How did KC become so dangerous? (Kansas City, St. Louis: middle-class, apartments, waterpark)

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by denverian

Obviously lower middle class people buy things. But they're not the people out dropping $300 on new clothes at Macys on a whim. If you look at Oak Park Mall, for instance, it's surrounded but middle to upper middle/upper class households for miles in every direction that have expendable income.

I just checked on googlemaps and the area surrounding Indian Springs just looks depressing and sort of abandoned. Very low density and it looks like an odd place for a mall. I don't know if the mall ever really was much of a success. Malls that have all "lower end" stores tend to fail.

As for crime, I just checked and for 2012, KCMO had 108 homicides with a population of around 450K people. Compare that to Denver where in 2012, there were 40 homicides with a population of around 620K people. KCMO trends toward the more dangerous cities in the U.S., but not up there at the top, luckily.

You're not getting it and I can't explain any better. There was a day before things were like they are now. I'm barely able to see that, because I'm barely old enough to have seen any of the change. I have to wonder if maybe you're younger than me. Like I said, I'm 28.

The area around Indian Springs collapsed. It's at an all-time low. But it wasn't an odd place for a mall at all. It's on the western edge of a highly-populated area. There was no room for it further east. It was a successful mall. And it didn't have all lower-end stores. I mentioned the community-oriented places because I was making a point about how malls used to be a sort of community center the way downtowns were and how malls sort of replaced them. Indian Springs was anchored by Dillard's (was Macy's before Dillard's bought them out in KC), JCPenney, and Montgomery Ward, and had all of the normal mall stores in addition to the things I already mentioned.

I don't really consider Denver a peer of KCMO in that regard because composition of the population is drastically different, isn't it? If Denver had the black population that KCMO does and the distraught leftover industrial population, it would have a murder rate the same as KCMO. By the way, isn't there a suburb of Denver that is partly similar to KCK, meaning diverse and with significant crime? I can't remember which Denver suburb is, but I'm curious about how its murder rate compares to KCK.

[MOKAN]

^I was talking about Aurora, a portion of which seems to be just as bad as KCK, especially in terms of murder rate. However, Aurora's "crime rate" is diluted by the fact it's sort of like KCK combined with Olathe or something. At a glance, I'm guessing a lot of Denver's destitute and distraught population was pushed into Aurora? If that's the case, that's also part of why Denver's murder rate is relatively low. I don't know much about Denver or if what I said is true, but I suspect so. Denver's housing is very expensive and I doubt it always has been. I'm thinking the influx of Californians, etc. gentrified formerly modest and poor areas and pushed those people out of the city of Denver, thus lowering the murder rate and overall crime rate.

[TabulaRasa]

Originally Posted by MOKAN

^Ward Parkway Mall has been successfully reinvented.

And, yet, there were people totally ready to pull the plug on it when I first moved to the area in 2007. There had been a recent fatal shooting there, I was told "don't go there," various high profile tenants that exist there now did not at that point, etc.

What a difference being adjacent to Leawood and Brookside, versus Hickman Mills and Ruskin, or KCK, makes in saving a place from going the "dead mall" route.

[MOKAN]

^I wish something similar would happen with The Landing.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by MOKAN

^I wish something similar would happen with The Landing.

This is what should happen to the Landing. This is a proposed DC walmart. There are several walmarts going up in DC, most of them much more urban than this, but this is probably as dense as a project could get at that location.



Here is another DC walmart project that would be good for the east crossroads etc.



I'm not a fan of walmart at all, but I don't think KC (or most depressed urban cores) can be picky. Walmart would be better than nothing and provide much needed retail.

Here is a pic of the Target about a mile from my house (suburban area) which would work in urban KCMO as well.

[TabulaRasa]

Didn't Waldo pretty vociferously oppose getting a Walmart Neighborhood Market not too awfulky far from The Landing?

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by VaughanWilliams33

I feel like I'm too young to really understand what happened to the city over the last 30 or 40 years. I was born near Indian Springs Mall, and I remember when I really young, my parents stopped taking me there because they said it was becoming bad. We later moved out of KCK to a safer area.

Then there's KCMO with people saying the whole area east of Troost as being very dangerous. It's such a large part of the city, and it seems odd that an area this large in the city is considered bad. My question to anyone on here is I'd like to know how the city declined. What were the causes? Is the city really going to make a turn around and be considered "up and coming" in the future?

Also, if you have any links to online articles that explain what I'm curious about, please post them.

I have posted specifically about certain areas (Bannister Mall etc), but it really comes down to white (and now black) flight which is and continues to be a pretty serious problem in metro KC. That’s the quick and simple answer.

But things are much worse in metro KC because of the out of control sprawl and decay which exasperates the problem even more.

While Metro KC does have some nice suburbs and some parts of its urban core are at least stable if not strong, so much of the city and metro are in a state of decline or are completely gone and have no chance of ever being gentrified. Gentrification is barely happening along the eastern edge of KCMO’s north/south River to Brookside corridor, let alone anywhere in the vast and massive areas of the city to the east of that to I-435 and into large swaths of suburban areas (Independence, Grandview, Raytown, Hickman Mills, Ruskin, Red Bridge, NKC area (kcmo south of Gladstone), KCK and even many parts of NE Johnson County. All of these areas have either already died, are starting to die or are showing signs of decay. Even far out places like Olathe and Blue Springs have more blight then you would ever think because they have their own sprawl and decay issues mostly caused by their own urban planning mistakes.

So...

White/black flight

Terrible land use which encourages people and developers to walk away from existing developed areas and build new residential in far flung areas

Overbuilt and excessively subsidized retail development which also contributes to sprawl and decay. In KC it’s much cheaper to just build a new mall in a farm field than to put money into infill redevelopment and this is why KC has so much empty or underutilized retail space even in areas with good demographics. And nobody wants to live next to massive empty (or barely used and deteriorating) retail centers which also contributes to flight.

General anti city/urban mentality by a large portion of metro residents. KC still has a very conservative and very 1980’s suburban mentality and culture compared to most major metros today.

All of this combined keeps much of KC in a state of blight, which encourages poverty and keeps crime relatively high.

[RadioSilence]

Originally Posted by TabulaRasa

Didn't Waldo pretty vociferously oppose getting a Walmart Neighborhood Market not too awfulky far from The Landing?

77th & Wornall (former school)

[VaughanWilliams33]

Wow, so many great responses. Thanks everyone! So basically, what most of you are saying is that putting too much section 8 into certain areas caused the problem? That makes sense, unfortunately. Those that are really struggling are much more likely to resort to crime out of desperation.

It just makes me sad to look on Google maps at how ugly and empty (certain areas) of the city where I was born have become. I was born in Kansas City Kansas just west of Indian Springs mall. I remember that we would often visit people in the city for years even as it declined, even though our family had left KCK when I was pretty young. Now it seems like the only reason to go to KCK would be to get Gates BBQ, which is exciting, but also really depressing. Most people in my family won't even go driving in that city anymore, as they are so scared of something happening.

Anyway, I live in Los Angeles now, but there's many things I miss about the KC area.

[TabulaRasa]

High poverty = high crime...not something that's specific to KC, by any means.

Personally, I have a soft spot for KCK. My husband used to teach there, knows a lot of families there, etc.