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2000: St. Louis >> Kansas City >>> Springfield > Columbia >> St. Joseph > Jefferson City >> Joplin > Rolla > Hannibal > Cape Girardeau
2020: St. Louis > Kansas City >>> Springfield | Columbia >> Jefferson City > St. Joseph > Joplin > Rolla > Hannibal > Cape Girardeau
2040: Kansas City > St. Louis* >>> Columbia > Springfield > Jefferson City >> St. Joseph | Joplin > Hannibal > Rolla > Cape Girardeau
* or possibly Kansas City | St. Louis, or even St. Louis | Kansas City, but in any case, Kansas City's growth trajectory has been outpacing St. Louis' since the 1990s. I may be underselling St. Joseph here, given its proximity to Kansas City, but it's been my impression that the state's onetime fifth-largest city (Columbia has passed it already in that department, and Jeff City is nipping at its heels) hasn't been able to capitalize on its closeness to KC, and especially to KCI, which is closer to St. Joseph than it is to the southerly reaches of the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PerseusVeil
Missouri is going to be the weird one to predict in the future. Metro St. Louis is growing on the Missouri side but losing population on the Illinois side, whereas metro KCMO seems to be more so favoring the Kansas side these days. This might very well keep the weight towards metro St. Louis if current trends continue for the next 20-30 years.
MO is actually really easy to predict, because unless there's a massive change, it's St. Louis by a long shot. Aside from St. Louis's big MSA lead (yes, KC is very slowly gaining), like you (PerseusVeil) alluded to, KC is much more split over state lines. The MO counties of St. Louis are almost half ($141.3 billion)of the state's gdp, while KC MO counties are less than a quarter at just over $70 billion. Some KC posters on here love to bash STL and pretend like KC is already the number 1 region in MO, but all the numbers show this claim is empty and really just absurd, and that's before we even get into things like culture and history.
MO is actually really easy to predict, because unless there's a massive change, it's St. Louis by a long shot. Aside from St. Louis's big MSA lead (yes, KC is very slowly gaining), like you (PerseusVeil) alluded to, KC is much more split over state lines. The MO counties of St. Louis are almost half ($141.3 billion)of the state's gdp, while KC MO counties are less than a quarter at just over $70 billion. Some KC posters on here love to bash STL and pretend like KC is already the number 1 region in MO, but all the numbers show this claim is empty and really just absurd, and that's before we even get into things like culture and history.
St. Louis will always have the historical advantage over Kansas City; it dates to 1763 while "Westport Landing" was settled in 1838.
And it will have the cultural advantage overall thanks to institutions like the Missouri Botanical Garden (Shaw's Garden), the St. Louis Symphony and the St. Louis Zoo, but there are some KC cultural institutions and facilities that outclass their cross-state counterparts: the Nelson-Atkins vs. the St. Louis Museum of Art, the Kemper Contemporary vs. nothing in St. Louis yet, and the Kaufmann Center for the Performing Arts (is there a counterpart to this in St. L? The KC analogue for the Fox Theater is the Midland).
But we'll see your blues and raise you jazz, and KC is in the BBQ pantheon while St. Louis is on the next level down (though everyone gets confused thanks to St. Louis-style ribs, which are a method of trimming rather than a style of preparation: the even trim of St. Louis ribs makes them better for grilling, which is not the same thing as barbecuing).
However, yes, St. Louis is rooted in Missouri whereas Kansas City, Mo., has had one foot in Kansas for many decades (The Kansas City Star was Kansas' largest-circulating newspaper in its heyday from the 1930s to the 1960s, and John Guinther called the city "the capital of a state it isn't even in" in his 1948 book Inside U.S.A.). Which is why I also included it in my Kansas power rankings.
I'm not sure how to do Washington state, we have so many strong edge cities that if they were their own metro areas they would out rank many of our independent cities, and then Portland metro area bleeds into the Vancouver area. And then if we just go purely based on city boundaries then I would have to consider 100k+ suburbs such as Kent, so I'm not really sure how to split this up.
If I just go by my personal feelings on how much influence the various cities in WA carry I would say something like this
Probably all three. I don’t see it changing anytime soon. An argument MIGHT be able to be made for swapping Orlando and Tampa for 2020, but moving forward, I think Tampa has the edge.
St. Louis will always have the historical advantage over Kansas City; it dates to 1763 while "Westport Landing" was settled in 1838.
And it will have the cultural advantage overall thanks to institutions like the Missouri Botanical Garden (Shaw's Garden), the St. Louis Symphony and the St. Louis Zoo, but there are some KC cultural institutions and facilities that outclass their cross-state counterparts: the Nelson-Atkins vs. the St. Louis Museum of Art, the Kemper Contemporary vs. nothing in St. Louis yet, and the Kaufmann Center for the Performing Arts (is there a counterpart to this in St. L? The KC analogue for the Fox Theater is the Midland).
But we'll see your blues and raise you jazz, and KC is in the BBQ pantheon while St. Louis is on the next level down (though everyone gets confused thanks to St. Louis-style ribs, which are a method of trimming rather than a style of preparation: the even trim of St. Louis ribs makes them better for grilling, which is not the same thing as barbecuing).
However, yes, St. Louis is rooted in Missouri whereas Kansas City, Mo., has had one foot in Kansas for many decades (The Kansas City Star was Kansas' largest-circulating newspaper in its heyday from the 1930s to the 1960s, and John Guinther called the city "the capital of a state it isn't even in" in his 1948 book Inside U.S.A.). Which is why I also included it in my Kansas power rankings.
Do you not realize that I was the one who explained everything about St. Louis ribs to you because you actually had no clue why they were called that (yet you somehow were presenting yourself as some kind of BBQ authority...)? You also said in that thread you hadn't been to St. Louis in like 30-40 plus years, and I questioned then how you felt able to critique things like the current food scene there, yet here you go again...
You also kind of just ignored the meat of this:
The MO counties of St. Louis are almost half ($141.3 billion)of the state's gdp, while KC MO counties are less than a quarter at just over $70 billion. Some KC posters on here love to bash STL and pretend like KC is already the number 1 region in MO, but all the numbers show this claim is empty and really just absurd....
So how do KC posters such as yourself justify saying KC will pass STL in 20 yrs and be the number 1 region in MO? I wasn't thinking of you when I mentioned the KC posters before (because on lots of issues on here your posts are well thought out and informative), but how you continue to post about STL things that you've already admitted you can't possibly know is kind of making me wonder... There's plenty more to address in your posts, but with how you ignored the half dozen BBQ discussions I'm thinking more why bother.
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