CNNMoney.com's Best Places to Live

[warwickland]

Maybe its just me, but looking at the map, it seems like they just took the same demographic suburbs located in almost every major metro (with a few exceptions that really are small cities that dont need a major metro and an engine of demographic flight and segregation to prop them up), and threw them all on a list.

Comments from the site - "Are all the women strong, the men good looking, and the children above average in Eden Prairie too?" 

[LindseyLohan]

Wouldn't a sea of Chevy Tahoe's outside a stucco'd strip mall Coldstone Creamery be better visual representation of Overland Park? Seriously? A Horse and a Red Barn?

[studentper]

Wouldn't a sea of Chevy Tahoe's outside a stucco'd strip mall Coldstone Creamery be better visual representation of Overland Park? Seriously? A Horse and a Red Barn?

It's Deanna Rose children's farm in the city park.

[mudjack]

Deanna Rose is awesome.

[slimwhitman]

All us city dwellers need to stop bitching about fat suburban kids and go back to being lazy and watching TV or playing X-box in our condos like we do....like everyone does.  Most people are sedentary whether they live in the city or the suburbs.  Stop your ridiculous generalizations.

Chances are: you will live in the suburbs yourself when you have a family.  9 out of 10 of my hard-core city dweller friends have done it.  Mindsets change when your life situation changes.  I'm not saying you will end up at 167th & Antioch, but your love for the "city" will probably reveal it's blinders some day.  I have one Hyde Park homeowner friend that loved HP to death….until her baby was born.  House went on the market within 4 months and they are looking to move to the outer suburbs.

[GRID]

All us city dwellers need to stop bitching about fat suburban kids and go back to being lazy and watching TV or playing X-box in our condos like we do....like everyone does.  Most people are sedentary whether they live in the city or the suburbs.  Stop your ridiculous generalizations.

Chances are: you will live in the suburbs yourself when you have a family.  9 out of 10 of my hard-core city dweller friends have done it.  Mindsets change when your life situation changes.  I'm not saying you will end up at 167th & Antioch, but your love for the "city" will probably reveal it's blinders some day.  I have one Hyde Park homeowner friend that loved HP to death….until her baby was born.  House went on the market within 4 months and they are looking to move to the outer suburbs.

Nice post.  I find the dozen or so regular posters on here that seem to look down on the vast majority of the 2 million people in metro KC rather comical myself, especially considering that Downtown desperately needs suburbanites to even begin to look like something other than a ghostown with a hand full of joggers and and dog walkers.  Not to mention the fact that 80% of KCMO is suburban itself.

KC needs to get on the same page and those downtown newbies (I lived in downtown, midtown and plaza when you guys all were out in the burbs or some small town) are just as much the problem as the people at 167th and Antioch that never go north of the beltway.

There is zero respect across metro KC and zero cooperation.  Well the 5000-10000 people (actual people that choose to be downtown, not section 8 housing, single family housing at 30th, etc, but people that moved downtown to be in a loft or condo is tiny compared to those that have just as much love and support for downtown, but they choose to live in the burbs or some other part of the city.

You would think this forum would be more than the same people it was five years ago.  KC is not Seattle or San Francisco or Boston.  It's KC.  Downtown is great, but those that live there need to come back down to earth sometimes.  You can start by reducing the constant insults to 99% of the metropolitan area.

Fat downtown hating suv driving idiots with no good kids that do nothing but play video games and go with mom to target.  Stop it.  That's stupid and you can ask my 13 year old son how 3 hours of sports a day after school is anything but sedative yet both my kids know the city better than probably half of those that live downtown (you know, those that live there, but don't really give a shit that they do, which there are plenty, trust me.)

Sorry, I just think the urban snobbery on this forum is off the charts.

If you really want downtown to come back and be an active urban area, you are going to have to look beyond whatever makes the 5000 people that live downtown happy and think about how to tap into the 2 million people that live outside the loop.  Every town that has a vibrant downtown has done this.   That will translate into customers that can keep restaurants open which will attract more people to live there.  Even with 20,000 people living inside the loop, downtown needs suburbanites to survive.  Otherwise downtown will support about the same amount of dining and retail establishments as Grain Valley.

Sorry for the rant.  Carry on.

[KCPowercat]

Slim....vast majority of KC households don't have a 'family'.

While we all do our fair share of sitting.....name me the last time Joe blue springs walked to dinner to a restaurant or other activity. It doesn't happen.

[kcmetro]

All us city dwellers need to stop bitching about fat suburban kids and go back to being lazy and watching TV or playing X-box in our condos like we do....like everyone does.  Most people are sedentary whether they live in the city or the suburbs.  Stop your ridiculous generalizations.

Chances are: you will live in the suburbs yourself when you have a family.  9 out of 10 of my hard-core city dweller friends have done it.  Mindsets change when your life situation changes.  I'm not saying you will end up at 167th & Antioch, but your love for the "city" will probably reveal it's blinders some day.  I have one Hyde Park homeowner friend that loved HP to death….until her baby was born.  House went on the market within 4 months and they are looking to move to the outer suburbs.

[LenexatoKCMO]

Nice post.  I find the dozen or so regular posters on here that seem to look down on the vast majority of the 2 million people in metro KC rather comical myself, especially considering that Downtown desperately needs suburbanites to even begin to look like something other than a ghostown with a hand full of joggers and and dog walkers.  Not to mention the fact that 80% of KCMO is suburban itself.

KC needs to get on the same page and those downtown newbies (I lived in downtown, midtown and plaza when you guys all were out in the burbs or some small town) are just as much the problem as the people at 167th and Antioch that never go north of the beltway.

There is zero respect across metro KC and zero cooperation.  Well the 5000-10000 people (actual people that choose to be downtown, not section 8 housing, single family housing at 30th, etc, but people that moved downtown to be in a loft or condo is tiny compared to those that have just as much love and support for downtown, but they choose to live in the burbs or some other part of the city.

You would think this forum would be more than the same people it was five years ago.  KC is not Seattle or San Francisco or Boston.  It's KC.  Downtown is great, but those that live there need to come back down to earth sometimes.  You can start by reducing the constant insults to 99% of the metropolitan area.

Fat downtown hating suv driving idiots with no good kids that do nothing but play video games and go with mom to target.  Stop it.  That's stupid and you can ask my 13 year old son how 3 hours of sports a day after school is anything but sedative yet both my kids know the city better than probably half of those that live downtown (you know, those that live there, but don't really give a shit that they do, which there are plenty, trust me.)

Sorry, I just think the urban snobbery on this forum is off the charts.

If you really want downtown to come back and be an active urban area, you are going to have to look beyond whatever makes the 5000 people that live downtown happy and think about how to tap into the 2 million people that live outside the loop.  Every town that has a vibrant downtown has done this.   That will translate into customers that can keep restaurants open which will attract more people to live there.  Even with 20,000 people living inside the loop, downtown needs suburbanites to survive.  Otherwise downtown will support about the same amount of dining and retail establishments as Grain Valley.

Sorry for the rant.  Carry on.

The two lifestyles are not mutually compatible.  As long as our country (this is not a KC-specific issue) continues to celebrate a lifestyle built around sprawl and driving miles and miles in oversized vehicles to get from one surface parking lot destination to another surface parking lot destination- we will never see the necessary policy changes to move past the onward march towards destruction of our urban fabrics, destruction of the environmentm, destruction of our bodies, and destruction of our minds.  In order for effective change to occur, the traditional suburban lifestyle must be repudiated.  People must be made aware that there are real choices.  More and more suburbanites are themselves waking up to the drawbacks of that lifestyle and starting to demand better - that is a good thing.  The historical dominance of the suburbs directly impacts my life in significant negative ways despite the fact that I have done my best to avoid involvement with them - thus I refuse to apologize and "live and let live".  Your choice to live a freeway bound and SUV dependent life has major impact on my life in countless negative ways.  The defensiveness of your tone makes it clear that the implications must draw awfully close to the bone.  

[studentper]

The two lifestyles are not mutually compatible.  As long as our country (this is not a KC-specific issue) continues to celebrate a lifestyle built around sprawl and driving miles and miles in oversized vehicles to get from one surface parking lot destination to another surface parking lot destination- we will never see the necessary policy changes to move past the onward march towards destruction of our urban fabrics, destruction of the environmentm, destruction of our bodies, and destruction of our minds.  In order for effective change to occur, the traditional suburban lifestyle must be repudiated.  People must be made aware that there are real choices.  More and more suburbanites are themselves waking up to the drawbacks of that lifestyle and starting to demand better - that is a good thing.  The historical dominance of the suburbs directly impacts my life in significant negative ways despite the fact that I have done my best to avoid involvement with them - thus I refuse to apologize and "live and let live".  Your choice to live a freeway bound and SUV dependent life has major impact on my life in countless negative ways.  The defensiveness of your tone makes it clear that the implications must draw awfully close to the bone.  

I think the two lifestyles are quite compatible, and one person can choose to live in different places at different points in their lives without being ignorant of the benefits and drawbacks of the other.  I also think you made GRID's point very nicely.

[LenexatoKCMO]

I think the two lifestyles are quite compatible, and one person can choose to live in different places at different points in their lives without being ignorant of the benefits and drawbacks of the other.  I also think you made GRID's point very nicely.

How can they be compatible when one of the lifestyle choices demands that all of our public infrastructure resources (transportation in particular) be devoted to perpetuating further disposable sprawl?  Suburbs don't work unless our public resources remain focused on building more sprawl infrastructure. 

All so your kids can continue to enjoy segregated schools. 

Anyone who thinks this isn't an "us vs. them" fight is kidding themselves.  The only hope is to convert more of "them". 

[chrizow]

exactly.  suburbanites (and urbanites i suppose) will bitch about the city spending a few million a year to subsidize the P&L, hotels, etc., but no one seems to notice the many, many billions of dollars that are spent by local, state, and federal governments to subsidize, support, and encourage ever more destructive sprawl. 

[LenexatoKCMO]

For a second there I was afraid I was going to be the only angry "condecending" urbanite to be brave enough to raise my head around here. 

History has established very conclusively that suburban growth happens at the expense of urban and rural health.  Playing nice about it will never help the situation.  Short of massive energy crisis, we may never stop or reverse the trend of suburbs sucking the life out of urban and rural communities but we can at least slow that down.  And I feel pretty confident that the only way to ever pull that off is full on confrontation.  The more suburbs can come to be viewed as unfashionable, undesireable, and yes shameful, the more the process can be slowed.  I feel absolutely no regret in suburbanites feeling picked on and perhaps inwardly a bit shamed over their choice.  Those feelings can result in real change.  Otherwise we just keep building freeway loops farther and farther away so your children can maintain the bare minimum number of brown kids in their class. 

[KCPowercat]

I think its funny the non kid having, young kcmtro is such a suburbanite defender. How freaking boring is that guy?   

Honestly though, I see why families move to the burbs in some cases. I kinda think they are just being lazy but overall they are bred to think they are only doing their child the best to get a half acre and house. They never really try and they do, they are going to get tons of comments about education for their kid. There are still very real issues to work on in the city.

That breing said this country isn't made up of families with school aged kids.  Well over the majority are just adults. So why are these people choosing to live in an isolated world where the only way to get anywhere is by personal auto....why would someone do that to themselves. He who dies with the biggest house doesn't win.

[lawngnome]

The two lifestyles are not mutually compatible.  As long as our country (this is not a KC-specific issue) continues to celebrate a lifestyle built around sprawl and driving miles and miles in oversized vehicles to get from one surface parking lot destination to another surface parking lot destination- we will never see the necessary policy changes to move past the onward march towards destruction of our urban fabrics, destruction of the environmentm, destruction of our bodies, and destruction of our minds.  In order for effective change to occur, the traditional suburban lifestyle must be repudiated.  People must be made aware that there are real choices.  More and more suburbanites are themselves waking up to the drawbacks of that lifestyle and starting to demand better - that is a good thing.  The historical dominance of the suburbs directly impacts my life in significant negative ways despite the fact that I have done my best to avoid involvement with them - thus I refuse to apologize and "live and let live".  Your choice to live a freeway bound and SUV dependent life has major impact on my life in countless negative ways.  The defensiveness of your tone makes it clear that the implications must draw awfully close to the bone.  

No offense, but if you knew Grid at all, you wouldn't be making such claims.

[LenexatoKCMO]

No offense, but if you knew Grid at all, you wouldn't be making such claims.

Chef, reread the post - it has next to nothing to do with Grid specifically.

[kcmetro]

I think its funny the non kid having, young kcmtro is such a suburbanite defender. How freaking boring is that guy?   

That is the kind of condescending attitude that makes people like you hard to be around.  To think that one can only have fun living downtown in a loft is simple minded.  Using your logic, that means 99% of people in their 20's in this metro are boring.  And some people on here wonder why they're often tagged as being urban snobs. 

[chrizow]

while i don't consider myself an urban "snob," per se, i do think that this metro could use a helluva lot more ardent urban supporters/defenders.  there are probably hundreds of thousands of "city haters" in this metro area who take every opportunity to bash the city and tout wasteful, absurd, govt-subsidized suburban living.  the suburbanite-victimology is just ridiculous.  yeah, a couple dozen people on an URBANIST chat forum are suburb-bashers - boo fucking hoo.  the suburban menace continues unabated.

[KCPowercat]

I lived in the burbs for a couple years of my 20s, I was boring....so I speak from experience.

99% of 20 ish people live in the burbs? Ehhhhhh.

Just jokes.  Obviously people can be boring or not boring independent of their bed location....just my experience. Why are you such a burb lover if you don't mind me asking?

I think I'm getting a "i am an urban snob" bumper sticker....yet no one would ever see my bumper.  What a dilemma.

Honestly you haven't seen snobbery until you tell people you live downtown or other urban areas in KC. So consider any snobbery you read here as backlash for that.

[mlind]

I know a lot of people who lived in downtown urban areas, moved to the suburbs when the kids came, & moved back to downtown urban areas when the kids left. 

People with kids want to live around other people with kids.  And they want parks, sports, classes, childcare, good schools, etc. nearby.  That's not going to change.  So, until that's available, it's off to the suburbs they go.