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LMFAO...Okay, T.I., I used to live in Atlanta for a decade and have defended its honor when snotty folks from the coasts deride it, but trust and believe, Atlanta’s arms are too short to box with Chicago’s from a qualitative standpoint as well. And that’s even after seeing the vast improvements that ATL has made to attract tourists over the last decade or so and making the core area more attractive to residents and tourists since the 1990s/2000s or so. It has nothing to do with the city being car centric vs. the more traditionally urban footprint of Chicago (I certainly would not compare Atlanta to Los Angelesnin terms of amenities neither, and they’re both car-centric) . Hell, Chicago has miles of lakefront with beaches. Atlanta doesn’t have that. Chicago has far more museums, a more robust theater scene, has a better bar scene (I’ll concede and say ATL has better clubs though), and has a far superior dining scene, to name a few things.
But to say a city that’s had a population boom for the last 40 years can go to to toe with a city that’s been far more established for far longer in terms of attractions? No way. Chicago has had about a 100 year headstart on Atlanta (which has mostly grown since 1975 or so) , and even with the influx of people who have moved to Atlanta, it has traditionally been about suburban growth rather than strengthening the core (I’m talking about the Downtown/Midtown/Buckhead spine as well as the East Atlanta neighborhoods along with Decatur) up until about 20 years ago. The Loop/Rover North/North aside packs way more of a punch and has for a longer period of time. Atlanta has changed dynamically over a shorter period of time and is ever evolving a lot more than Chicago,which has improved its core drastically, but had the bones to do so as it has been far more established for a longer period of time as it was a larger city when ATL was a mid-size city on the Piedmont. I’m not singling out ATL, because I’d say the same thing about comparing Houston’s amenities to Chicago’s. It might be the fourth largest city, but it didn’t start growing rapidly until the mid-late 20th century like ATL did, and is a reflection of those times.
Hey, I’m trying to help you out and save you some time by not creating a thread comparing the two. It’ll be a bloodbath. You don’t have to agree, and that’s fine, but like I said...this ain’t the hill you want to die on, son. Atlanta may function as a regional hub for the Southeast the way Chicago does for the Midwest, but it’s obvious that it doesn’t have quite the amenities that Chicago has from a qualitiative standpoint, much less a qualitative one. Nor would I expect it to. Trust and believe, I’m not saying ATL is boring or lacking in amenities, but it pales in comparison to Chicago. You mention SF and DC further down, and ATL is definitely a slight drop down from those cities too. It is what it is.
While Chicago holds its own in terms of amenities, it doesn’t hold a candle to NYC to me. But because it grew to be the second largest city at its peak, its civic leaders had the wherewithal to develop the city and create attractions becoming of that status. It also grew and boomed around the same time as NYC did too, so has a similar ethos to it in terms of development, so comparison between those two cities would make a bit more sense due to the times they developed compared to the cities that grew later down in the sunbelt. These things take time, Atlanta is still catching up with developing amenities becoming of a metro of its size. Keep in mind that back in 1980, there were only about 2.5 Million people in the metro area. Very few metro areas have had the boom in population that Atlanta has, and it takes time for cities that endure that type of growth to cultivate and develop the attractions and amenities.
Well, you took the figurative ambiguous semantical structure of my post way too far, Patna.
Joking aside, yes, Chicago has things Atlanta doesn’t. That’s not saying much. In context of every day life, for the large majority of people, you’ll find lots qualitive similarities between them,Chicago just often having more of it.
As far as LA, yes it is car-centric, but larger than both combined. LA being a beast world city doesn’t change the fact that I can get in my car and have access to most of things Chicagoans have access by more efficient means. Other than that, I mostly agree with your post, but I wasn’t really saying Atlanta compared much as city overall. Most of Atlanta’s things are found in Sandy Springs, Smyrna, Alpharetta, etc. it’s identity is more dependent on things throughout the metro, for sure.
MetroLink runs underground elevated at grade in it's own right of way. At this time it doesn't serve as a street car.
No, but St. Louis is also getting one of those, in the Delmar Loop.
As I said before, it's in the transit department that St. Louis has clearly made greater strides than Kansas City. But that may also be because Kansas City has the least congested traffic of any city in the country - or the hemisphere.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Be Proud
You are pretty defensive. Attempting to disicredit me because you disagree is not fair.
I have lived in Milwaukee,El Paso,Phoenix,Albuquerque,and some other smaller cities for different periods of time including much larger cities like Atlanta,Ive have spent considerable amount of time in KC/STL also.
I never said they were not "peers" but in my opinion(which is what it is),those cities have just as much or more to offer,yet I still would not think they have as much or more ooffer than cities much larger..Im not referring to just things like economy but things to do and offerings as far as the debt of those offerings.
Nashville has a much bigger tourist economy so why would it make since that those cities could compete?Charlotte has a much more booming and growing economy.
I mean I dont pretend to know but I am a foodie.I read many publications about diffeent cities food options.
Atlanta is often mentioned and even smaller cities like Charleston, Even Nashville gets press lately about its food scene as well as Charlotte.
Charlotte as well as Atlanta have top restaurant chains that are found often in NYC.True also about hotels and such.
I dont claim to know everything but if Im wrong please give some examples.
Naming one hospital,or naming two amusement parts while neglecting major attractions in Atlanta as one poster did is not proof of anything.
The biggest attraction in KC and STL is the Arch.I also enjoyed the Westward Expansion Museum.Only thing I remember in KC is the art Museum and the park on the hill with the great views.
I am impressed with the new things K.C. has added but its noting different found in most growing cities.
Which park, on which hill?
You could be referring to two different sites in Penn Valley Park, which lies at the south edge of the greater downtown.
One is the site of the National World War I Memorial (aka the Liberty Memorial), just south of and overlooking Union Station. The view of the downtown from its promenade has become nearly as iconic as the other one...
...which is about a half-mile to the west, at the site of the statue known as "The Scout." The view of the downtown with the statue in the foreground has historically been THE iconic view of downtown Kansas City.
Or were you referring to the view across the West Bottoms, where the Missouri and Kansas rivers meet, from Lewis & Clark Point, the place where, in 1838, U.S. Sen. Thomas Hart Benton proclaimed a great city would rise around the bluff he stood on?
Quote:
Originally Posted by meep
I don’t think Atlanta blows it away, but probably just off the strength of Atlanta being Atlanta. If the poster is black, Atlanta probably does blow them away. This is not say Atlanta is only for blacks, but the things it offers for us culturally and eventwise can not be matched. Maybe DC.
But as far as my original point, when you have two distinct metros growing alongside one another in the same state you have the potential to have two places with their own flavor, this could be more interesting to some than Atlanta’s mega-metro model.
More on this below, riffing off a relevant Census stat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by First24
I couldn't let this go.
A diverse and vibrant corporate base is a city's crown jewel for many reasons.
- Increased tax base
- Economic growth and prosperity
- Airport growth. A large corporate base is a key factor in determining airline traffic and route growth.
- Each major corporation has their own micro-economy revolving around it. Home Depot, for example, has numerous supplier companies that may set up offices (corporate or back office) and/or warehouses to be near their biggest client. All of this means is that attracting one major corporation, beyond the immediate impact of their own employee base, could draw dozens or more jobs from it's supplier and spinoff companies.
- Philanthropy/Sponsorships.. Many large corporation desire to place a stamp on their home city and to help it stay or become a better place to live. This is for a number of reasons, a couple are to be able to retain & recruit new talent and to give the company a good public image.
- Help to recruit other major corporations to the city. Companies within a city's existing corporate base are some of the best recruitment tools the city has. They let others companies know that the city/state offers a good business environment.
Topic..
Pitting both Kansas City & St Louis against one Atlanta has made for an ackward thread.
Both KC and StL are decent cities in their own right with good legacies, however both have been left in the dust by their true peer cities like; Minneapolis, Denver and Seattle. While, Charlotte, Austin, Raleigh and Nashville are catching up fast.
One can talk about the traffic and sprawl of Atlanta all they want but how would Kansas City be able to handle a population growth of around an additional 4 million residents in the span of 38 years (like Atlanta 1980-present)? We will likely never know.
About amenities. It takes time for a city to mature and develop to match it's population.
Definitely not suggesting from an urban standpoint that Atlanta will be like Chicago, but how long did it take Chicago to catch up to it's massive growth then mature into the world city it is today?
Honestly, a Chicago vs Atlanta thread would suck. Any Sunbelt city going up against C-D homers holy grail issues of urbanity and density is going get layed to waste.
A thread with.. KC vs Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Cincy, Indy or Austin could be interesting without the inevitable troll-fest of a Chicago-Atlanta matchup.
First, addressing the diverse corporate base:
One reason Kansas City doesn't have more Fortune 500 companies is because some of this city's largest and best-known firms are privately owned - and their owning families have managed to avoid the dissension and dissipation that usually leads to their sale.
The largest and best-known of these is one I'm sure all of you recognize: Hallmark Cards Inc.
The Hall family, all of whose sons attended the same prep school this kid from the East Side of town did, have been both incredibly good stewards of their patrimony and shapers of the city: Crown Center, the mixed-use development that surrounds Hallmark Cards headquarters, is a master-planned, privately financed urban renewal project with only one real rival in the U.S.: New York's Rockefeller Center, similarly conceived and financed on land still owned by Columbia University.
One of their donations to the larger city, a collection of photographic art Hallmark had amassed over the years, enhanced the collections of another institution created partly by the founder of one of those private companies: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
When the estates of Kansas City Star founder William Rockhill Nelson and teacher and real estate heiress Mary Atkins were combined in 1930 to endow the new museum, only one art museum in the nation had a larger pot of money with which to acquire art (are you ready for it now?): New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Personal aside: The Star was the first newspaper I wrote for professionally, as an intern in 1976, and I attended the city grade school named for its founder.)
In more recent times, the Nelson-Atkins has been greatly expanded and its collections broadened through the generosity of another founder-owner of a privately held household-name company headquartered in Kansas City: Henry Bloch, the "H" in "H&R Block." (The "R" is his brother Richard; the two founded America's tax preparer in the mid-1940s after having done their friends' and relatives taxes for a few years. They changed the spelling of their last name in the company's name so people would pronounce it right.)
Just a few blocks away from the Nelson-Atkins is a newer museum that fills a hole in the Nelson-Atkins' collection: the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. This institution, along with a sports arena that has for years been but soon will cease to be the home of the city's big livestock show, the American Royal, bears the name of another great local philanthropic family - the Kempers, whose two branches control the city's (and the Central Plains') two largest banks, Commerce Bancshares and UMB Financial.
All of these families continue to spread their largess across the Kansas City landscape. They're a big reason why the city punches above its weight.
The reason why this thread is as contested as it is is because Atlanta does too, only on a larger scale economically. Here's the stat for you; it shows the latest (2018) Census estimates of city populations, their rank among the country's 50 largest cities and the change from 2017:
37. 488,943 -- 6,825 Kansas City city, Missouri
38. 486,290 -- 13,323 Atlanta city, Georgia
The two cities - and their metros - were also close in population in 1960; then as now, Kansas City was larger, but the metros (KC's was about 1.2 million or so at the time, big enough to put it in the top 25) were much closer in population to each other at the time. And KC's was larger then as well.
(N.B.: Kansas City's population remains about 19,000 below its 1970 peak of 507,330. Atlanta's, unless I'm mistaken, is higher than it's ever been before.)
One reason why Atlanta has grown much faster is because of a shrewd public-relations move on the part of its leadership around that time. While Birmingham, which was about Atlanta's size (city and metro) in 1960, showed the world images of fire hoses trained on black civil-rights protesters, church bombings and Sheriff Bull Connor, Atlanta promoted itself as "the city too busy to hate." (It also began planning for the rapid transit system it now has in 1961, by the way.) That image-polishing helped attract capital from outside the region to the city that might have gone to Birmingham, or somewhere else, had it not been for the Civil Rights Movement, which Atlanta gingerly embraced.
That embrace, symbolic though it may have been, was enough to make a huge difference in the city's fate - and it probably helps account for Atlanta's status as the Mecca for African-Americans who have decided to return to the South.
Atlanta has cultural institutions similar to those in Kansas City, but I'd say Kansas City's operate at a level above Atlanta's - where's Atlanta's answer to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts? (Oh, there's another philanthropic local family whose company was privately held: the Kauffmans owned Marion Laboratories, since sold to another much larger pharma firm. Ewing Marion Kauffman is also the man who brought Major League Baseball back to Kansas City by establishing the Royals in 1969, and the foundation he started is a major researcher and promoter of entrepreneurship, especially among the disfavored. It has three core missions: improving education, especially in and around its hometown; helping entrepreneurs succeed, no matter where they are; and keeping Kansas City "a major league city" as Kauffman wanted it to be.)
IOW, as I and some others have maintained, Kansas City (especially) and Atlanta are closer to each other than some Atlantans (it appears) might think. The major difference is that Kansas City has over time become an "established, older" slow-growth metropolis while Atlanta became a Sun Belt boomtown. Coca-Cola and Ted Turner, to name just two, have done much for that city, but not so much as to put it way out of Kansas City's league.
No, but St. Louis is also getting one of those, in the Delmar Loop.
As I said before, it's in the transit department that St. Louis has clearly made greater strides than Kansas City. But that may also be because Kansas City has the least congested traffic of any city in the country - or the hemisphere.
The Vintage trolley in the Delmar Loop was a stupid move. Its basically a tourist contraption that should have never happened.
St Louis city has approved public funds for a north south Metrolink expansion. From my understanding, the system will run at grade as a glorified street car similar to the one in KC. It is a much needed addition to Metro Transit.
KC has an excellent freeway and Boulevard system that is better than St Louis and far superior to anything Atlanta could think of. Now days it cost so much to build LRT that I don't know if it would be worth the investment for a KC type of city.
I’ve been thinking, would huge metros (Chicago another example) which dominate their states be better off being in split into two large ones? Missouri is a good example of this, I think.
Which region offers more overall between mid-northern GA (Atlanta) or Mizz (KC/STL)?
Economy:
QOL:
Walkability:
Nightlife/Entertainment:
Dinning:
Growth (potential, two separate well-branded metros could be a bigger lure statewise):
COL:
St. Louis and Kansas City are 250 miles apart from each other. They're not one region, and they don't interact with each other in that way. The only way that might change in the distant future is if Missouri lands the hyperloop and they connect the two cities. Additionally, both metros are bringing in sections of other states into the fold (Kansas for Kansas City and Illinois for St. Louis).
You might be better off looking at two distinct MSAs that come together to make one larger CSA, like San Francisco and San Jose or Washington and Baltimore. Hell, even dual city metros like the Twin Cities or Dallas/Fort Worth might work better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shakeesha
Atlanta is not thinking about either city. Both cities combined still don't come close to Atlanta.
The feeling would appear to be mutual for St. Louis. Chicago will always be its main focus due to their fight for Midwestern domination 100+ years ago and the Cards/Cubs rivalry. It appears to hold true for relocations as well. St. Louisans Secretly Want to Move to . . . Chicago?
No, but St. Louis is also getting one of those, in the Delmar Loop.
As I said before, it's in the transit department that St. Louis has clearly made greater strides than Kansas City. But that may also be because Kansas City has the least congested traffic of any city in the country - or the hemisphere.
Which park, on which hill?
You could be referring to two different sites in Penn Valley Park, which lies at the south edge of the greater downtown.
One is the site of the National World War I Memorial (aka the Liberty Memorial), just south of and overlooking Union Station. The view of the downtown from its promenade has become nearly as iconic as the other one...
...which is about a half-mile to the west, at the site of the statue known as "The Scout." The view of the downtown with the statue in the foreground has historically been THE iconic view of downtown Kansas City.
Or were you referring to the view across the West Bottoms, where the Missouri and Kansas rivers meet, from Lewis & Clark Point, the place where, in 1838, U.S. Sen. Thomas Hart Benton proclaimed a great city would rise around the bluff he stood on?
More on this below, riffing off a relevant Census stat.
First, addressing the diverse corporate base:
One reason Kansas City doesn't have more Fortune 500 companies is because some of this city's largest and best-known firms are privately owned - and their owning families have managed to avoid the dissension and dissipation that usually leads to their sale.
The largest and best-known of these is one I'm sure all of you recognize: Hallmark Cards Inc.
The Hall family, all of whose sons attended the same prep school this kid from the East Side of town did, have been both incredibly good stewards of their patrimony and shapers of the city: Crown Center, the mixed-use development that surrounds Hallmark Cards headquarters, is a master-planned, privately financed urban renewal project with only one real rival in the U.S.: New York's Rockefeller Center, similarly conceived and financed on land still owned by Columbia University.
One of their donations to the larger city, a collection of photographic art Hallmark had amassed over the years, enhanced the collections of another institution created partly by the founder of one of those private companies: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
When the estates of Kansas City Star founder William Rockhill Nelson and teacher and real estate heiress Mary Atkins were combined in 1930 to endow the new museum, only one art museum in the nation had a larger pot of money with which to acquire art (are you ready for it now?): New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Personal aside: The Star was the first newspaper I wrote for professionally, as an intern in 1976, and I attended the city grade school named for its founder.)
In more recent times, the Nelson-Atkins has been greatly expanded and its collections broadened through the generosity of another founder-owner of a privately held household-name company headquartered in Kansas City: Henry Bloch, the "H" in "H&R Block." (The "R" is his brother Richard; the two founded America's tax preparer in the mid-1940s after having done their friends' and relatives taxes for a few years. They changed the spelling of their last name in the company's name so people would pronounce it right.)
Just a few blocks away from the Nelson-Atkins is a newer museum that fills a hole in the Nelson-Atkins' collection: the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. This institution, along with a sports arena that has for years been but soon will cease to be the home of the city's big livestock show, the American Royal, bears the name of another great local philanthropic family - the Kempers, whose two branches control the city's (and the Central Plains') two largest banks, Commerce Bancshares and UMB Financial.
All of these families continue to spread their largess across the Kansas City landscape. They're a big reason why the city punches above its weight.
The reason why this thread is as contested as it is is because Atlanta does too, only on a larger scale economically. Here's the stat for you; it shows the latest (2018) Census estimates of city populations, their rank among the country's 50 largest cities and the change from 2017:
37. 488,943 -- 6,825 Kansas City city, Missouri
38. 486,290 -- 13,323 Atlanta city, Georgia
The two cities - and their metros - were also close in population in 1960; then as now, Kansas City was larger, but the metros (KC's was about 1.2 million or so at the time, big enough to put it in the top 25) were much closer in population to each other at the time. And KC's was larger then as well.
(N.B.: Kansas City's population remains about 19,000 below its 1970 peak of 507,330. Atlanta's, unless I'm mistaken, is higher than it's ever been before.)
One reason why Atlanta has grown much faster is because of a shrewd public-relations move on the part of its leadership around that time. While Birmingham, which was about Atlanta's size (city and metro) in 1960, showed the world images of fire hoses trained on black civil-rights protesters, church bombings and Sheriff Bull Connor, Atlanta promoted itself as "the city too busy to hate." (It also began planning for the rapid transit system it now has in 1961, by the way.) That image-polishing helped attract capital from outside the region to the city that might have gone to Birmingham, or somewhere else, had it not been for the Civil Rights Movement, which Atlanta gingerly embraced.
That embrace, symbolic though it may have been, was enough to make a huge difference in the city's fate - and it probably helps account for Atlanta's status as the Mecca for African-Americans who have decided to return to the South.
Atlanta has cultural institutions similar to those in Kansas City, but I'd say Kansas City's operate at a level above Atlanta's - where's Atlanta's answer to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts? (Oh, there's another philanthropic local family whose company was privately held: the Kauffmans owned Marion Laboratories, since sold to another much larger pharma firm. Ewing Marion Kauffman is also the man who brought Major League Baseball back to Kansas City by establishing the Royals in 1969, and the foundation he started is a major researcher and promoter of entrepreneurship, especially among the disfavored. It has three core missions: improving education, especially in and around its hometown; helping entrepreneurs succeed, no matter where they are; and keeping Kansas City "a major league city" as Kauffman wanted it to be.)
IOW, as I and some others have maintained, Kansas City (especially) and Atlanta are closer to each other than some Atlantans (it appears) might think. The major difference is that Kansas City has over time become an "established, older" slow-growth metropolis while Atlanta became a Sun Belt boomtown. Coca-Cola and Ted Turner, to name just two, have done much for that city, but not so much as to put it way out of Kansas City's league.
This post is a mouthful. I think you’d be the only person say KC could *individually* compete with Atlanta.
As far as you tagging my post, what exactly is that you want me to see in there?
This post is a mouthful. I think you’d be the only person say KC could *individually* compete with Atlanta.
To be fair, he was speaking specifically about cultural institutions. I don't know much about Kansas City in that regard, but it's common knowledge that in Northeastern and Midwestern cities, those institutions have been mainstays since those cities were late 19th/early 20th century boomtowns and have been cultivated over a longer period of time than those in most Sunbelt cities, whose boom occurred in a later period.
No, but St. Louis is also getting one of those, in the Delmar Loop.
As I said before, it's in the transit department that St. Louis has clearly made greater strides than Kansas City. But that may also be because Kansas City has the least congested traffic of any city in the country - or the hemisphere.
Which park, on which hill?
You could be referring to two different sites in Penn Valley Park, which lies at the south edge of the greater downtown.
One is the site of the National World War I Memorial (aka the Liberty Memorial), just south of and overlooking Union Station. The view of the downtown from its promenade has become nearly as iconic as the other one...
...which is about a half-mile to the west, at the site of the statue known as "The Scout." The view of the downtown with the statue in the foreground has historically been THE iconic view of downtown Kansas City.
Or were you referring to the view across the West Bottoms, where the Missouri and Kansas rivers meet, from Lewis & Clark Point, the place where, in 1838, U.S. Sen. Thomas Hart Benton proclaimed a great city would rise around the bluff he stood on?
More on this below, riffing off a relevant Census stat.
First, addressing the diverse corporate base:
One reason Kansas City doesn't have more Fortune 500 companies is because some of this city's largest and best-known firms are privately owned - and their owning families have managed to avoid the dissension and dissipation that usually leads to their sale.
The largest and best-known of these is one I'm sure all of you recognize: Hallmark Cards Inc.
The Hall family, all of whose sons attended the same prep school this kid from the East Side of town did, have been both incredibly good stewards of their patrimony and shapers of the city: Crown Center, the mixed-use development that surrounds Hallmark Cards headquarters, is a master-planned, privately financed urban renewal project with only one real rival in the U.S.: New York's Rockefeller Center, similarly conceived and financed on land still owned by Columbia University.
One of their donations to the larger city, a collection of photographic art Hallmark had amassed over the years, enhanced the collections of another institution created partly by the founder of one of those private companies: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
When the estates of Kansas City Star founder William Rockhill Nelson and teacher and real estate heiress Mary Atkins were combined in 1930 to endow the new museum, only one art museum in the nation had a larger pot of money with which to acquire art (are you ready for it now?): New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Personal aside: The Star was the first newspaper I wrote for professionally, as an intern in 1976, and I attended the city grade school named for its founder.)
In more recent times, the Nelson-Atkins has been greatly expanded and its collections broadened through the generosity of another founder-owner of a privately held household-name company headquartered in Kansas City: Henry Bloch, the "H" in "H&R Block." (The "R" is his brother Richard; the two founded America's tax preparer in the mid-1940s after having done their friends' and relatives taxes for a few years. They changed the spelling of their last name in the company's name so people would pronounce it right.)
Just a few blocks away from the Nelson-Atkins is a newer museum that fills a hole in the Nelson-Atkins' collection: the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. This institution, along with a sports arena that has for years been but soon will cease to be the home of the city's big livestock show, the American Royal, bears the name of another great local philanthropic family - the Kempers, whose two branches control the city's (and the Central Plains') two largest banks, Commerce Bancshares and UMB Financial.
All of these families continue to spread their largess across the Kansas City landscape. They're a big reason why the city punches above its weight.
The reason why this thread is as contested as it is is because Atlanta does too, only on a larger scale economically. Here's the stat for you; it shows the latest (2018) Census estimates of city populations, their rank among the country's 50 largest cities and the change from 2017:
37. 488,943 -- 6,825 Kansas City city, Missouri
38. 486,290 -- 13,323 Atlanta city, Georgia
The two cities - and their metros - were also close in population in 1960; then as now, Kansas City was larger, but the metros (KC's was about 1.2 million or so at the time, big enough to put it in the top 25) were much closer in population to each other at the time. And KC's was larger then as well.
(N.B.: Kansas City's population remains about 19,000 below its 1970 peak of 507,330. Atlanta's, unless I'm mistaken, is higher than it's ever been before.)
One reason why Atlanta has grown much faster is because of a shrewd public-relations move on the part of its leadership around that time. While Birmingham, which was about Atlanta's size (city and metro) in 1960, showed the world images of fire hoses trained on black civil-rights protesters, church bombings and Sheriff Bull Connor, Atlanta promoted itself as "the city too busy to hate." (It also began planning for the rapid transit system it now has in 1961, by the way.) That image-polishing helped attract capital from outside the region to the city that might have gone to Birmingham, or somewhere else, had it not been for the Civil Rights Movement, which Atlanta gingerly embraced.
That embrace, symbolic though it may have been, was enough to make a huge difference in the city's fate - and it probably helps account for Atlanta's status as the Mecca for African-Americans who have decided to return to the South.
Atlanta has cultural institutions similar to those in Kansas City, but I'd say Kansas City's operate at a level above Atlanta's - where's Atlanta's answer to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts? (Oh, there's another philanthropic local family whose company was privately held: the Kauffmans owned Marion Laboratories, since sold to another much larger pharma firm. Ewing Marion Kauffman is also the man who brought Major League Baseball back to Kansas City by establishing the Royals in 1969, and the foundation he started is a major researcher and promoter of entrepreneurship, especially among the disfavored. It has three core missions: improving education, especially in and around its hometown; helping entrepreneurs succeed, no matter where they are; and keeping Kansas City "a major league city" as Kauffman wanted it to be.)
IOW, as I and some others have maintained, Kansas City (especially) and Atlanta are closer to each other than some Atlantans (it appears) might think. The major difference is that Kansas City has over time become an "established, older" slow-growth metropolis while Atlanta became a Sun Belt boomtown. Coca-Cola and Ted Turner, to name just two, have done much for that city, but not so much as to put it way out of Kansas City's league.
As far population,that too is not an accurate comparison.
Atlanta sq miles is abut 139 w/est 3600 people per sq mi density
Kansas City around 314 w/est 1400 per sq mi density.
Nashville and Charlotte are also bigger than Atlanta in that regard to for the same reasons.
Ted Turner and Coca Cola contributions are enormous but thats old news compared to Home Depot founders )Black and Marcus), As wellas the Cox family of Cox Cable
Id say Koch Industries by far are much bigger than anybody else in KS as far as corporate presence.Its the largest private company in MO and also the second largest in the country.
Speaking of banks,the largest in Atlanta is SunTrust.
Also Bank of America who was Nations Bank before the name change became as big as it did due to its merger with Atlanta based banks,
Atlanta has huge private companies too.Already mentioned ,Cox Media but there are several others as well,
I mean you have Mercedes Benz and Porsche that have their North American headquarters in Atlanta to which is just the tip of a very large international corporate presence.
What foreign consulates in KC or STL located their compared to Atlanta?If you are a foreigner and need to go to a consulate for any reason,you must go to Chicago or Texas more than likely if you are living in KC/STL.Atlanta has quite a few consulates.I believe it may be one of the to cities in America for number of consulates like Houston and Dallas.
These are things that people dont think of when living in smaller metros untill you need such things.
KC does punch above its weight I agree but its still lacking in so ,uch compared to Atlanta.
I find it so odd that some of you are picking very random statistics that really show no dept of why a this comparison is not so close.
If I said something like :KC/STL has no answer for the CDC,GSU(in size)GA Aquarium, ,the Atlanta University Center,MARTA,Spaghetti Junction,GA Tech(A major ranked engineering and research university).No one in Raleigh would say its anywhere in Atlanta's company and Raleigh ranks well with KC but lags in GDP only.Yet Charlotte is also more in line with KC but KC lags well behind Charlotte in population and GDP.
This post is a mouthful. I think you’d be the only person say KC could *individually* compete with Atlanta.
As far as you tagging my post, what exactly is that you want me to see in there?
I was referencing the population comparisons and my explanations of the trajectories the two cities have followed since 1960.
I wouldn't say KC is on par with Atlanta, but I don't think the differences between the two cities save in population and transit (and traffic, where KC kicks butt) are so great as to put Atlanta in a different league altogether.
And I do think it worth observing that I can think of no cities 250 miles apart that would be thrown together ordinarily.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 06-30-2018 at 04:43 PM..
As far population,that too is not an accurate comparison.
Atlanta sq miles is abut 139 w/est 3600 people per sq mi density
Kansas City around 314 w/est 1400 per sq mi density.
Nashville and Charlotte are also bigger than Atlanta in that regard to for the same reasons.
Ted Turner and Coca Cola contributions are enormous but thats old news compared to Home Depot founders )Black and Marcus), As wellas the Cox family of Cox Cable
Id say Koch Industries by far are much bigger than anybody else in KS as far as corporate presence.Its the largest private company in MO and also the second largest in the country.
Speaking of banks,the largest in Atlanta is SunTrust.
Also Bank of America who was Nations Bank before the name change became as big as it did due to its merger with Atlanta based banks,
Atlanta has huge private companies too.Already mentioned ,Cox Media but there are several others as well,
I mean you have Mercedes Benz and Porsche that have their North American headquarters in Atlanta to which is just the tip of a very large international corporate presence.
What foreign consulates in KC or STL located their compared to Atlanta?If you are a foreigner and need to go to a consulate for any reason,you must go to Chicago or Texas more than likely if you are living in KC/STL.Atlanta has quite a few consulates.I believe it may be one of the to cities in America for number of consulates like Houston and Dallas.
These are things that people dont think of when living in smaller metros untill you need such things.
KC does punch above its weight I agree but its still lacking in so ,uch compared to Atlanta.
I find it so odd that some of you are picking very random statistics that really show no dept of why a this comparison is not so close.
If I said something like :KC/STL has no answer for the CDC,GSU(in size)GA Aquarium, ,the Atlanta University Center,MARTA,Spaghetti Junction,GA Tech(A major ranked engineering and research university).No one in Raleigh would say its anywhere in Atlanta's company and Raleigh ranks well with KC but lags in GDP only.Yet Charlotte is also more in line with KC but KC lags well behind Charlotte in population and GDP.
Oops.
Koch Industries is not in Missouri - or the Kansas City metropolitan area - at all. (I think that last may have been your point.) They've contributed a lot to Wichita's civic institutions, but they aren't "the largest company in Missouri" because they're not in Missouri. If what you meant is that they're larger than any company based in that state, okay, but that wasn't how you phrased it. Besides, the observation had to do with companies headquartered in the city.
Of which speaking: NationsBank may have gotten bigger through acquiring Atlanta banks, but it took its present name when it acquired the better-known California-based bank that had it. And it's still headquartered in Charlotte, so no more counts towards "Atlanta-based" corporations than PNC does those based in Philadelphia despite its acquiring the city's third-largest bank at the time it took its present name (in order not to have either Pittsburgh National or Provident National seem dominant).
Kansas City remains Kansas' largest metropolis, though. And it's noteworthy that, of all the bi-state or multi-state metro areas in the country, its population is the most closely divided between its component states: 55 percent in Missouri, where the core city is located, 45 percent in Kansas.
Woodruff is Coca-Cola, IIRC. But The Coca-Cola Company is publicly traded, IIRC. Cox Cable would be closer to the firms I cited.
Yes, KC is far less dense than Atlanta overall. And there's still a lot of undeveloped land within those 316 square miles to boot, much of it still planted in corn and soybeans. I'm not sure what the extent of the urbanized area of the city is, but I'll wager it's not even 60 percent - though it is larger than it was in 1976, when I left it, because there's been lots of development North of the River that has made up for the depopulation of the old heart of the city (and its area of historically black settlement has, like St. Louis' northwest side, emptied out completely).
So the question remains: is Atlanta in a different league altogether than Kansas City, St. Louis, or both put together? I think the answer to the latter is no. To the former, on the economic and metro population scores definitely, but - and maybe this makes me a homer away from home - I'm not totally convinced on the overall livability scale.
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