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For me, the "sunbelt" feel is not just the new construction, but also the spread out feel of the area. The super wide arterial streets (so many six-eight lane streets with dual right and left turn lanes making crossing the streets on foot insanely uncomfortable.
All the buildings have massive setbacks, the relative lack of trees, hills and the flat and straight streets and general topography.
Also, the office parks in their islands of surface parking lots on the vast prairies of KS.
JoCo looks pretty much just like suburban Phoenix without the palm trees. It looks nothing like suburban St Louis or Minneapolis or Denver or Chicago or even the suburbs on the Missouri side of KC.
It has more of a Phoenix, or Plano or suburban Oklahoma City feel to it. It's not like sunbelt places like Atlanta or LA though. The topography and street layout is too different.
Hmm, well, I think "so many six-eight lane streets" is an exaggeration. But I guess if you are just passing through and don't live here, you may not notice the great neighborhoods that are in between them.
I've seen suburban similarities in Denver, Chicago and StL (can't speak about Minneapolis) but it wouldn't surprise me that JoCo would look more spread out like a TX or OK city. Even I can figure out that a surface parking lot is less expensive to build than an underground garage and if you have the land, it's a no-brainer.
All of this makes perfect sense. Where is the "insane" part? Is there a problem with it? (Other than that you just like other cities/'burbs better?)
When it is evident that the previous posters all feel that this building as designed is a huge mistake why do you find it necessary to be insulting and label the mentality as "soccer-mom"?
I agree with kcmo. I think the new JoCo suburbs look substantially different than those in St. Louis and Chicago -- I have lived in the suburbs of both those cities within the last decade and they have much more in common with each other than either do with Kansas City.
And I totally agree about the streets and trees aspect, but the houses really are different too. St. Louis' and Chicago's nicer homes (both new and old) tend to be brick and in the American traditional style while Kansas City has much more stucco and is heavily influenced by Spanish.
Probably the first thing I noticed when experiencing the joco suburbs the first time were all the Spanish tiled roofs. I've never really seen that on such a massive level in the Midwest.
I didn't say I had a problem with it. Johnson County's built environment, is what it is and really it offers suburban diversity to metro KC because KC does have a wider variety of suburban areas to choose from. KC has the "sunbelty" areas of southern joco (which many people like) to the more hilly and forested and lake areas of the the MO burbs. JoCo does have super wide streets which have positives and negatives. The street system in suburban st louis (and parts of the kc mo side burbs) create terrible traffic for example. The topography makes having wide streets nearly impossible. While I like the hills and curving streets and bridges, they don't function well during rush hour. JoCo's expansive space and grid street system is far more conductive for office parks and their footprints and the traffic they create which is one of the primary reasons JoCo has become KC's premier suburban office market. JoCo's built environment is extremely un-friendly to pedestrians and bikers, but they do at least attempt to make up for it with an excellent trail system.
So, again, my problem is not with JoCo's built environment. It's not my first choice, I would much rather live in a place like Lee's Summit for suburban living, that it more my style. But a lot of people like JoCo and I get that.
My problem with JoCo has and will always be how the county interacts with the rest of KC. The general attitudes people have there toward the MO side, the way the county has no desire to corporate with the KC metro region while at the same time luring over kcmo businesses with incentives. Other than that, it's a fine suburban area. I just wish it were more of a KC area county than a county in Kansas that seems to have no other interests other than to take full advantage of being next to KCMO to thier benefit no matter what the consequences to KCMO are.
I didn't say I had a problem with it. Johnson County's built environment, is what it is and really it offers suburban diversity to metro KC because KC does have a wider variety of suburban areas to choose from. KC has the "sunbelty" areas of southern joco (which many people like) to the more hilly and forested and lake areas of the the MO burbs. JoCo does have super wide streets which have positives and negatives. The street system in suburban st louis (and parts of the kc mo side burbs) create terrible traffic for example. The topography makes having wide streets nearly impossible. While I like the hills and curving streets and bridges, they don't function well during rush hour. JoCo's expansive space and grid street system is far more conductive for office parks and their footprints and the traffic they create which is one of the primary reasons JoCo has become KC's premier suburban office market. JoCo's built environment is extremely un-friendly to pedestrians and bikers, but they do at least attempt to make up for it with an excellent trail system.
So, again, my problem is not with JoCo's built environment. It's not my first choice, I would much rather live in a place like Lee's Summit for suburban living, that it more my style. But a lot of people like JoCo and I get that.
Okay, with you there.
But then
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My problem with JoCo has and will always be how the county interacts with the rest of KC.... Blah blah blah ... yada yada yada ...
JoCo isn't IN Missouri. It's in Kansas. Why does it continue to surprise you that it would look after its own interests first before that of another city that's in another state? KCMO doesn't consider what's best for Overland Park nor should they be expected to.
It's unfortunate that competition exists because of the state line and with competition there will always be winning and losing. But none of it really should be surprising nor such a source of continued grudge-holding and resentment. Doesn't that ever get old?
Parts of Denver have "some" wide streets, because parts of suburban Denver are very flat and expansive like JoCo. But they don't have the extensive grid street network that JoCo has, just a few wide streets. That's about where the similarities end though.
Denver builds more dense, even in the burbs. They do far more zona rosa and longview farm type (new urbanism) commercial development, they have a less percent of single family homes (more condos and multifamily) and even though they do have some wide streets, they also extensively integrate transit (rail and and buses) into suburban areas and do a lot of mixed use vs the extremely separated and zoned uses that JoCo does and in most of the popular Denver burbs along the front range, the mountains are right there and that "wall" helps keep Denver from sprawling too low density. Everybody wants to live west of I-25. That's why the eastern suburbs of Denver are locally called "Kansas" and there is little desire to live there. That is where you will find JoCo type development, spread out single family homes in expansive flat unrestricted areas.
Really, the only areas of the country that JoCo really compares to is the northern burbs of Dallas and Fort Worth, suburban OKC and suburban Phoenix.
JoCo isn't IN Missouri. It's in Kansas. Why does it continue to surprise you that it would look after its own interests first before that of another city that's in another state? KCMO doesn't consider what's best for Overland Park nor should they be expected to.
The thing you have to realize is that most other suburbs in most other metro areas simply do not think like this. A suburb's health is tied to the health of its city. Period. Most people who moved out to the suburbs in the last 50 years did so with the understanding that they were still intrinsically tied to their big city -- but it doesn't appear that JoCo has ever learned this lesson.
If Kansas City imploded on itself today, whether you would like to admit it or not, its suburbs -- JoCo included -- would be in big trouble.
The thing you have to realize is that most other suburbs in most other metro areas simply do not think like this. A suburb's health is tied to the health of its city. Period. Most people who moved out to the suburbs in the last 50 years did so with the understanding that they were still intrinsically tied to their big city -- but it doesn't appear that JoCo has ever learned this lesson.
If Kansas City imploded on itself today, whether you would like to admit it or not, its suburbs -- JoCo included -- would be in big trouble.
Exactly.
The Kentucky side of Cincinnati acts more like a part of Cincy than a fierce competitor of Cincy. Northern KY is not there just to take businesses from Cincy. They are a party of the cincy metropolitan area. They get it. So they figured out a way to compete as a group (both the KY side and as part of the Cincy Metro area)
I went to Northern Kentucky recently to meet with some of the region's leaders in government, business and education. Over and over, they told me the same thing: They owe much of their success to good regional planning and cooperation.
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The idea is that we as counties do not compete with one another...
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Instead they work together so Northern Kentucky and the Greater Cincinnati region con compete more effectively with other major metropolitan areas.
The end result is far less resentment and a far better community. Northern KY is an integral part of the Cincy region. Downtown Covington is everything Downtown KCK could and should be.
If Johnson, Wyandotte and even Douglas/Leavenworth got together and competed as a team, they could do amazing things and actually help the metropolitan area rather than play a huge role in destroying it.
I see the same thing here in DC with Maryland and Virginia. It's not perfect, but it's far from the poaching that goes on in KC. There is respect. VA don't go after MD or DC companies and MD doesn't do it either. A company choose to move, but incentives are rarely given and they don't fight over companies. Metro DC is too busy competing with LA, Houston, Atlanta etc to bring in new jobs, not snatch something from across town and end up with a net loss in tax revenue.
Now imagine this quote coming from KS leaders...
Instead they work together so Kansas side counties and the Greater Kansas City region con compete more effectively with other major metropolitan areas.
The day this happens, is the day that KC can be proud and once again excited for its future. Till then, it will just continue to self destruct with a false impression of growth that is nothing more than migration from MO to KS which is doing more harm than good to the region as a whole.
Shall I once again bring up metro funding cooperation for things such as the zoo or the museums or the stadiums? Just check out a few towns close to KC such as St Louis, Denver and Minneapolis for examples of how metro area counties come together to fund regional issues and or avoid regional competition for economic development. JoCo may be in KS, but that doesn't justify how it interacts with the rest of KC. Not in the least.
Kansas is and will always be a backwards state. They didn't repeal prohibition until 1950 i believe. It's such a reactive state.
Do you think Southern Johnson County becomes such a dominant force that we see an airport built there?
I think it would be so cool if an Out of the Box Thinking Airline like Allegiant or JetBlue started using the Downtown Airport. Jetblue could run flights to JFK
There is a map in the truman library showing the states that voted for Truman and Kansas wasn't one of them (only a handful didn't vote for him). My oldest son said "look dad, that figures". I understand that KS is a conservative state, but considering most of the population of KS lives near KC and that Truman was very popular in the KC area, you would think that the state would have had just enough interest to get a popular vote. Guess not.
Missouri voted for republican Eisenhower (who obviously grew up in rural Kansas) in the next election.
I'm sure this doesn't mean a lot, but it sure does "figure" as my son said .
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