KCMO or KCK?

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 11:40 am

bahua wrote:^

KCK, east of the highway, is about the only urban part. Poverty can be fixed. Sprawl is harder.

You obviously dont travel KCK too much.

Post by **mean** » Thu Dec 11, 2003 3:52 pm

You obviously dont travel KCK too much.

Oh, get off it. Where's the other urban part, Captain Mysterious? What do you think you know that you think I don't?

I'm in KCK every day. If you think it's hopeless, fine, just sit around and whine about it. Tell us all sad stories about the crime and poverty, because we all know KCK is the only place in the world with crime and poverty.

Post by **bahua** » Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:10 am

That's kinda what I wanted to say. I've been to KCK more times than I know, and west of 635 is definitely not urban.

GRID · Post by **GRID** » Sat Dec 13, 2003 12:16 am

bahua wrote:That's kinda what I wanted to say. I've been to KCK more times than I know, and west of 635 is definitely not urban.

It's almost not "suburban". It's just at a very low density even by sprawl standards, and the land that is developed is not used very efficiently, lots of boarded up and under used buildings for a suburban type area. KCK Is rural past KCKCC.

I hope KCK comes back, I really do.

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:32 pm

That doesnt make sense GRID. Past KCKCC, the population gets denser. Between 70th street(KCKCC) and 86th street(KCK public library). There are more apartments, townhomes, duplexes, single family homes in that area than any rural area ever could have. I dont think there is a single farm in that area. Its also past there where a great deal of the still thriving KCK businesses lie. I think what you mean is that it is rural west of 86th street and North of Leavenworth road. It is much more suburban here. Believe me I know, after all I live here.

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:38 pm

bahua wrote:That's kinda what I wanted to say. I've been to KCK more times than I know, and west of 635 is definitely not urban.

I never said it was urban. I just said that it doesnt look like a fucking dirty ghetto. You've been to KCK more times than you know, well you obviously havent been anywhere. Ive been to KCMO more times than i know, but I mainly go just for school. If I judged all of KCMO based on Redbridge, I'd assume the entire place was just like Johnson County. I would be wrong too.

GRID · Post by **GRID** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:52 am

OK, but it's not to much further west before KCK becomes rural. I know State and Parallel are pretty built up about 2/3 the way to 435, but I-70 seems rural past 635 except a couple of hotels etc off a couple of exits.

Post by **bahua** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:43 pm

DeadManWalking wrote:I just said that it doesnt look like a fucking dirty ghetto.

Again, what is that, besides crime and poverty? These things can be fixed, and underneath that is a much more viable urban landscape than points west. West of the highway is spread out, decentralized, and not that nice anyway.

Please stop trying to tell me what I have and haven't seen. It's insulting. I'm trying to be civil, and I'd advise you do the same.

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 3:38 pm

bahua wrote:
DeadManWalking wrote:I just said that it doesnt look like a fucking dirty ghetto.
Again, what is that, besides crime and poverty? These things can be fixed, and underneath that is a much more viable urban landscape than points west. West of the highway is spread out, decentralized, and not that nice anyway.

Please stop trying to tell me what I have and haven't seen. It's insulting. I'm trying to be civil, and I'd advise you do the same.

You just described the perfect reason why west of the highway has the most room to grow. Not to mention lower crime, better schools and so much less blight. Stop trying to try to prove you know more about my city than I do. Im a lifelong resident and my whole family has stuck through the good and bad times here while you were busy just driving through.

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 3:40 pm

GRID wrote:OK, but it's not to much further west before KCK becomes rural. I know State and Parallel are pretty built up about 2/3 the way to 435, but I-70 seems rural past 635 except a couple of hotels etc off a couple of exits.

The real problem in KCK is that it isnt aligned correctly with the highways. The main streets in KCK run parallel to the highways and are blocked from view by hills, trees and pretty empty looking areas and that means no development can be seen from them. This explains why KCK isnt very built up in a lot of places. If the government had been smart they would have promoted development around the highways. The exceptions would be the new area around I435 in KCK. Kansas City, MO and Johnson County did this the right way and have benefitted from it, however ours is all wrong. Along I635 you are assaulted with either the ugliest industrial area near the railroad yards in Argentine, or between State Ave. and Fairfax, you have a dead shopping mall, residential housing and thats it. I635 could have been a beautiful thing.

StL_Dan · Post by **StL_Dan** » Mon Dec 15, 2003 5:32 pm

nice pix.....

there...now i'm not stuck on "666" posts.

whew

Post by **bahua** » Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:38 am

DeadManWalking wrote:You just described the perfect reason why west of the highway has the most room to grow. Not to mention lower crime, better schools and so much less blight. Stop trying to try to prove you know more about my city than I do. Im a lifelong resident and my whole family has stuck through the good and bad times here while you were busy just driving through.

I did not describe a pefect reason. "Room to grow" would suggest that the city is undeveloped, and hence, not a city. It's a sprawled, suburban mess, with okay free schools and low crime. East of the highway is compact, built-up, and has lots of crime and poverty, not to mention bad free schools.

The problems that exist east of the highway don't faze me, though. Sprawl is a much more difficult problem to fix than crime or poverty. Sprawl scars the landscape, changes people's outlooks on where they find an attractive place to live, and encourages laziness, obesity, pollution, pop culture, drinking and driving, inefficient land use, and a score of other problems that ingrain dangerous and irresponsible lifestyle choices into people's minds.

Poverty and crime are two things that, if taken away from even the shittiest neighborhood, liberate an area for easy success. Success is easier in urban places than suburban, because of the inherent problems I mentioned with sprawl.

Regardless of whether you have lived in KCK for your whole life(gasp!), I still know that the west side of 635 doesn't have much going for it, because of all the sprawl-related problems it has. You pay for "less blight" and better schools with a temporary success. In 20 years, it'll all be low-income suburb, Nebraska Furniture Mart will be jonesing for new shinier land farther west(or south), and the great free schools you mentioned will be mediocre to bad.

Cities can endure, but sprawled suburbs cannot.

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 9:20 am

bahua wrote:
DeadManWalking wrote:You just described the perfect reason why west of the highway has the most room to grow. Not to mention lower crime, better schools and so much less blight. Stop trying to try to prove you know more about my city than I do. Im a lifelong resident and my whole family has stuck through the good and bad times here while you were busy just driving through.
I did not describe a pefect reason. "Room to grow" would suggest that the city is undeveloped, and hence, not a city. It's a sprawled, suburban mess, with okay free schools and low crime. East of the highway is compact, built-up, and has lots of crime and poverty, not to mention bad free schools.

The problems that exist east of the highway don't faze me, though. Sprawl is a much more difficult problem to fix than crime or poverty. Sprawl scars the landscape, changes people's outlooks on where they find an attractive place to live, and encourages laziness, obesity, pollution, pop culture, drinking and driving, inefficient land use, and a score of other problems that ingrain dangerous and irresponsible lifestyle choices into people's minds.

Poverty and crime are two things that, if taken away from even the shittiest neighborhood, liberate an area for easy success. Success is easier in urban places than suburban, because of the inherent problems I mentioned with sprawl.

Regardless of whether you have lived in KCK for your whole life(gasp!), I still know that the west side of 635 doesn't have much going for it, because of all the sprawl-related problems it has. You pay for "less blight" and better schools with a temporary success. In 20 years, it'll all be low-income suburb, Nebraska Furniture Mart will be jonesing for new shinier land farther west(or south), and the great free schools you mentioned will be mediocre to bad.

Cities can endure, but sprawled suburbs cannot.

Better schools west of I635.....lol

That is funny. The whole of District 500(KCK School District) is having problems. The better schools are west of I435 in the Piper School District. I think you mean west of I 435, because between I635 and I435, KCK faces the same problems as east of I635, with a little less blight. Drive past Indian Springs on State Ave. You see boarded up buildings on left and right sides of the road.

I dont know what you are thinking, but no city starts out with high rise towers and an ultra dense environment. Maybe in your dream world this is what happens, but not in real life. A city starts with houses, and as demand for housing inside that city increases, higher density housing is built on top of lower density housing. Problem is when that demand never increases. In fact the demand for housing in Wyandotte County was decreasing over the last 30 years. So the higher density housing isnt being built and we have a more sprawled out city. This combined with the fact that the city west of I635 used to be several small towns that all were annexed. Piper, Turner, Bethel, and others used to be small towns, and since they werent trying to centalize around downtown KCK or probably didnt even attach to downtown KCK, they built the main area further away. You sit there and preach about sprawl, but you dont know why things are the way they are.

Post by **bahua** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 10:30 am

I'm not preaching about anything, and I'm not confusing dreams with reality. Stop insulting me. I value your opinion, but if you keep this crap up, I'm just going to put you on ignore.

I never suggested that any city starts out with massive skyscrapers or urban landscapes. I do know, however, that KCK has been around for well over a hundred years, giving it plenty of time to at least rival its cross-state neighbor. But it doesn't. It pisses me off when I hear people say it, but people look at most of KCK as something of a joke, when the idea of moving there is broght up. Granted, I also hear this about living in the city("It isn't safe!"), and that pisses me off too.

But, the demand for housing did not go down. There weren't 1.8 million people in the metro when the 20th century began. There weren't 1.8 million people in the metro when WW2 ended. Housing demand, through the last hundred years, has been in a steady state of increase. The thing is, the increase hasn't happened in KCK. It's happened in JoCo, Lees Summit, Blue Springs, and the Northland. KCK wasn't a victim of bad times and bad circumstances. It, like KCMO, was a victim of bad government.

Bad government creates sprawl, through irresponsible development and punitive taxation that chases people to places of (relatively) more forgiving taxes. But, the thing is, bad government happens even in the new shiny suburbs. What every place seems to lack, and would avail an ailing city like KCK or KCMO like nothing in its history, is good government.

Good government can fix KCK, east of 635, and KCMO, in all of its urban core. But, like I said, sprawl is a much more difficult problem to fix than the problems that eastern KCK and urban KCMO suffer from, and even with good government, repairing the damage done by sprawl is a long, expensive, painstaking process. That's why I like depressed cities so much more than suburbs. The sprawl variable is removed from the equation, making recovery and prosperity much more easily attainable goals than in, say, a depressed sprawled suburb(which they all become).

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Fri Dec 26, 2003 6:33 pm

Please dont put me on ignore. Im really just one of those people who loves to argue. Im kind of passionate about my hometown too. I apologize for insulting you. I really dont mean to be an asshole, especially since you use linux......lol

Post by **bahua** » Mon Dec 29, 2003 11:51 am

I love arguing too, but it doesn't need to be a series of taunts between people who want to embarrass each other. The goal is to achieve an understanding, and insults tend to get in the way of reaching any kind of understanding.

I like pancakes.

KCKBOY · Post by **KCKBOY** » Sun Apr 04, 2004 7:55 pm

sigh...people judge kck and dont even know really know about it. I mean kck aint the best place in the world but it could be alot worse. I go to downtown kck everyday because my school is down there and NOTHING EVER HAPPENS, after school me and my friends walk to the mcdonalds or the subways of off minnesota and nobody messes with us, everyone minds there own business, if people would actually give kck a chance they might juss be suprised, its no different then any other older city, if OP or olathe was as old as kck they would face the same issues kck would

KCK · Post by **KCK** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 3:18 pm

Other than being bugged by a few panhandlers no one ever has messed with me downtown. I never have been bothered on Quindaro either, I used to live there and I know its not what people consider a safe place.

I love my hometown to death, I just wish I could improve the place.

Post by **bahua** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:58 pm

I feel safe in most parts of the metro, but there are still bad neighborhoods with poor people in them. Thick skin is helpful in dealing with bad neighborhoods(because yes, 99% of the time, nobody messes with you), but the people there still need some success brought to them.