying planning in the country.
A LOT can be learned from this disaster in SKC of how race, public housing, sprawl, natural disasters etc can effect an area.
1) I'm intending to go to the plaza this weekend.
2) It's a slow news week and trouble on the plaza is rare so there you go.
3) You've ventured over to the Kansas forum on MANY occasions to rip the place a new one and yet cry here about the same treatment. Sorry, but you should realize that you are part of the problem as well (we both know I can provide examples if asked). I do generally enjoy your posts though....just realize that to many of us transplants the whole metro feuding thing is dumb.
I would like to see these posts! And they can't be something that is in reply to somebody ripping on something MO. It has to be something "I" started. I may have, but I honeslty don't think I do anything other than correct people when they say stupid stuff like the MO side is unsafe, the MO side schools are bad, Indepedence is ghetto etc. I do visit the KS forums, because many topics related to KC end up there and if you read enought, you might even see that I defend KS pretty often. I actually think it's a nice state. I just don't like a lot of things about Johnson County. Sorry.
I had a retired educator tell me this, "The uneducated drop outs can't leave, they marry each other, have kids who become uneducated drop outs who can't leave either " It is a burden on the economy of a city if it has to support to many uneducated people. Kids who are educated well go off to college and sometimes don't come back.
Good paying industrial Jobs in KCMO supported a lot of people on both sides of the river. Even as far back as the 50's there was practically a convoy of people driving from North Western Wyandotte county to work in KCMO. The Lewis and Clark Viaduct was like the Oregon Trail.
I think the Grand Children of a lot of those early industrial workers always though they too would get one of those high paying jobs regardless of their education. The school get all of the blame an unfairly so. Some of blame should be shared by families who have not taught their kids to Value education. That's what happen when you have high paying jobs for high school drop outs.
Something I have heard (albeit from a casual source) that a township in Pennsylvania is requiring a diploma to get a job there, any job and a two year degree to work in a trade. That's how you "cleaned up" a city.
I think the plaza riot is the beginning of the End if the problems in KC aren't address aggressively. If people feel like they are being profiled let them Slug out in Court
So I go to the Star's website to catch up on KC news and there was a shooting in a Blue Springs QT, two people were shot and killed in Lee's Summit and some dude was shot and killed in Shawnee. I also see that NKC schools are laying off 80 teachers? That's at lot for that size of a district. I mean disctricts out here have 150,000 students in them and they are avoiding any teacher layoffs. KCMOSD is laying off 700. You know the crime in KC may have something to do with the overall low taxes there (not enough for schools) and of course the racial tension there. Not really sure what the hell is wrong with KC anymore, but I have been thinking at lot about it.
Do you know that we shop at malls out here all the time that would go out of business in a year if they were in metro KC? I go to a mall and I see Bannister Mall right before all the whites fled like cockroaches. A very diverse population racially, culturally and economically. But still a thriving shopping, dining area. Sure, you will see groups of black teens at a movie theater, but you can walk right by them as a white family and not think twice about it. Bannister Mall was fine. As a person interested in urban planning since I was in middle school, I watched what happened with Bannister Mall with far more interest and detail than the average KC person, plus I lived and worked near there. The mall DID NOT GET BAD TILL EVERYBODY QUIT GOING THERE. Once the whites left, there was not enough people to support the area and it quickly turned bad. I'm not sure you will see an example of 4 million square feet of retail going up in a growing suburban area, becoming one the nation's hottest suburban retail areas and then failing and closing all in a matter of 7-10 years anywhere in the country. All due to racial tension. The guard towers, the city buses (people in KC freak out with "bus people", god they wouldn't last 2 seconds here), the media coverage (imagine KCTV times five since Bannister Mall was much easier to destroy for sake of media revenue than the beloved Country Club Plaza), although KCTV has no such allegiance.
I think much of KC's problem goes back to race from blacks and whites. I think the whites still flee from blacks and I think the blacks resent that and generally resent whites in the KC area while at the same time, a good number of un-educated blacks in KC are stuck in a rut of "the whites keep me down". I think this creates instances where it's difficult to get 20 blacks together in KC without creating problems or having "thugs" among them. Where here, it seems like the thugs are generally replaced with teens of other races. If that makes sense. Basically here, most groups of teens you see are very racially diverse. A few blacks, a few whites, a couple of asians, a hispanic all sitting together at a Chipolte being teens.
Whatever it is, the problem is huge.
Out here, people dot not think twice about a black family moving in next door or even if an entire block became black. In KC that still causes white flight. Maybe it's because you can't just move ten miles to a white area, few areas like that exist or it may be too expensive or increase commutes too much. This may have forced better integration. I don't know.
This plaza thing for example. I understand there were thugs among the group that were getting a kick out of all the attention they get from the police state environment they create with choppers buzzing around to the mass exodus of "paying customers". But how do they know this? I have a feeling it's because in KC, if a group of 10 young blacks show up to a movie theater, they see the tension in the whites, they see the security presence increase instantly.
If these kids return to the same movie theater more than once, the theater quickly gets a reputation as "a bad area" even if the kids did nothing you wouldn't see from a dozen white kids at the Leawood Town Center theater.
As young adults, they could feed on this resentment and hostility and dumb as it is, start to mess with police and innocent people.
I don't know what the answer is but I had a huge wake up call when we first moved to DC.
We were in a suburb, an middle class to upscale suburb, but a suburb that is probably 50% black and 30% white. As we were driving near a strip mall, a half dozen or so black teens walked by my car. They actually looked like they were walking to the convenience store from school or something, some had backpacks.
My 12 year old son asked. "Are we were in the ghetto?"
From that day on, I have been somewhat relieved to get away from the Midwest because I guarantee you that I didn't teach my son that, but he picked it up from people he associates with be it friends or family.
I proceeded to tell him that those are just "normal" kids! They are just walking, maybe to get a soda, just like you do with your friends to Sonic!
DC is FAR from racial utopia, but much of it is light years ahead of places like KC. I don't know what the answer is, but we still have a long way to go to fix it. The entire country. KC is just about 20 years behind. Kind of like everything else, cough transit cough .
I know exactly what you're saying about the racial tensions. When I moved to Dallas from KC, I expected much of the same basic structure and treatment I'd gotten back home. I figured everything would be as segregated as it was or is in KC. To my surprise, it's not even remotely close. Not only is the Dallas metro more integrated than the KC metro, but the different racial groups are cordial with one another. There are no racial tensions here.
So I go to the Star's website to catch up on KC news and there was a shooting in a Blue Springs QT, two people were shot and killed in Lee's Summit and some dude was shot and killed in Shawnee. I also see that NKC schools are laying off 80 teachers? That's at lot for that size of a district. I mean disctricts out here have 150,000 students in them and they are avoiding any teacher layoffs. KCMOSD is laying off 700. You know the crime in KC may have something to do with the overall low taxes there (not enough for schools) and of course the racial tension there. Not really sure what the hell is wrong with KC anymore, but I have been thinking at lot about it.
Do you know that we shop at malls out here all the time that would go out of business in a year if they were in metro KC? I go to a mall and I see Bannister Mall right before all the whites fled like cockroaches. A very diverse population racially, culturally and economically. But still a thriving shopping, dining area. Sure, you will see groups of black teens at a movie theater, but you can walk right by them as a white family and not think twice about it. Bannister Mall was fine. As a person interested in urban planning since I was in middle school, I watched what happened with Bannister Mall with far more interest and detail than the average KC person, plus I lived and worked near there. The mall DID NOT GET BAD TILL EVERYBODY QUIT GOING THERE. Once the whites left, there was not enough people to support the area and it quickly turned bad. I'm not sure you will see an example of 4 million square feet of retail going up in a growing suburban area, becoming one the nation's hottest suburban retail areas and then failing and closing all in a matter of 7-10 years anywhere in the country. All due to racial tension. The guard towers, the city buses (people in KC freak out with "bus people", god they wouldn't last 2 seconds here), the media coverage (imagine KCTV times five since Bannister Mall was much easier to destroy for sake of media revenue than the beloved Country Club Plaza), although KCTV has no such allegiance.
I think much of KC's problem goes back to race from blacks and whites. I think the whites still flee from blacks and I think the blacks resent that and generally resent whites in the KC area while at the same time, a good number of un-educated blacks in KC are stuck in a rut of "the whites keep me down". I think this creates instances where it's difficult to get 20 blacks together in KC without creating problems or having "thugs" among them. Where here, it seems like the thugs are generally replaced with teens of other races. If that makes sense. Basically here, most groups of teens you see are very racially diverse. A few blacks, a few whites, a couple of asians, a hispanic all sitting together at a Chipolte being teens.
Whatever it is, the problem is huge.
Out here, people dot not think twice about a black family moving in next door or even if an entire block became black. In KC that still causes white flight. Maybe it's because you can't just move ten miles to a white area, few areas like that exist or it may be too expensive or increase commutes too much. This may have forced better integration. I don't know.
This plaza thing for example. I understand there were thugs among the group that were getting a kick out of all the attention they get from the police state environment they create with choppers buzzing around to the mass exodus of "paying customers". But how do they know this? I have a feeling it's because in KC, if a group of 10 young blacks show up to a movie theater, they see the tension in the whites, they see the security presence increase instantly.
If these kids return to the same movie theater more than once, the theater quickly gets a reputation as "a bad area" even if the kids did nothing you wouldn't see from a dozen white kids at the Leawood Town Center theater.
As young adults, they could feed on this resentment and hostility and dumb as it is, start to mess with police and innocent people.
I don't know what the answer is but I had a huge wake up call when we first moved to DC.
We were in a suburb, an middle class to upscale suburb, but a suburb that is probably 50% black and 30% white. As we were driving near a strip mall, a half dozen or so black teens walked by my car. They actually looked like they were walking to the convenience store from school or something, some had backpacks.
My 12 year old son asked. "Are we were in the ghetto?"
From that day on, I have been somewhat relieved to get away from the Midwest because I guarantee you that I didn't teach my son that, but he picked it up from people he associates with be it friends or family.
I proceeded to tell him that those are just "normal" kids! They are just walking, maybe to get a soda, just like you do with your friends to Sonic!
DC is FAR from racial utopia, but much of it is light years ahead of places like KC. I don't know what the answer is, but we still have a long way to go to fix it. The entire country. KC is just about 20 years behind. Kind of like everything else, cough transit cough .
There seems to have been an uptick in violence lately. Not sure why.
As for racial integration, my immediate neighborhood in Independence has recently become quite diverse racially (this is a very small sampling). A few black families have moved in as well as Hispanic. I've yet to see any 'white flight'. Maybe that's due to the housing market (I hope not), but it hasn't happened. Go to any of the businesses along Noland, and you'll see people of many different ethnic backgrounds. This seems to have happened in many areas of Indy and I also see it around other parts of the metro.
I do not in any way dispute what you say has happened in the past and still occurs to some extent today, but I do believe the instantaneous migration as soon as a couple of different-looking people move in has slowed down quite a bit in KC.
Yawn. Nothing happened this weekend. Much ado about nothing.
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