KCRag Forum

Kansas City gets high Travel + Leisure rankings for barbecue, affordability

The Travel + Leisure rankings of 35 U.S. cities put Kansas City second for barbecue, barely edged out by Memphis, Tenn. Residents had given Kansas City the top barbecue ranking, but visitors put it second. The city came in third as an affordable getaway, close behind No. 1 Nashville and No. 2 Salt Lake City.

Screw you Memphis.

The city?s worst rankings were for ?wild weekend? (31), diversity (31) and public transportation/pedestrian-friendliness (30).

trailerkid wrote: KC was 12th. That seems higher than I thought it would be.

Not too surprising to me... since the 90s, JoCo was showing 6th most educated county in US.  I think it's about 9th or 10th now.

The metric of non-fiction book sales is odd.  Those would include Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lowhoever and pop culture icon sales.  And how do they estimate that?  One city might like to order from Amazon, another from Barnes or Borders.  OK, it's just a list.

Our friends over in the Lou have triumphantly brought home the most prestigious city ranking of the year:  Most Dangerous Place in America 2010.  http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/11/da ... ities.html

I am sure that getting rid of their pesky e-tax will help stem the tide, right Rex?

Here's the full 2010 list...

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/ci ... 0-2011.htm

(and 2009)
http://os.cqpress.com/rankings/2010/statecrime2010.html

KC ranked 21st, an improvement from 15th last year.

If you take the E/SE side of KCMO though, you'd think KC probably would be top 5... But then you could say that about any city with large area, selecting the more violent parts.  Given STL city has a small area, they are getting short end of stick when it comes to stats that compare to other cities.  Nevertheless, they aren't showing signs of improvement when comparing STL city to itself in previous years. 

Not that any list is very valid, but it would make more sense to show a list that shows change in violence relative to itself than attempt to compare cities that are demographically distributed differently between metros.  IE one metro might have it's worst parts 80% city, 20% in other areas of metro (like STL) or some have 50% in the city and 50% across metro.  That really skews what the stats mean.  A metro or 5 block radius (neighborhood) comparison might be more valid than a city boundary comparison.

Here's the metro ranking (KC/STL weren't ranked)...

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/Me ... htolow.pdf

1 Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI M.D. 169.66
2 Pine Bluff, AR 123.32
3 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 117.58
4 Lake Charles, LA 89.90
5 Lawton, OK 89.72
6 Hot Springs, AR 78.80
7 Flint, MI 73.08
8 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 71.34
9 Little Rock, AR 70.73
10 Texarkana, TX-Texarkana, AR 70.23
11 Brunswick, GA 70.06
12 Oakland-Fremont, CA M.D. 68.46
13 Jackson, TN 67.83
14 Stockton, CA 66.33
15 Florence, SC 64.60
16 Miami-Dade County, FL M.D. 63.89
17 Fayetteville, NC 62.29
18 Anchorage, AK 61.64
19 Mobile, AL 59.76
20 Albuquerque, NM 58.95

Who knew that hanging out in all the trashy corners or Arkansas could be so dangerous?  Pine Bluff, Hot Springs, Little Rock . . . throw in Memphis and Texarkana.

Here's another 'city' crime list.  KCMO ranks 59th, KCK ranks 54th...

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighb ... dangerous/


Here's a 'worst public schools' list...

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighb ... /worst100/

One is E STL ranked #1 worst.  SC takes the cake for most in top 100.  WI and IL have more than I'd thought and really surprised to see many poor schools in Minneapolis, which is considered to be a high educated city.  I'd think Westport High would have been on the list but it is now closed.

Kansas City's population estimate is now 488,259.  That exceeds the historical population of the municipality in 1960 of 475,539.  Only in one census has the municipal population been higher--in 1970 at 507,087.

At the current rate of growth, the municipality of Kansas City, Missouri, should reach its' highest population of all time in about three to four years.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/n ... a=e_du_pub

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City,_Missouri

Good to see KC not shrinking but what was the area of KC in 1960/1970?  There's still some catching up to do in density that was lost.

BTW, here is an estimate of KC Metro as of Nov... over 2.1M, ranking 28th.  KC was ranked about 30th/31st through most of 2000s so not sure who we passed up (according to that estimate).

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/data ... PIorderBy=

We won't get the Census report until later next year.


Edit, found this..

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/data ... PIorderBy=

Does it not disturb people that virtually ALL of the growth is suburban. The truly urban portion of KC (south of the river, north of 85) is probably 150,000.

Yes, it is troublesome. However, it does provide the revenue to begin to rebuild the city south of the river using Smart Growth principles.

We just need to elect leadership that realizes that the suburban expansion of the city is only going to dig ourselves into a deeper hole by creating even more infastructure to support than already exists, and it is cheaper to reuse existing infastructure than it is to create new.

The historical population peak of all industrial/blue-collar cities seems to be 1970, at least within their more original boundaries.

The population getting closer to that peak nowadays, with triple the land mass, is just bullshit. It makes the original part of any city no less abandoned.

Not everybody will like this, but in reality JoCo is a real, diverse, balanced, vibrant and unified community, despite its suburban form. That is what Kansas City used to be. Should that day come again, then it will be time to celebrate.

FangKC wrote: Yes, it is troublesome. However, it does provide the revenue to begin to rebuild the city south of the river using Smart Growth principles.

We just need to elect leadership that realizes that the suburban expansion of the city is only going to dig ourselves into a deeper hole by creating even more infastructure to support than already exists, and it is cheaper to reuse existing infastructure than it is to create new.

Let's see.  Revenues from the suburban areas of the city will be used to revive the older parts of the city.  So that is good.  But then that is bad because it creates more infrastructure. Sounds like selling one's soul to the devil.

The truly urban portion of KC (south of the river, north of 85) is probably 150,000.

False.

The city limits in 1960 were virtually the same as they are now.  The annexations took place in the 1950's.  The population high of 507,000 in 1970 took the city unawares(no one realized the scope of abandonment in the central city).  MARC used building permits to estimate the 1970 population to be over 600,000.

moderne wrote: The city limits in 1960 were virtually the same as they are now.  The annexations took place in the 1950's.  The population high of 507,000 in 1970 took the city unawares(no one realized the scope of abandonment in the central city).  MARC used building permits to estimate the 1970 population to be over 600,000.

False.

After the annexations in the 50's the size of the city was 128.40 sq miles in 1959.  Currently (2001)  the city has 317.72 sq. miles after 19 individual annexations.

Information taken from kcmo.org/idc/groups/cityplanningplanningdiv/documents/cityplanninganddevelopment/016880.pdf

Haven't the vast majority of those post-1960 annexations remained more or less undeveloped? While I don't have the exact figures, a cursory glance at a city map would suggest that more than 50% of KC's total land area is undeveloped hinterlands or working farmland.

The contiguous urbanized area is probably largely the same as it was in 1970.

I made my statment based on the map of annexations that was prominently featured at the KC Museum 2nd floor for over 30 years.

chingon wrote: Haven't the vast majority of those post-1960 annexations remained more or less undeveloped? While I don't have the exact figures, a cursory glance at a city map would suggest that more than 50% of KC's total land area is undeveloped hinterlands or working farmland.

The contiguous urbanized area is probably largely the same as it was in 1970.

For the area south of the river since 1970 there has been much built in the Red Bridge area and south of it, a large area between Ruskin Heights and Grandview, areas south of Raytown and around Raytown Rd and close to Lees' Summit, plus a huge area east of Raytown.  Other than that there is much land south of 435 that is park land either for the city or Jackson County (for example Minor Park, Blue River Parkway, and Longview Lake).  And what is rather deceiving are houses on large tracts of land but that land is not farmland - so developed but not dense development.
For north of the river there is more undeveloped land but big pockets of it has been developed.
In other words your 50% number might be on the high side if you are looking at the city as a whole.  That number would be low if you look at just north of the river though.

It is kind of frustrating to explain density figures when you are from a city that has so much undeveloped land.