That's because they're starting to realize that as landlocked, aging suburbs they can no longer ride the suburban sprawl Ponzi scheme to success. They now have much more in common with the center city that they fed off of as they grew than the farther-out suburbs that are and will continue to leave them behind without so much as a second glance. St. Louis County is recognizing this as a whole as St. Charles and Jefferson Counties steal its thunder.warwickland wrote:inner joco reminds me a little of inner st. louis county (where i live), and like inner st. louis county, inner joco seems much more willing to identify as "KC" and is an important sort of auxillary that quietly feeds the center city.
That said, it does the metro no good to kick them while they're down. Recognize that many of them have value to add to the city and go from there. Somewhere like Roeland Park is as close or closer to Downtown than Brookside and closer to the Plaza than Downtown is. With the right leadership, it and others could be retrofitted into something livable & sustainable. Thriving inner-ring suburbs do much more for the metro than another Grandview. That's why the lazy Missouri/Kansas division in everything is so irksome--places like Westwood, Roeland Park, Prairie Village and so on should really be lumped in with the neighborhoods of KCMO south of the Plaza than with the Masters of Sprawl (Olexawood Park, if you will) in southern & western JoCo - which you alluded to.
KC is actually much better off than St. Louis in this regard in that it only has a dozen or so munis in this situation instead of the 90 or so in St. Louis County.