What Do You Hate About Kansas City (St. Louis, Charleston: theatre, school)

[TabulaRasa]

How did you go from downtown to Rockhust/UMKC area and avoid the Plaza? It's about the least seedy part of the city. Even if you went via 71, there are MUUUUUUUCH scarier parts of the city.

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by Vegas Joe

Just from a recent visitor view, there is nothing I hate about your city but it seemed rather seedy when you go out of the downtown area and drive to Rockhurst University. Maybe that is just a scary looking part of the city. We have those in Las Vegas too but most visitors never go there. The rest of the city I saw was beautiful but I was only there 3 days and on business so I did not get the time to run around much. Oh, and the BBQ at Gates was fantastic!

If you went down Troost Ave to get to Rockhurst (Troost is Rockhurst's western boundary) , that street has long been the divide between white and black, rich and poor. As a division, it is quite striking. It almost looks as though an official segregation boundary. Same house one block west of Troost you'll have a $153,000 house, one block east it's $53,000.

Troost is a bit seedy but it is also improving a bit. Urban pioneers buying into eastern portions of more desirable areas like Brookside, Hyde Park, and a few other spots along the Troost corridor, sometimes east of it, are responsible for the improvement.

Other than that, to be honest, midtown KCMO is perhaps even seedier than Troost. Midtown is the area between downtown and the Westport and Plaza areas along Main and Broadway, from about 31st to about Westport Rd. Public alcoholism, crack sales and smoking, homeless folks, and public gay sex are all problems that plague midtown. Much of the trouble comes from section 8 and low-income housing in the area. The area is rampant with sex offenders and HIV as well. Fortunately or unfortunately, most folks don't know how bad midtown really is. You have to live there, have your feet on the sidewalks all times of day and night, and not be totally oblivious.

Although, there is improvement in Midtown. Much of the housing has been returned to single-family use and is even inhabited by upper-middle class and families, many runned-down apartment buildings have been remodeled and returned to market rate, the streetscape along Main is being revamped, and there are CID guys doing security and cleaning up litter.

Even downtown KC, while very much improved, has a lot of weird/troubled/bad people lurking around, guys smoking crack in the alleys even in the middle of the business day, and public drinking. Some of these people come in by bus, some from the nearby homeless shelter, some live in cheap/low-income apartments around downtown such as those on the west side of downtown that are perhaps the largest concentration of sex offenders for 250 miles.

That said, I'm a 25-year-old male (not even big in stature) and while I think I can navigate (and have) these areas fairly safely, when it comes to the thought of putting a woman in this situation, I won't do it, so I wouldn't live in these areas because of this, even though I very much like downtown.

All that said, these are some of the things I hate about Kansas City. Acknowledging reality hits your pretty hard.

Brookside, Plaza, or no go. For me.

[TabulaRasa]

Originally Posted by MOKAN

If you went down Troost Ave to get to Rockhurst (Troost is Rockhurst's western boundary) , that street has long been the divide between white and black, rich and poor. As a division, it is quite striking. It almost looks as though an official segregation boundary.

This pretty much summarizes the main beef I have with Kansas City, right here. The fact that there even exists/is perceived to exist a street that's the dividing line between black and white.

KC is hands down the most racially segregated community in which I've personally lived, and I've lived in much larger and more ethnically rich cities.

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by TabulaRasa

This pretty much summarizes the main beef I have with Kansas City, right here. The fact that there even exists/is perceived to exist a street that's the dividing line between black and white.

KC is hands down the most racially segregated community in which I've personally lived, and I've lived in much larger and more ethnically rich cities.

A good idea for a thread is to find a good color-coded map showing black, white, Hispanic and having everybody visualize their city's segregation.

I bet you're right and that KC's dividing line is the most striking.

It's weird though because just east of Hyde Park there are more houses that are the same as Hyde Park, but they're east of Troost, so they remain mostly untouched. Same with SE KC, east of Brookside and Waldo. As far as I can tell, 63rd, Meyer, Gregory and 75th St aren't that bad of areas, almost merely working-class, and there are some nice houses and boulevards, but those places still fall into the general consensus of areas to avoid.

[joebaldknobber]

Kansas City is a great town. I hear they call Paris "The Kansas City of Europe".

[TabulaRasa]

And Seville is "just like that shopping district in Kansas City!"

[Blue Earth]

Originally Posted by MOKAN

A good idea for a thread is to find a good color-coded map showing black, white, Hispanic and having everybody visualize their city's segregation.

Those maps are here:

Race and ethnicity (2000) - a set on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624812674967/detail/ - broken link)

Kansas City is on page 3.

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by Blue Earth

Those maps are here:

Race and ethnicity (2000) - a set on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624812674967/detail/ - broken link)

Kansas City is on page 3.

Somebody really took some time to load those onto Flickr.

I've seen better maps where black is grey and white is green and they seemed to really get across how segregated places are, but I can't remember what website they're a part of.

[aragx6]

Delmar in St. Louis is still probably the most striking demarcation line I've ever seen, and it's absolutely heartbreaking. There's been an impressive (really, I'd even say incredible) amount of gentrification in St. Louis over the last decade, but only one neighborhood north of Delmar has seen any marked improvement, and it's just north of downtown -- Old North St. Louis.

Driving north through the heart of the Central West End (which is up there as one of the best urban neighborhoods in the midwest) and then getting past Delmar and being in a terribly empty, dilapidated and depressing neighborhood is the worst.

[denverian]

Originally Posted by TabulaRasa

This pretty much summarizes the main beef I have with Kansas City, right here. The fact that there even exists/is perceived to exist a street that's the dividing line between black and white.

KC is hands down the most racially segregated community in which I've personally lived, and I've lived in much larger and more ethnically rich cities.

And it's still like that today? I grew up in KC and knew of the "dividing line". That's something I like about Denver. There is an area of NE Denver that was traditionally the "black neighborhood" and even today it's probably a majority of black people living there, but there is now dividing line. The area isn't impoverished and run down, and you find plenty of white people living in this area these days.

But the worst place I've ever seen such a dramatic dividing line between white and black people was Charleston, SC. This was in the '90s, and the poverty and racism there was just sad.