Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I had a chance to visit the Twin Cities recently and it was very interesting place to me. For one, it was almost like I was visiting a Pacific Northwestern city than a Midwestern city. It didn't have the old, heavy industry feel, was very clean and modern looking, felt way more like Seattle or Portland to me than any other Rust Belt city. Everything was very foreign to me, the architecture, the layout, the demographics, etc. As far as Missouri, I think you're somewhat spot on. I would say that Missouri has a bit of a Lower Midwest, Upper South kind of vibe to it that would be very noticeable to someone from the Upper Midwest. With that said, I think you're coming off somewhat elitist in your comparisons of Minnesota to Missouri, Missouri is still a very important state with a lot of industry, culture, and educational offerings. You make it sound like Missouri is some sort of cultural backwater and I'd argue that Missouri has just as much cultural and economic relevance to the United States as Minnesota, if not more influence. As far as social dysfunction, let's not forget the recent George Floyd protests and the unjustified killing of Philando Castile (whole is actually a blood relative of mine) and act as if Minnesota is somehow free of any social dysfunction.
Oh, not disagreeing at all regarding 2020 and the Twin Cities, it was a very bad period of time. My point regarding social dysfunction and Missouri is related to cities that are at or below average with poor metrics in many categories, and the large gulf between the many terrible rural areas of Missouri that are crumbling with big drug issues- compared to most of rural Minnesota that is mostly neat and tidy towns with far less poverty and decay.
Oh, not disagreeing at all regarding 2020 and the Twin Cities, it was a very bad period of time. My point regarding social dysfunction and Missouri is related to cities that are at or below average with poor metrics in many categories, and the large gulf between the many terrible rural areas of Missouri that are crumbling with big drug issues- compared to most of rural Minnesota that is mostly neat and tidy towns with far less poverty and decay.
Native Kansas Citians, as I've discovered over 40-plus years of living on the East Coast, just about to a person love their hometown to death and take a piece of it with them in their hearts no matter where they live. I know I do, and I had this observation driven home both when a perfect stranger to whom I'd given directions hugged me when she found out I was from there and when a couple of women visiting the city engaged me in conversation after they spotted me wearing an "I (heart) KC" T-shirt on Walnut Street here — it turned out the younger woman, who had a Worlds of Fun T-shirt on, lived in Vermont.
So my hair will just about always stand on end when someone disses it — but at the same time, the years have indeed not been kind to St. Louis, and had Kansas City remained the 61-square-mile city it was in 1945 rather than the 316-square-mile one it is now, we would have seen the same population trajectory there (and indeed, from 1970 until 2000, KC's total population also declined even after all that annexation). Both Missouri and Pennsylvania have aging populations as well, which does not bode well for either state's economic future.
Part of the difference, however, I would also attribute to Minnesota's status as the Scandinavia of America.
Native Kansas Citians, as I've discovered over 40-plus years of living on the East Coast, just about to a person love their hometown to death and take a piece of it with them in their hearts no matter where they live. I know I do, and I had this observation driven home both when a perfect stranger to whom I'd given directions hugged me when she found out I was from there and when a couple of women visiting the city engaged me in conversation after they spotted me wearing an "I (heart) KC" T-shirt on Walnut Street here — it turned out the younger woman, who had a Worlds of Fun T-shirt on, lived in Vermont.
So my hair will just about always stand on end when someone disses it — but at the same time, the years have indeed not been kind to St. Louis, and had Kansas City remained the 61-square-mile city it was in 1945 rather than the 316-square-mile one it is now, we would have seen the same population trajectory there (and indeed, from 1970 until 2000, KC's total population also declined even after all that annexation). Both Missouri and Pennsylvania have aging populations as well, which does not bode well for either state's economic future.
Part of the difference, however, I would also attribute to Minnesota's status as the Scandinavia of America.
I'm originally from the Kansas City region as well, but left at a young age- similar to your story as well. I come back and visit a few times a year, and follow some things that go on there. One of the biggest shifts of momentum in the metro area for better or worse was the massive amount of subsidized development and corporate welfare that occurred in Johnson County for many decades at the expense of Kansas City, MO. Johnson County residents were basically paying even higher taxes to subsidize companies to build new green field developments or office parks- often part of TIF projects, or deferred on paying property taxes for longer periods of time. Now, in a post-COVID world, you have a massive glut of commercial office space in Kansas City and St. Louis metro areas. Cerner was idiotic enough to build that massive corporate complex in a suburban setting with football sized surface parking lots- large metro areas that are dynamic and innovative don't usually do things like this.
As mentioned from a poster, kcmo, who doesn't frequent this forum much anymore, the state line cutting things in half really caused many problems with the Kansas City metro area.
As for Minnesota, it's just quietly above average in most important quality of life metrics. I lived in the region before, I think an important fact that can't be underestimated is that they look for ways to move forward economically, socially, environmentally, and don't tend to dwell on the past. Missouri residents can be overly guilty of dwelling on the past, to a detrimental degree.
I had a chance to visit the Twin Cities recently and it was very interesting place to me. For one, it was almost like I was visiting a Pacific Northwestern city than a Midwestern city. It didn't have the old, heavy industry feel, was very clean and modern looking, felt way more like Seattle or Portland to me than any other Rust Belt city. Everything was very foreign to me, the architecture, the layout, the demographics, etc. As far as Missouri, I think you're somewhat spot on. I would say that Missouri has a bit of a Lower Midwest, Upper South kind of vibe to it that would be very noticeable to someone from the Upper Midwest. With that said, I think you're coming off somewhat elitist in your comparisons of Minnesota to Missouri, Missouri is still a very important state with a lot of industry, culture, and educational offerings. You make it sound like Missouri is some sort of cultural backwater and I'd argue that Missouri has just as much cultural and economic relevance to the United States as Minnesota, if not more influence. As far as social dysfunction, let's not forget the recent George Floyd protests and the unjustified killing of Philando Castile (whole is actually a blood relative of mine) and act as if Minnesota is somehow free of any social dysfunction.
Minnesota actually has one of the lowest rates of murders by police. It just gets way more coverage when it happens in Minnesota due to being a blue state.
As mentioned from a poster, kcmo, who doesn't frequent this forum much anymore, the state line cutting things in half really caused many problems with the Kansas City metro area.
As for Minnesota, it's just quietly above average in most important quality of life metrics. I lived in the region before, I think an important fact that can't be underestimated is that they look for ways to move forward economically, socially, environmentally, and don't tend to dwell on the past. Missouri residents can be overly guilty of dwelling on the past, to a detrimental degree.
I actually met kcmo on a visit to a dear journalist friend of mine who lived in Washington, DC, at the time (this person now works for West Virginia Public Media, and I will be spending Labor Day weekend visiting him in Charleston).
It's not just the state line itself that's the source of the problem — it's the ease with which one can cross it. In most of the bi- and multi-state metros I'm familiar with, the state line is either a significant barrier (a river, usually, as in New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis) or some distance from the core city (as the Wisconsin and Indiana state lines are from Chicago). In KC, it's just a street south of where the Missouri River makes its left turn, and it's also the common city limit of the two core cities (counting KCK as a core city here for purposes of argument, but with about 1/3 KCMo's population and with suburban Overland Park having passed it, it's debatable whether it should be counted as one).
One of my Next City colleagues has also written about the economic "border war" between Missouri and Kansas, in which the latter state basically gave away the tax-revenue store to Missouri companies just for moving across State Line Road and the Missouri legislature felt compelled to respond in kind. That war finally came to an end when fed-up Kansans finally replaced the Republican governor who fueled it with what I called a "faith-based 'job creation' strategy" with a Democrat willing to call a truce, but the effects of that war will linger in the region for some times to come.
(Hmmm. Something else just popped into my head. An ad for the biggest Minneapolis-based bank, one with a nationwide presence, just aired on the program I was watching. The largest Missouri-based bank, which calls KC its headquarters, has a regional presence throughout the Central Plains (Colorado, Iowa, Kanas, Missouri, Nebraska) but not beyond it. There was a time when KC thought big and got things done quickly. (The painting in question was created shortly after the 1951 West Bottoms flood.) Now, as with the airport that took a nearly decade-long fight to get built [I flew into it in June, and it's a vast improvement over what it replaced], that's no longer the case.)
Any metropolitan area in the Plains region will have a hard time nationally and globally. The coasts represent America's shop windows to Europe, Asia and Latin America respectively, and the Plains are removed from that. Add the climate and geography that doesn't offer much for the outdoorsy or the winter haters, and you're not going to be a 'golden child' city.
Being a regional hub is probably the best a city like KC can hope for, but of course it's in competition with other cities even for that.
I'm a Missouri native, and I tend to bristle at people who call the state "Southern", in large part because, as with Maryland, the Civil War actually tore it in two. Maryland is the site of one of the major battles of the war (Antietam, on the road to the Confederates' Waterloo at Gettysburg, PA), and the "Western Gettysburg" was fought entirely within the present-day city limits of Kansas City, MO (the Battle of Westport in 1864, one of two major Civil War battles fought in or around Kansas City, the other being the Battle of Lexington in 1861 in adjacent Lafayette County).
When I lived in Missouri, suggesting that it was in any way Southern was always a quick way to make people angry. But at the same time I saw lots of Missourians who proudly identified as Southern and glorified the people from their state that supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. Some of them even had Southern accents.
I think it was understood that Missouri is a border state and St. Louis is a border city, very akin to the role that Baltimore and Maryland play on the East Coast. I always found it strange that people from the Upper Midwest (especially Chicago) always try to play up St. Louis' Southerness as if it's some kind of put down. I think the Southern influences in St. Louis' culture is what makes it one of the most interesting cities in the region. Also, St. Louis is a very ancient city by Midwestern standards, like it's literally Chicago's smaller big brother if that makes sense. It's also literally at the geographic crossroads of a lot of regional influences.
I personally quite enjoy St Louis. I've visited twice. I currently live on the West coast, but if I was on a cross country trip, good chance, if I was headed that way, I'd stop by there again and check it out some more.
When I lived in Missouri, suggesting that it was in any way Southern was always a quick way to make people angry. But at the same time I saw lots of Missourians who proudly identified as Southern and glorified the people from their state that supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. Some of them even had Southern accents.
I guess being in the SEC now makes it official
Sorry, I won't forgive Mizzou either for bolting the Big 12 (nee Big 8, the athletic conference of the Central Plains) and thus shredding the MU-KU football rivalry, one of the most storied in the Midwest — and sure to stir passions in KC.
The Wall Street Journal sent a reporter to Kansas City sometime in the early 2000s to report on the clash, which usually ended the regular season for both teams. That year, the winner of the game would also walk away with the Big 12 conference title. He began the story by reporting from a popular bar in Brookside, a neighborhood on KCMo's southwest side, and noting that the place was packed with fans in black-and-gold Missouri Tigers jerseys with "Quantrill" on the back.
(The raid that made his name relevant to any MU-KU matchup is also the reason the official city seal of Lawrence, Kan., depicts a phoenix rising from a building in flames and bears the year of the raid as well as its date of incorporation (4th March 1858).) The city now uses a stylized logotype that references the phoenix in its design. Full disclosure: I'm a Missourian, and my Dad's family made much of being able to trace its ancestry to when Missouri was a territory. But I'm also the son of a Jayhawk mom, who got both of her nursing degrees from KU [the first Black woman to do so]).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
