GRID wrote:
Denver is in a different league than KC. Period. KC doesn't have enough "grit" or green (Most of KC's green space is wasted or just grass/trees and is not used recreationally anyway) to even come close to closing all the other gaps.
As far as people from Denver thinking KC is boring. Shit, you must not get out much. That's what the entire country thinks of KC, unless they have been there. KC = wichita to most of the country...
Even people from Denver that have driven through KC have horrible images of the city. Think about it. Driving into KC from Colorado is simply depressing. The city seems rural/industrial as you drive into the city. It looks like an old industrial city that is very sparsely developed and has many run down areas and very little suburbs. As you drive through downtown, the skyline looks tiny from the west. It looks smaller than Omaha. Then you pass downtown, you have 15 miles of 1950's urban interstate and run down areas before you have a few suburban exits east of 470 and that's it. That's KC. The drive across KC via 70 is similar to the drive across Peoria, IL, only in Peoria, they have rebuilt the interstates, have developed both sides of the riverfront etc.
Now, if people got off 70 and drove south into the city, that image should change for the better, but I can't tell you how many people I know that have driven through KC via 70 and told me their image of the city is small/industrial/ghetto/abandoned. That's the image we give to 1000's of travelers everyday that pass through KC.
KC is a nice city, but it's not really a peer to Denver anymore. The city has made and just continues to make the wrong decisions and there are too many areas the city is just way too far behind in.
Denver=A vibrant, bustling true "big city" next to the mountains.
KC=A city that has some vibrant areas, but it can't seem to quite get over the hump and be more like a Denver or Minneapolis and KC is in the middle of hundreds of miles of farmland that nobody really wants to live next to.
But it's cheap.
Truth...
I find it strange you would start your comparison with a view of KC from I-70. While KC does not put its best foot forward along I-70, one's perception of Denver would not be much better if one never exited I-70. Like any US city outside of Texas, you have to get off the interstate to experience either city. East of I-25, I-70 in Denver is a pretty ugly mess of industry and warehouses with only distant views of its impressive downtown. West of I-25, things do not improve much until one approaches the Golden area. Of course, the Front Range is always serving as a backdrop to any west bound traveller and that is something that KC will never match. Nonetheless, when living in Denver, both my wife and I missed the more aesthically pleasing aspects of Kansas City.
I would also disagree regarding the drive between KC and Denver, while parts are dull (particularly between Oakley Kansas and Limon Colorado) there is a surprsing amount of topography through the Flint and Red Hills. The Plains are what they are but they are anything but "depressing".
KC will never have the recreational opportunities that Denver offers and that is what attracts the young crowd which in turn attracts business, money and all the nice things a progressive attitude and a lot of money can do for a city. I love the fact that Denver is pretty vibrant downtown but KC may not be as far behind as you might believe. It's certainly well ahead of where I now live (Houston) despite the fact that Houston even has a light rail line. Frankly, I think Denver pays a pretty steep price for all of it's attributes. The drive back into Denver from the mountains on Sunday night, always bad when I lived there 20 years ago, has become a bit more "depressing" to me than the trip across Kansas. I remember climbing in my teens (late 70's) and being the only people on the summits of Colorado peaks, in the late 90's when I last climbed in Colorado, I shared summits with hundreds of other climbers, there were often 1000+ people on the trails of the near-Denver peaks on busy summer weekends; the recreational experiences has changed much for the worse. Given the changes that have occurred in rural mountainous Colorado along with paying over 500,000$ for a house/condo I could get for 250,000$ in KC, I decided it just wasn't a place I wanted to live anymore.