My German city was sent back to the stone age with the help of American bombs in WWII. Ironic how they did this to themselves without having had a war on their home soil.
Heard that! When I was a lot cooler and had a big mohawk the deserted downtown streets were my place. Now it's catered to the wealthy. Meh... I do like the bike lanes going in all over the city. Not that I bike more than 5-10 times a year, but I think it's a good thing for our city.
I remember that. As a kid we went down to Union Station and things looked dead and I remember going back from about 2010 or so on things looked much better, though there still were problems for sure.
I remember that. As a kid we went down to Union Station and things looked dead and I remember going back from about 2010 or so on things looked much better, though there still were problems for sure.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now.
There are, thankfully, a few exceptions to that rule. But, yes, for the most part, that is true. You could say the same for some Canadian cities as well.
Unfortunately our country has become kind of boring as well. European cities have character, culture, and sophistication so much more so than we do in my opinion.
As a retired truck driver I can tell you the biggest difference in the US city's. Logistics in older cities like what we have on the east coast is a nightmare for modern trucks simply because they were built for much smaller vehicles and even horse traffic in some cases. KC on the other hand has moved it's Logistics away from those areas and it's much more efficient to get in and out quickly. It's only going to get worse for the older cities because they are pushing for even bigger trailers as demand for everything grows. That and the tightened regulations on the truck business have been leading to a shortage of drivers. Places like KC, being located in the middle of the country are going to make it more of a major hub for Logistics nationwide. It's already happening on a large scale and has spread out to smaller communities already. It's been going on for more than twenty years and still growing. The traffic around KC isn't bad at all when you compare it to other cities. Houston, Dallas, Atlanta are just a few that are true traffic nightmares and all three coasts are the worst for traffic I have ever experienced.
@@rustyreese4006 Building entire cities around the needs of truckers rather than the needs of people as a whole is a terrible idea. If trucks are getting bigger, that is the fault of trucking companies. The same is true for firetrucks. Fire departments have caused innumerable problems with their constant demands for oversized roads to accomodate their unnecessarily large vehicles, all of which serve to justify their bloated budgets.
Demolishing multi story buildings in the center of the city and replacing them with parking lots makes zero economic sense I still can't understand how it happened
Because companies built skyscrapers with no underground parking for employees, so they buy up cheap lots and demolish them. Other cases it was just the Robert Moses style of "always progress moving forward, ignore the consequences" to make highways.
No, it makes sense when you get the timeline right. Cars allowed people to live further away. So while people might still work downtown, they increasingly stopped doing their errands downtown. Consequently thriving offices had high demand for parking while failing businesses were trying to sell their land. Perfect recipe for parking lot conversions.
Those details at 2:18 are very beautiful, it also shows how ornament can be added to a simple cube and still be effective. Many modern cubes could still be improved by adding ornament on top.
Totally agree. Many modern architects won't put lintels along the top of their buildings, for stylistic or cost reasons. Turns out this ornamentation actually has a use: when you don't include it, rain drips down the exterior walls and creates ugly drip marks.
As a Kansas City Metro resident, I CANNOT STAND how much beautiful architecture has been destroyed. Also, that traffic is most likely during rush-hour. It’s not like that most of the time.
@@hezahaubeza yeah for sure fellow KC bro. Traffic overplayed. He didn’t show the actual scariest part of Kansas City which I drive thru cuz I sell houses in KC, the neighborhoos like Ivanhoe, Oak Park, Blue Valley South/Central, Marlborough specifically Marlborough East. That’s the actual scariest part of KC which no media company dares to touch as the violent crime rates are approximately 1400-1450% above national average.
As a native Kansas Citian, I was really excited to see you made a video about my city. Although it deeply saddens me to see how beautiful of a city we used to have, but traded in exchange for a dysfunctional highway system, I am really excited to see all the new developments taking place. Hopefully 50 years from now I’ll be able to tell my grandkids how much better they have it compared to when I was growing up.
I'm also from Kansas City, and chasing work on the railroad I've now lived in a few different cities around the Midwest. Kansas City's highway system is FAR from dysfunctional lol. It might be sad, but so far it's the nicest highways and the "best" traffic I've experienced.
I’ve lived in the Kansas City area all of my life, and the city has a very unique, interesting history (Civil War, American frontier, Prohibition) and culture. I imagine it was a sight to behold when my family before me lived and worked here before all of the urban renewal and sprawl. Really appreciated the video on my city btw!
The Kansas City metro area is honestly a delightful place to live - large enough to have great varieties of businesses, restaurants, etc., but small enough to drive anywhere pretty quickly and without the traffic you experience in larger cities. He greatly exaggerates the traffic and other problems.
No the fck is doesn't. In and out of DT is gridlock, Johnson co in and out is gridlock. Shit bus system, one of the worst in the nation. Politicians that are more concerned with protecting criminals. Multiple areas in Kansas and Missouri that are no go zones unless you want something bad to happen to you. Get real, and off whatever you are probably smoking or huffing
@@meanpie13 100% agree. It's really minimal in comparison to other major cities. I think the JOCO side is much safer and nicer overall, but the traffic is really not an issue. I lived in CO for 6 years and it's 1000% more beautiful. I delivered beer in the Denver/Boulder/FOCO area and it was always so enjoyable and scenic there. We don't have that here. It's mundane and that's perfectly understandable. KC is about the food, football, and raising a family. Downtown could definitely be better. Crime's not great, parking is shit, and it just makes the suburbs like OP and OIathe make way more sense. It's the place I grew up in and I still love it here.
@@caw7007"5-10 mph over the speed limit. Darting in and out"... ...means that traffic is actually moving. Ever been to New York or L.A.? You are in traffic for hours everyday, unless you work close to home. (which most people don't)
Kansas City is definitely a victim of its own geography. There’s so much easy to build on land for miles around the core, that suburban sprawl became a logical conclusion. There aren’t a whole lot of natural boundaries, especially to the south
bing-fucking-go. and the dark secret nobody wants to admit is that very few people actually love to live in a downtown apartment arrangement, especially to raise a family. nearly everybody aspires to have a house with a decent yard, a garage, and neighbors you all know by name. kansas city offers that in excessive abundance. that is most everyone's utopian fantasy world. it's not some ultra condensed concrete jungle where we all ride the smelly bus together.
@@jose.a.a.a The MO hasn't flooded KCMO in a very long time. It probably won't again, thanks to the flood control structures in place. Unfortunately, that does mean more flooding elsewhere.
My family has been in Kansas City for nigh on 130-140 years, and has lived all over the city. A lot of them are from the Northeast, which if you know anything about KC, is the original neighborhood for a lot of old families. My uncle (a boomer, raised in town at the end of the original streetcar era) won’t even visit KC anymore due to how sad it makes him. The way they all reminisce about going downtown to walk about or explore is just depressing comparatively. Can’t help but feel like I missed it.
My dad was born here in 1947, and he used to live off Gladstone down the street from the Kennedy memorial and the Museum(shame what they’ve done to that place!). He used to drive me around northeast and tell me about what it was like in the 50s/60s, and I could only imagine by some of the architecture in that area. He said northeast was one of the finest parts of town. Just like he told me that living off the Paseo was a symbol of status back then. It surely isn’t now!
Blame it on the floods and William B Strang's passenger rail service to the surrounding rural areas which then caused an explosion of smaller suburban cities especially after WWII.
Urban development did a lot but crime took its toll too. Lots of neighborhoods and cultural areas fell apart. I had lots of family in strawberry hill back in the day. Seems like it’s coming around again now, but not near as vibrant as it once was.
My dad grew up in Monkey Park. It doesn't exist anymore. But, I believe it was in the west bottoms. Not sure. I grew up on the East side, but spent a lot of time as a kid in the northeast. I went to Northeast Junior(if that tells you how old I am). There is a lot of history here. What I call "The Castles", down off of St. John right behind the museum. Cliff Drive. There is a monument at one of the outlets of Cliff Drive that my sister was married at in 1986. It has an eternal flame that as far as I know is still burning. I always was awe inspired by my city. I used to skip school at Sante Fe Trail with my buddies at 27th and Topping. We'd sled down the hill on our school books at 26th and Topping in Blue Valley Park. I worked at a fruit stand at the corner of 27th and Van Brunt in the parking lot of Hav-a-Snack when I was 8 years old for $3 a day. I don't think that removing old uncared for buildings is what has tainted our history. Growth is necessary. My memories are filled with the culture I grew up in. I think what tainted our city is the crime. Not the big stuff, the incessant petty shit. Druggies taking the change from your car, drive by shootings, etc. I moved from there on October 25th of this year to greener pastures. Either way, I'm ranting. I still love my city.
@@knucklehead83 That monument is the JFK memorial. My dad would always go down and light it anytime it went out. It was at the north end of Gladstone Blvd. where he lived. It’s also called the Collonade. All those houses were turned into apartments, but the owner of the building he lived in was an old Italian guy with lots of well dressed friends lol, he just told me to “be respectful” lol. They would tell me to wash their cars and they’d give me a hundred dollar bill every time.
Well yeah. wtf do you think the train is for? Moving people between destinations. People come to town in cars and park then ride the train to an area they want to go.
Kansas City feels like the most confusing mix between an older city with a solid urban core and a more decentralized, sprawling metro like Columbus. The boundaries are so weird to look at on a map.
I live in st louis but worked in kansas city back in 2010-11. There was a saying in the st louis metro back in the 90s that was a bit of an exageration but wasn't too far off. You could drive anywhere in 20 minutes. What i noticed about kc when i was there, everything seemed so spread out.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
St Joseph is a small city to the north of KC with a similar trajectory to its larger neighbor, however with none of the growth and optimism. The city has done nothing but been stagnant for over 100 years, yet it has grown to double its land area. There is so much rich history of architecture and human-oriented development throughout the area; yet today it's a bunch of decaying brick buildings and empty fields.
I was raised on a farm north of Kansas City and had cousins that lived near St. Joe. In high school (1970's), St. Joe was a hang out destination for us. I moved away years ago but I was back there last year and was surprised at how little had changed.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
Living in St. Joe sucks. Like, it’s literally a cultural black hole. The local “leadership” certainly doesn’t help and oozes corruption. Unless you’re a good ol boy of course.
It’s funny how people act like they kept up with maintenance on these buildings and they didn’t get ruined by sitting there being vandalized. After a while you get sick of looking at all that, yes it’s a shame. You can’t keep everything the same, especially when it’s all decrepit.
What’s great is that the street car has expanded down Main Street to the Plaza. which initially has a lot of old buildings that are boarded up and now once that gets going, so many businesses will be revived in these old buildings. Come check out Kansas City it’s really growing.
As a touring musician out of Kansas City, the traffic flow in KC is a blessing compared to just about every other city I have traveled to! And the current street car situation has had our streets in non functional government money waste and making the local traffic flows way worse than it was before they started this ridiculous project! We used to have music venues all over with good parking now it's mostly gone with rubbish street parking
@RTFLDGR yep totally destroyed setting up shows and inviting people to come knowing they're going to have to walk from blocks away through dark alleys@@RTFLDGR
Thank you for sharing the actual purpose and benefits of the changes. Side note: The many references to “beauty” as if it isn’t completely subjective annoyed me.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
@@t4squared I can't say I'm a fan of getting locked in a steel tube with a homeless guy who is willing to stab me for looking at him the wrong way. So yes, unironically, heaven forbid.
My great grandmother had a hotel in downtown KC in the 60s and 70s, gorgeous place with marble stairs. It got demolished in the 90s and it's still a parking lot today.
Man, all of those beautiful old buildings traded for parking lots. I've always hated Kansas City as someone living nearby, now I'll hate it even more. Hey, the antique stores are pretty good though! Still grateful for the West Bottoms.
There’s a lot of irony/hypocrisy when you’re making a video about the tragic loss of old beauty in favor of modern convenience, and you use an AI slop photo for the “jazz scene” instead of an actual photo of 18th and Vine
he should have started the video with "here is my arrogant and uninformed opinion about a place i know nothing about besides what other people have said on reddit"
You guys missed the point. He used those images to purposely exaggerate the modern "beauty" of the city. When in fact, the video is about the modern decline of beauty of the city.
As a born and raised Kansas Citian every time I see pictures of old Kansas City just think about “how they massacred my boy” We used to have an extensive streetcar system, we used to have a regional *electrical* rail network, we used to have these dense walkable and beautiful neighborhoods. We literally find ourselves in a position where we need to go backwards to go forwards.
@@Str3ltsov In my country, Sweden, there are examples of new houses being built in a classical style. Google Ekmansgatan 5 (especially for images). This building in Gothenburg/Göteborg was constructed only a few years ago.
theres a revival in traditional (pre-modernist) architecture happening right now. hopefully within the next decade it will gain traction and older styles will be built again
@dontwren In my country, Sweden, many people want more of classical architecture, but there's a resistance among project owners and architects. However, there are examples of new houses being built in a classical style. Ekmansgatan 5 in Gothenburg is a new building that has received a lot of praise.
Theres a plan in motion to add onto the kc country club plaza in the traditional Spanish Architecture. Luckily seems like atleast some developers are against modern trends.
Lived in the area most of my life. The main reason for the deterioration of KC and the boom of it's suburbs was the huge crime rate and gang activity amongst a certain demographic. During the 70's and 80's due to that crime, the inner city started moving to the suburbs, and brining the crime and ghetto with them. To avoid this, cities like Lee's Summit would put a huge fee on getting utilities activated. If I remember correctly it was as high as $3000 just to get your water turned on. Grandview was a huge victim of the inner city migration. It became a crime haven overnight. Bannister mall and the Super Walmart both closed down due to the astronomical crime rates there. At that time, it was the only Walmart in the world that ever closed.
I was a little boy in Ruskin in the early '00s. I remember going to that Super Walmart and I remember when it closed down. Thankfully we cleared out of the zip code a couple years later. The area wasn't exactly "Detroit" but it was getting a bit rough.
@@JesusHammer That only makes sense if we first assume that the original comment was from a person of one ethnicity looking down on others who do not share that ethnicity, which is, in and of itself, prejudiced, as no one said anything about race. Anyone can be a broke crook from the inner-city. Not just one or two ethnic groups.
I live about 3 miles from where Bannister Mall and the Super Walmart were. Bannister Mall was built on a landfill that had not set long enough to be stable. It was unsafe and big cracks were covered up, but the whole place was unsound. It had to be shut down. There’s a whole new business center being built. That whole area was always a mistake. And to further the collapse of that area, it was decided by management that there would be no security in the area - it cost money, it seems. Gangs of kids roamed the mall and Walmart once it got dark. It really got bad once the theaters came into the mall. Kids running and roughing shoppers up between shows. Then you’’d try to get to your car and get robbed. They put up “security stations” but they were not manned. I used to spend time shopping on my way home, but you had to be out of there before it got dark.
@@brynpookc1127 That walmart and surrounding area closed due to high crime rates, not structural damage. You must be thinking of the Bannister Complex which is where Bendix was vs Bannister mall. It was a landfill at one time. If the ground was unsafe, Cerner wouldn't have built huge multi billion dollar buildings where the mall was afterwards. Not to mention that land was owned by Benjamin Ranch for years and years before Bannister mall was built there. There's a wiki page for Bannister Mall, you should read it. It clearly talks about the migration of the inner city to that area, and the high crime rates, and gang activity that followed.
Great video! I grew up in Kansas City and saw a lot of familiar places. Here's hoping we can do better in the next few decades compared to how we've done in the last few.
The worst thing that was done to Kansas City was putting the highway loop right through the middle. It has essentially blocked in the city and has squashed a lot of potential for growth and development.
The question does come up that can we ever get rid of our highway systems that destroyed the cities? It feels like they are so established to fully get rid of
@ in all fairness the only cities I’ve seen this happen are places like Boston, but I don’t think it can really work anymore since most of our cities are broke/bankrupt
Both Seattle and Boston, which @Andrew-iw9th and @OliveOilFan bring up as examples, didn't actually "get rid" of their highways. They spent billions of dollars putting overground segements of their downtown freeways into tunnels. The only American cities to truly get rid of their highways wihtout replacing them in an expensive manner is San Franscisco, with its Embarcadero Freeway, and Rochester, NY.
Answer: no, we will never get rid of urban freeways. We’ll get rid of some little-used loops and spurs here and there, but the mainline freeways will be sticking around until we’re too poor to rebuild them.
The suburbs of KC are great. Some of the best burbs to live in in the whole U.S. there is often one of them in the annual top 10 best places to live lists
65 and lived in KC all of my life. My family goes back well over 100 years here. It is was SO SAD to see them tear down all of the old beautiful warm architecture and put up these cold boxy looking buildings. It saddens us to no end.
Kansas Citian here 👋 While the physical boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri proper have expanded greatly over the last 50+ years, the graphic you provided at 4:10 is misleading - that is not the current city boundary. The graphic you showed is showing new growth / sprawl for the entire metro area, not just KCMO proper
I'll clarify since it probably wasn't clearly stated in the video. The graph is not of the city boundaries. Just the extent of the urban sprawl to show how the amount of urbanized land has greatly increased. I'm not concerned with political boundaries when it comes to this.
I'm in st louis county and it's very similar here. If you took a map of metro st louis from 30 years ago and compared it to what it is now, it would be significantly larger today. And the population hasn't gone up enough to justify that expansion. People just move farther and farther out.
@@alexanderrotmensz Several of the Urban Sprawl cities around Kansas City are as old, or older than Kansas City proper. I get that your schtick is all about doom and gloom, but honestly, the Kansas CIty area is a pretty great place to raise a family. I am very grateful it isn't a densely packed urban jungle. There is green everywhere!
Kansas City MO is undergoing a large resurgence. The Power & Light District or whatever it's called has brought a much younger population moving in and a great entertainment area.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
Redlining, white flight, gentrification. It's all so obvious in KC. I live in a suburb of KC that has absolutely boomed in the last 20 years. It's absolutely wild to learn about history then you can drive to troost and see the line. Awesome video. 👌🏾
Alexander, you have again prepared an excellent, informative video about an American city that once dazzled the senses. Kansas City teemed with exciting, mesmerising architecture. Its neighbourhoods exuded ambiance. As I watch from the Netherlands, I feel such sorrow for what has disappeared. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the '60s and '70s, I loathed the car centric communities. I told my parents in 1971 that I would return to the homeland where I would live in a beautiful, historic town--without a car. I realised that dream, and I now live in glorious Middelburg.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
As a native of Kansas City, Our downtown is changing in character.. At one time it was full of major department stores and banks and such.. As the Suburbs grew like around most cities that had room around them, the stores followed the people there. The downtown remained the home of mainly financial and banking businesses. What has happened in the last 10 years is that the downtown is growing back again.. They are building resident towers and converted many of the big buildings into condos and apartments. They have a very lively sports bar and eating places that are drawing in the 20-30 crowd.. They even have a full line suburban type grocery store right down town.. They have put in a lot of new hotels and such because we do a lot of conventions here. We have a wonderful performing arts center down town.. They built an arena downtown - it never attracted a sports team but it is full constantly with events - music, sports and lots of other events there. They are in the process of planning a large park that will be built over I-70 on the South side of the city that will make it better.. Just to the South side of the downtown area in the crossroads area are all kinds of small shops and eating places that attract a lot of the younger crowd (I'm over 70 so I can say that). further south but still part of basically Downtown is our Historic Union Station with our Science center, HUGE 3-D studio and ongoing traveling exhibits.. Also is the official WWI museum and monument for the country with it's own museum. A number of years ago they put in a street car from our City Market area to the Union Station.. They are about ready to open the extension of that to the Country Club plaza area to the south... They have started building an extension of it to the North and East that will end up at the new Womens Current's Soccer teams stadium - the first ever stadium devoted to Women's sports. I think Alexander Rotmensz is NOT seeing the city as it is and I expect has never been here.. His ideas of what is going on is very outdated. NOTE: Kansas City's Transit system (the buses and Street Car) are FREE TO RIDE...
If you want to understand Kansas City, look into trying to desegregate a city that has a state line running down the middle of it. For more focus, look at racism in the 1960s and 1970s. If you want a nonracist view, if you had kids in the KC, MO. school district, which were once top of the nation, but began declining in the 60s and 70s, you ask yourself do you want your kid riding a bus for 30 minutes to attend a grade school, when one is right around your corner? If you had money, you could stay in KC and send your kid to a private school, or move across the state line to Kansas, or move out to Lees Summit, which were separate school districts and not subject to bussing. Once you eliminate the local school culture, you've destroyed the loom that weaves everyone together and builds communities. KC was very segregated. Undoing that wasn't and isn't easy. I believe it is still a very segregated city. I was born in KC and when I was young, my sister went to a private school. I assume my folks thought she'd get a better education or they could avoid the hassle of bussing, idk the precise reason, but I suspect it was all of the above. When my grandfather died, my grandmother moved in, but the house in KC was too small, so my parents went shopping. Grandma infused some additional cash and when they looked at what was available, Leawood KS had a house that fit and we could walk to school, plus no additional cost of private school. It was called "white flight," but a better name would be capital flight. I mean that the people who created the remedies for desegregating KC assumed they could force desegregation by bussing, but failed to understand that everyone who disliked this remedy and could afford to move, would move. I may not remember this correctly, but all the families on my old block in KC with kids my age, moved to Kansas. This hollowed out Kansas City MO, causing a glut of undesirable housing neighborhoods. It's a downward spiral and it feeds on itself. If you're in KC and want an example, drive down the Paseo and then Ward Parkway. Both of them have absolutely enormous houses, but the Paseo is in a wretched state of decline and Ward Parkway isn't. As far as architecture goes, it's difficult to keep old buildings in good shape. You may love how the old buildings look, but as time passes, they become more outdated. I live in a house that was built in 1938. That's around the time a lot of your pictures were taken. At some point forced air was added. It can get very hot in the summer. If I want to keep my second floor cool with the main A/C, the main floor needs to be about 60 degrees. During the summer heat waves I close the main unit vents and use a window unit. Overall, it's cheaper. If I had the cash, I'd bulldoze it and build something more energy efficient with a floor plan that made sense. For example, I'd have a garage that went into a laundry/mud room then the kitchen, instead of going through the office, formerly a porch, into the living room, through the dining room to the kitchen. If I could, it would only be a step up from the garage floor, instead of seven steps up. Newer houses fit better with today's lifestyle. Lamenting the demise of classic architecture is akin to whining about getting older. It's going to happen, but it doesn't change the outcome. KC's downtown decline is a product of desegregation and all the pitfalls that come with trying that on a state line city. The cool thing about it is the downtown is going through a redevelopment. My hunch is in another 86 years no downtown in the US will look like they did in 2024 much less the 1930s. I am hopeful that a cool downtown will attract younger people and some will stay and have kids and then the schools will see a rebound in quality. I'll be dead by then.
The investment and development happening here is great, but there's an alarming tendency (quite recently) to submit proposals that would turn this into any other city. There are communities and unique traits of the city that should be empowered and celebrated. I'm glad downtown isn't dead in the evenings and weekends like it once was, but importing chain restaurants and a readymade "entertainment district" lacks charm. But also, it takes money to preserve vintage architecture, but that needs to be part of our priority list, not just if it's profitable. There's a lot of push and pull, but it's exciting when good decisions get made by people who "get it"...rather than "get away with it."
You should make a video about Fall River, MA. In the late 19th/early 20th century, it was the most productive textile manufacturing center in North America (and second in the world behind Manchester), but competition from southern states created an economic downturn that led to a population decline of over 25%, going from the third most populous city in Massachusetts to currently tenth. The old urban core of the city is completely unrecognizable and there's a distinct lack of any form of community space for any of its residents. One of the few American cities outside the Rust Belt to have a population above 100,000 but fall below that from demographic decline.
They lost a few more buildings in the river market with the new Buck O’Neil bridge. Now you have some old loft space buildings stuck between bridge ramps and over passes
You’re about 15 years late with the burn, bud. Wealth is moving in and paving over the life and soul of the city while crime and poverty get displaced into once fine neighborhoods.
This is breaking my heart! Grew up in KC and I rememver as a little girl in the 70's, the talk about tearing down buildings in KC and not sure why they did this? They were going to tear down Union station!!
I live in Dubuque, Iowa. We have, for the most part, retained much of our 19th-century architecture and city layout. We are actively reviving our millwork district and warehouses and making them into shops, bars, hotels, restaurants, and arcades. All while retaining the buildings' exterior and red brick vibe.
The same thing happened to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Its a shame, sometimes, remembering it, makes me wanna cry, what have they done to my beloved Rio... When i went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, i had a hard shock. Its impressive how they preserved the city spirit
I'm in KC. Live in a house built in 1920 in the historic northeast. I grew up here. My first inclination was to defend the decisions made, but you make some really great points. Sometimes we have to look in the mirror to find the responsible party - many of the decisions were voted on by the people and we made our own beds with a lot of our own problems. I didn't like 71 highway when it first came in, but it's grown on me. Could we have put in an elevated train instead, or at least parallel to it, in the way DC or NYC or Chicago have? Yes. Absolutely. Is the streetcar a nice touristy thing that needs to be expanded? Absolutely yes. Do I wish that my town was way, way, way more bike and walking friendly? My goodness yes. But we can only move forward, you know? We're building up in ways that are more progressive, we're expanding green spaces, we're building more efficiently with a lower footprint than those old buildings that ran on oil, coal, and steam. There is massive potential here, and in places like Tulsa and Spokane to be the next giants when the giants fall. The new airport is a huge success. Streetcar expansion. One of the big problems, from my perspective, it that KC proper annexed a bunch of the areas surrounding Kansas City. Those are where more conservative voting blocks sit who are less progressively minded when it comes to city beautification and downtown revitalization - they live 30+ miles away, so for us in the downtown area, we're out of sight, out of mind. And that goes for things like giving city civilian services raises, and public school upgrades - and indeed - infrastructure. How I would love to see us become more like a Denver - where the surrounding areas have home rule. I thought it was crazy when I first moved to Denver, but now I've seen the logic of how well it can work. Cannabis legalization is helping a ton with that, I feel. Areas long neglected by the city are starting to get new roads, sidewalks and such. The streetcar expansion plans are coming along (come east out of downtown, dammit!) but we're still 20-30 years out to be on the level of a Portland, Denver, Baltimore or Charlotte...it's coming though. Great video.
Kansas City was once known as the Paris of the Plains - drugs, sex, music, dancing, gambling, drink... we had several amusement parks and large recreation areas with swimming, skating, and ice skating, with shopping galore. You name it, we had it. When my grandfather, a South-Central Kansas farmer passed, his funeral was slapped together by relatives with a fire-and-brimestone pastor. My older cousin asked me afterwards, "Do you think Grandpa would've liked that?" I thought a moment and answered, "No!" My cousin nodded, and said, "He would've liked them to play the song 'Kansas City' - he loved the place when he was younger." Kansas City was a heaven and a haven for some folks. We just have to keep working to preserve our history while growing our opportunities with creativity.
Very insightful. I’m a KC resident, and I wish we could go back to street cars. I used to truck fuel in the city, I hated it. The urban sprawl is very ugly.
You're right in your conclusion. Kansas City has always had a palpable spirit and pride in its history and overall scene. I honestly think that the sprawl is partially symptomatic of that pride. Just about anyone within 60 miles of the KC State Line would tell someone, if asked, that they're from Kansas City and they find themselves downtown for work or an event at least once or twice a year. They wave that flag. A word to the wise: Arthur Bryant's is a fantastic place to eat, but it's really overrated. You can find plenty of superior BBQ joints in the Greater KC area. I recommend Big T's or LC's as far as downtown BBQ goes.
KC resident here. I love the old photos & yes it’s sad that so many cool buildings are gone. But they became impractical. Progress & change is inevitable. KC is still a beautiful city with many beautiful areas. Super easy to travel around. I love how spacious so many housing developments are. Way better than the squished , cramped, & crowded cities that I’ve experienced elsewhere. I absolutely love KC! 💕
@ Sorry you feel that way. I’ve lived in cities in the east coast & west coast. KC is my favorite place. It’s all each person’s opinions. Good thing we each have the freedom to live where we choose. Lots of cool things everywhere.
@@lisalibeer7824 If you enjoy terrible weather most of the year, KC is a great fit. That is a dealbreaker for me and why I left for a nicer area of the country.
Well done Sir. I live two hours south of KC and even just working a couple days a week in the KC area and you feel your soul being crushed by the endless suburbia.
Americans just love suburbia. Deep down we know it's expensive, inefficient, and ugly, but most aren't willing to live anywhere else. The "American Dream" is litterally just growing up, starting a family, and making enough money to buy a house in the suburbs.
These are great videos. But, the reality is that a lot of these buildings were very outdated and weren't built to last long. Meaning that 1930's version of Kansas City, was built on top of the 1870's Kansas City, that looked completely differently. That "beauty" of the 1930's picture would not have existed without that previous destruction. Not to mention the world was different. The electrical wires and telephone wires were everywhere on electrical poles. Neighborhoods were dirty. There's a lot more than what these pictures show. Not to mention, the people with cars in the 1950's were excited about superhighways. They saw it as an upgrade. They did not demonize cars or cities the way we do. They were looking forward to the new cities. Everyone moved to the suburbs. That means the entire way of life using the trolley cars, was gone. People wanted the security of the car over the New York City-lifestyle thst every city in America had prior. Fuel was cheap. Cars were cheap. Car repairs were simple. Cars were simple. Somehow we have become overengineered in our cars, which is ridiculous. We also are losing the fuel source, and cannot find an equivalent alternative. Electric Vehicles (EV's) are more expensive. It's making life more expensive for us. The entire world will lose wealth, which means it's more expensive to travel. We may have to move back into cities as fuel becomes too expensive. But that doesn't seem like the direction se're going in right now. Suburbs are still being built today. Either way, I think because our entire 1930's economy was built by the private sector to cater to a 1930's lifestyle, it makes perfect sense that that would all close once that lifestyle was gone. Nobody wanted to live in these tenement houses anymore. Yes the interstate highways crisscrossed the entire Kansas City downtown, but at the same time, people saw it as beautiful back in the 1950's. If anything people wanted more cities to be like that. People during the 1980's and 1990's also saw a futurism in cities and expected cities to evolve, but I think people didn't realize that our wealth would run out. Also, that there would be such an emphasis in nature and parks, which previous generations didn't value as much, at least not directly in city streets, like we do with trees and gardens everywhere. Basically, Kansas City is unfinished and should have continued to urbanism, but now people don't really want concrete jungles anymore, so we're regressing to what is fashionable today, pretending like it's a feature, but the reason why we can't continue the 1950's lifestyle, is because energy is too expensive and we don't feel the need to build that futuristic steel world of the Jetsons. Instead, we're just going to be simpler, and if anything our building will last even less than those of the 1930's. Houses and buildings are constantly built quickly and torn down quickly. They're not made and still are not made for longevity like European cities are.
True -- many urbanists tend to over-romanticize the past, even while making valid criticisms of the present. A lot of those beautiful older buildings probably would've been prohibitively expensive to update to modern standards of plumbing, HVAC, and electrical service.
What's your excuse for the way suburbs have been built? After W.W. II, suburban America was extremely prosperous, so why all the cheap, tacky, bland, architecture?
This a very long comment for a You Tube comment section. So few people will read the whole thing. But every word in it is well thought out and true. If viewers want to know what the rebuttal is to this rather negative video on Kanas City's "decline", this is that rebuttal. The bottom line is that Kanas City's decline is not a decline at all. Take the time to read @PromisingPod's comment, and you will see why.
@@Zalis116 "A lot of those beautiful older buildings probably would've been prohibitively expensive to update..." Okay, so why couldn't the buildings that replaced them also have been beautiful? Did they have to be so monstrously ugly? What's the excuse for buildings like 5:46?
@@Zalis116 Yeah, huffing leaded gasoline exhaust in an open streetcar in the middle of February doesn't sound like fun to me. And being forced to go to the grocery store every day because a day's groceries is all I can carry on the streetcar is also not something I would appreciate. I like keeping my shopping trips to a minimum. I also like living amongst the trees, and having space for a garden, and not hearing sirens at all hours every night. People talk about "human-centered design", as if a house with a yard to play in and host gatherings and such isn't human-centered. In anthropological terms, living in a brick box with a thousand other people is about as far from "normal" as you can get. Suburban houses are more akin to "normal" than that. Cities like Kansas City are an artifact of the industrial revolution. They wouldn't exist otherwise. And most of human history occurred prior to the industrial revolution. "A lot of those beautiful older buildings probably would've been prohibitively expensive to update to modern standards of plumbing, HVAC, and electrical service." Forget about retrofitting. These buildings were often torn down because they had fallen into such disrepair that it was prohibitively expensive to keep them from falling down.
I enjoy your videos but I'd prefer learning the history of what was in this series. I get the rant, and I agree, but there's already so much of that on RUclips. What there isn't is the history that inspires the next generation to remember that things weren't always this way. That even though we've forgotten, we can always remember
As a proud kc native, thanks for making a video on this. Urban sprawl, or more accurately white flight" really did kill the city. But its exciting to see KC redevelope in the past decade or so
I visited KC about 10 years ago and was impressed from what I was expecting but seeing this is absolutely shocking to know what it once was. As an architect and an urban aficionado I hope it continues to crawl back to its former architectural urban paradise. I live in a 100 y.o. house in a streetcar suburb with a compact but amazing terraced garden and three minute walk away from a vibrant urban village, transit and dt. We rarely get in cars and a live very social and active lifestyle as it should be.
Here is an explanation of what caused this and most of our problems as a country: List of who decides the government in various countries: France: French Voters Canada: Canadian Voters Germany: German Voters Japan: Japanese Voters United States: Automotive industry, oil industry, healthcare industry, airline industry
The part about traffic makes me laugh pretty hard. I've lived in Kansas City my whole life and I've been to plenty of other major metropolitan areas. Kansas City has some of the best traffic in the entire United States as far as major metropolitan areas go. Even in the worst part of rush hour, The longest it would take to get from one end of the sprawling metro to the other is 45 minutes. Of course there are slowdowns, but traffic keeps moving and usually the worst that can happen is your commute will take an extra 10 minutes. Not a big deal.
And now they want to stick an MLB ball park in the heart of downtown. Half the year traffic will suck and the other half will feature a giant, empty structure. It’s like they said ‘hey, let’s put a brick wall around that beautiful public park and fill it with empty bleachers.’🙄
A lot of the city has been stretched thin, but there are still some of the nicest neighborhoods in the country both in KC, MO proper and in the suburbs.
I moved to KC in 2009, living in either central or Southern JoCo. It's true sprawl here. The post 2016 construction trend of only building high-end homes is exacerbating it. I'm happy to see downtown rebuild itself and grow and old neighborhoods like Westside North where Chez Elle is see lots of revitalization. But that feel of the "old times" is lost. Here's to hoping the downtown and riverside projects create great, walkable spaces without making everything there so expensive to live around that only the cities wealthiest get to really enjoy.
Not the first time I see these comparisons of old/new Kansas City. A silly conspiracy theory - the city was actually nuked but the whole world was brainwashed into forgetting it
Not a Kansas City native myself but I've lived here most of my life and my family is from the area so I think I count. It's such a shame to see all that historic Beauty going to waste or being destroyed. I remember the first house we lived in when we moved here it was in the historic Northeast neighborhood used to be predominantly Italian beautiful old houses very stacked up on top of each other narrow streets that were obviously originally built for carriages most of them one way and nine times out of 10 you sure the driveway with your neighbor but those neighborhoods had so much character. Unfortunately it's not just the infrastructure but the schools that are causing problems and reasons people are moving away. Hoping things continue to improve we've got to work on getting our crime statistics down and helping our homeless population mostly the mentally ill who don't have anywhere else to go and can't manage shelters. I love telling people about my City's history especially the Roaring Twenties and the Pendergast years
none of this would hurt so much if we didnt throw away all of our damn style. if something needs demolished it doesnt mean we cant build with good looks for gods sake
I did research about this a while back and it legit just made me sad, such a big part of my city's soul that could've been midtown or a historic extension of downtown was torn down because of the minor modern convinience of having a highway right next to downtown that could've been moved 10-15 blocks down. Luckily the city building and modern restoration of older buildings and structures has been on the rise especially recently.
Just stumbled into this channel by accident and watched with interest. As someone who’s lived in the KC area for over 50 years I can’t say that I subscribe to the premise that the old architecture and infrastructure was better. I think the city and surroundings have changed in a way that most people want. So if there are some that don’t like it, that’s not surprising but personally I am glad that it has developed the way it has - very livable and full of opportunities - plenty of old AND new. And to even hint that Kansas City sits in the category of “Fallen Cities” to me seems a little over-blown.
KC is a bypassed city that doesn't even have one Fortune 500 company. The sprawl is ridiculous as the massive amount of highways in every direction have destroyed any type of cohesion across the metro area, along with the fact that the state line messes things up even more. Most of the migration will continue to go to the Sunbelt, Coasts, and Mountain West.
@@KS5040 As a point of clarification SEB (NYSE) still on Fortune 500 last I looked. Granted, KC's not New York. The population continues to grow at a little under 1% / year and sprawl seems to be driven by what people want -- life close to, but not necessarily in the city. Highways are what enable tourism and trade. I get that your viewpoint isn't favorable but it's great that our country is so large and varied that you can find somewhere else that's more in line with your expectations.
@@Dogfather66227 Yes, I'm well aware that the sprawl seems to be "what people want" in KC. It's the typical US mentality of "quantity over quality" as the newer housing construction at many price points there is absolutely atrocious. KC is a place you either really like or really dislike.. I lived in the region for 20 years and there are far better places to live elsewhere fortunately...
@@KS5040 It it took 20 years to drive you out it couldn't have been too bad. No one would disagree about housing prices, but it's not unique to KC. Heck, I'm probably part of that. Would it be appropriate to ask what region you live in presently? Not that my bags are already packed or anything but always open to suggestion.
I've lived in Chicago and Dallas and have lived in KC for nearly the last 20 years. Kansas City really is the biggest suburb I have ever seen. It's considerably larger in land mass than Chicago but has a fraction of the population.
My brother and I were talking about this, that the US doesn’t preserve any historic buildings or districts. Let’s not go far, when I went to the Zocalo in Mexico City, it’s the same as it was hundreds of years ago. And the same with many other cities throughout Latin America and Europe. But here, if it’s old, it has to be demolished and replaced with a modern building. There’s not much here that’s historic, other than the damn Liberty Bell.
The city needs to renovate that good sized area by the river with a bunch of really old big building that would make a super cool art, shopping, and restaurant district if they keep the old building aesthetic. Instead the city is just letting the buildings rot away last time I checked.
I lived in KC suburb (Independence) from 1960-1978 and moved back here in 2005. I can count the times I've been downtown on one hand. No thank You! Traffic, parking and the 'criminal element' are a huge turnoff. Sad...because in the 60's my friends and I would hop on a bus and go downtown and not worry about anything.....
Kcmo native here, funny seeing my old “luxury” apartment building-River Market paid $1800 a month to live in one of the the few “walkable” neighborhoods. Kcmo also has a severe housing crisis that no one seems to be talking about
I moved away from KC a few years ago. when I first moved there in 76, anyone that lived there then will know what I'm talking about. When you went down College Blvd from Metcalf traveling west, and tried to go south, most of the streets were gravel road. Antioch, and a few other main streets were paved, but it was farmland most of the way to the county line, which is a 120 blocks to the south. Overland Park, where I lived , is now the second most populated city in Kansas (200k). No one outside the area has ever heard of it probably. OPO is out of control too. They annexed land that chopped Leawood off to the state line, basically ending their city, then annexed Stanley Township, which is now gone, and are now trying to get Stillwell, who are fighting back against this. OP is less than twenty blocks from from the Miami county line. Take a look at the map I linked below see what they did on the state line to Leawood. They are also annexing all the way down Metcalf/69, and surrounding all of the townships that will have no choice to surrender in the next 5-10 years. For all of this, you would think taxes would be cheaper, but they are also out of control, and Kansas is now considered an unfriendly tax state because of this. property tax is nuts, and the sales tax is almost 10 percent. WTF. maps.opkansas.org/property-map/
Amen! Property tax is going up so fast every year it's crazy! I'm by the Old Overland Park area and you'd think I was living in a manor house - not a 50s ranch with no garage - if you looked at my tax bill. They're also tearing down all out old cool building and putting up ugly luxury high rise apartments. They could have at least made them fit the Old Overland Park theme. It's breaking my heart, I've lived here for decades and it's losing it's soul. Metcalf South was just the beginning. 😥
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
@@fredrickmillstead2804 Overland Park is all about rubber stamping every single development project they can get their hands on, and they don't give one #$%$ about what the residents have to say about anything. It's all about quantity and not enough quality.
@KS5040 I remember the Katz drug store at 75th and Metcalf. 2 stories, had most everything. Mission had a Woolworths with a lunch counter (?). Went to Santa Fe Trail elem. School at 71st and Lamar. Don't miss it at all.
Its almost criminal how we've ripped the heart and soul out of so many of our cities.
My German city was sent back to the stone age with the help of American bombs in WWII. Ironic how they did this to themselves without having had a war on their home soil.
@@jjandorliadul It was Germany itself that called it upon itself.
IT IS criminal
@@jjandorliadul bro you really can’t be complaining about that bro
@@harcoom
Why not? Everything he said is factual.
Native Kansas City resident. Things have luckily been slowly recovering in the last twenty years but down town used to be a ghost town.
Heard that! When I was a lot cooler and had a big mohawk the deserted downtown streets were my place. Now it's catered to the wealthy. Meh... I do like the bike lanes going in all over the city. Not that I bike more than 5-10 times a year, but I think it's a good thing for our city.
The place is still known as the armpit of the Midwest.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 says who? You must be thinking of St. Louis!
I remember that. As a kid we went down to Union Station and things looked dead and I remember going back from about 2010 or so on things looked much better, though there still were problems for sure.
I remember that. As a kid we went down to Union Station and things looked dead and I remember going back from about 2010 or so on things looked much better, though there still were problems for sure.
Kansas City is one of the biggest casualties of 1960s urban design, which is a shame.
It's also the meth production capitol of Earth - both flat and round.
Yep. Joplin is too. 🥺
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now.
American cities had so much style. Now they are empty and boring
There are, thankfully, a few exceptions to that rule. But, yes, for the most part, that is true. You could say the same for some Canadian cities as well.
Americans had so much style. Now we are empty and boring.
Unfortunately our country has become kind of boring as well. European cities have character, culture, and sophistication so much more so than we do in my opinion.
As a retired truck driver I can tell you the biggest difference in the US city's. Logistics in older cities like what we have on the east coast is a nightmare for modern trucks simply because they were built for much smaller vehicles and even horse traffic in some cases. KC on the other hand has moved it's Logistics away from those areas and it's much more efficient to get in and out quickly. It's only going to get worse for the older cities because they are pushing for even bigger trailers as demand for everything grows. That and the tightened regulations on the truck business have been leading to a shortage of drivers. Places like KC, being located in the middle of the country are going to make it more of a major hub for Logistics nationwide. It's already happening on a large scale and has spread out to smaller communities already. It's been going on for more than twenty years and still growing. The traffic around KC isn't bad at all when you compare it to other cities. Houston, Dallas, Atlanta are just a few that are true traffic nightmares and all three coasts are the worst for traffic I have ever experienced.
@@rustyreese4006 Building entire cities around the needs of truckers rather than the needs of people as a whole is a terrible idea. If trucks are getting bigger, that is the fault of trucking companies. The same is true for firetrucks. Fire departments have caused innumerable problems with their constant demands for oversized roads to accomodate their unnecessarily large vehicles, all of which serve to justify their bloated budgets.
Demolishing multi story buildings in the center of the city and replacing them with parking lots makes zero economic sense I still can't understand how it happened
Authoritarian delusions of modernist grandeur, combined with "lobbying" (bribery) by gas and automotive companies.
Because companies built skyscrapers with no underground parking for employees, so they buy up cheap lots and demolish them.
Other cases it was just the Robert Moses style of "always progress moving forward, ignore the consequences" to make highways.
Pushing the vehicular incentive ($)
No, it makes sense when you get the timeline right. Cars allowed people to live further away. So while people might still work downtown, they increasingly stopped doing their errands downtown. Consequently thriving offices had high demand for parking while failing businesses were trying to sell their land. Perfect recipe for parking lot conversions.
Most of the parking lots are owned by mark-one.
As a Kansas Citian, seeing the before and afters just hurts.
Those details at 2:18 are very beautiful, it also shows how ornament can be added to a simple cube and still be effective. Many modern cubes could still be improved by adding ornament on top.
Totally agree.
Many modern architects won't put lintels along the top of their buildings, for stylistic or cost reasons. Turns out this ornamentation actually has a use: when you don't include it, rain drips down the exterior walls and creates ugly drip marks.
Totally. Facades are nothing new and even they can add so much to the character of a city.
As a Kansas City Metro resident, I CANNOT STAND how much beautiful architecture has been destroyed.
Also, that traffic is most likely during rush-hour. It’s not like that most of the time.
The traffic has gotten worse over the past 10 years. All Mexicans too that can't drive for shit 😂
@@hezahaubeza yeah for sure fellow KC bro. Traffic overplayed. He didn’t show the actual scariest part of Kansas City which I drive thru cuz I sell houses in KC, the neighborhoos like Ivanhoe, Oak Park, Blue Valley South/Central, Marlborough specifically Marlborough East. That’s the actual scariest part of KC which no media company dares to touch as the violent crime rates are approximately 1400-1450% above national average.
As a native Kansas Citian, I was really excited to see you made a video about my city. Although it deeply saddens me to see how beautiful of a city we used to have, but traded in exchange for a dysfunctional highway system, I am really excited to see all the new developments taking place. Hopefully 50 years from now I’ll be able to tell my grandkids how much better they have it compared to when I was growing up.
Unfortunately the narrative is usually "how better it was decades ago" very few examples of improvement in time, sadly.
I guess.... I'd much rather live in 2025 KC than anytime in the 50's or 60's. Like, by far.
@@TheReelportHave you ever lived in KCMO?
@K.B.Williams They are not saying how societies are "better" back then. They are saying how they miss these architectural marvels.
I'm also from Kansas City, and chasing work on the railroad I've now lived in a few different cities around the Midwest. Kansas City's highway system is FAR from dysfunctional lol. It might be sad, but so far it's the nicest highways and the "best" traffic I've experienced.
I’ve lived in the Kansas City area all of my life, and the city has a very unique, interesting history (Civil War, American frontier, Prohibition) and culture. I imagine it was a sight to behold when my family before me lived and worked here before all of the urban renewal and sprawl. Really appreciated the video on my city btw!
The Kansas City metro area is honestly a delightful place to live - large enough to have great varieties of businesses, restaurants, etc., but small enough to drive anywhere pretty quickly and without the traffic you experience in larger cities.
He greatly exaggerates the traffic and other problems.
KC has way less traffic than any other comparable sized city. It's really only busy in certain areas at the 5:00pm rush hour.
No the fck is doesn't. In and out of DT is gridlock, Johnson co in and out is gridlock. Shit bus system, one of the worst in the nation. Politicians that are more concerned with protecting criminals. Multiple areas in Kansas and Missouri that are no go zones unless you want something bad to happen to you. Get real, and off whatever you are probably smoking or huffing
@@meanpie13 100% agree. It's really minimal in comparison to other major cities. I think the JOCO side is much safer and nicer overall, but the traffic is really not an issue. I lived in CO for 6 years and it's 1000% more beautiful. I delivered beer in the Denver/Boulder/FOCO area and it was always so enjoyable and scenic there. We don't have that here. It's mundane and that's perfectly understandable. KC is about the food, football, and raising a family. Downtown could definitely be better. Crime's not great, parking is shit, and it just makes the suburbs like OP and OIathe make way more sense. It's the place I grew up in and I still love it here.
Traffic in KC is horrible. 5-10 mph over the speed limit. Darting in and out.
@@caw7007"5-10 mph over the speed limit. Darting in and out"...
...means that traffic is actually moving. Ever been to New York or L.A.? You are in traffic for hours everyday, unless you work close to home. (which most people don't)
Kansas City is definitely a victim of its own geography. There’s so much easy to build on land for miles around the core, that suburban sprawl became a logical conclusion. There aren’t a whole lot of natural boundaries, especially to the south
underrated comment that the content creator should have explained more clearly
Exacly this, and the fact that the missouri river floods every few decades doesnt help
bing-fucking-go. and the dark secret nobody wants to admit is that very few people actually love to live in a downtown apartment arrangement, especially to raise a family. nearly everybody aspires to have a house with a decent yard, a garage, and neighbors you all know by name. kansas city offers that in excessive abundance. that is most everyone's utopian fantasy world. it's not some ultra condensed concrete jungle where we all ride the smelly bus together.
Remember the joke that Overland Park will just annex towns until it gets to the Oklahoma border?
@@jose.a.a.a The MO hasn't flooded KCMO in a very long time. It probably won't again, thanks to the flood control structures in place. Unfortunately, that does mean more flooding elsewhere.
My family has been in Kansas City for nigh on 130-140 years, and has lived all over the city. A lot of them are from the Northeast, which if you know anything about KC, is the original neighborhood for a lot of old families. My uncle (a boomer, raised in town at the end of the original streetcar era) won’t even visit KC anymore due to how sad it makes him. The way they all reminisce about going downtown to walk about or explore is just depressing comparatively. Can’t help but feel like I missed it.
My dad was born here in 1947, and he used to live off Gladstone down the street from the Kennedy memorial and the Museum(shame what they’ve done to that place!). He used to drive me around northeast and tell me about what it was like in the 50s/60s, and I could only imagine by some of the architecture in that area. He said northeast was one of the finest parts of town. Just like he told me that living off the Paseo was a symbol of status back then.
It surely isn’t now!
Blame it on the floods and William B Strang's passenger rail service to the surrounding rural areas which then caused an explosion of smaller suburban cities especially after WWII.
Urban development did a lot but crime took its toll too. Lots of neighborhoods and cultural areas fell apart. I had lots of family in strawberry hill back in the day. Seems like it’s coming around again now, but not near as vibrant as it once was.
My dad grew up in Monkey Park. It doesn't exist anymore. But, I believe it was in the west bottoms. Not sure. I grew up on the East side, but spent a lot of time as a kid in the northeast. I went to Northeast Junior(if that tells you how old I am). There is a lot of history here. What I call "The Castles", down off of St. John right behind the museum. Cliff Drive. There is a monument at one of the outlets of Cliff Drive that my sister was married at in 1986. It has an eternal flame that as far as I know is still burning. I always was awe inspired by my city. I used to skip school at Sante Fe Trail with my buddies at 27th and Topping. We'd sled down the hill on our school books at 26th and Topping in Blue Valley Park. I worked at a fruit stand at the corner of 27th and Van Brunt in the parking lot of Hav-a-Snack when I was 8 years old for $3 a day. I don't think that removing old uncared for buildings is what has tainted our history. Growth is necessary. My memories are filled with the culture I grew up in. I think what tainted our city is the crime. Not the big stuff, the incessant petty shit. Druggies taking the change from your car, drive by shootings, etc. I moved from there on October 25th of this year to greener pastures. Either way, I'm ranting. I still love my city.
@@knucklehead83 That monument is the JFK memorial. My dad would always go down and light it anytime it went out. It was at the north end of Gladstone Blvd. where he lived. It’s also called the Collonade. All those houses were turned into apartments, but the owner of the building he lived in was an old Italian guy with lots of well dressed friends lol, he just told me to “be respectful” lol. They would tell me to wash their cars and they’d give me a hundred dollar bill every time.
7:21
That light rail stop is exemplary of much of the transit system in America. You get off and on in a sea of parking lots.
Well yeah. wtf do you think the train is for? Moving people between destinations. People come to town in cars and park then ride the train to an area they want to go.
NOT Light Rail... Kansas City has a Street Car system that is MUCH lighter built than light rail is. a GREAT difference.
Kansas City feels like the most confusing mix between an older city with a solid urban core and a more decentralized, sprawling metro like Columbus. The boundaries are so weird to look at on a map.
I live in st louis but worked in kansas city back in 2010-11. There was a saying in the st louis metro back in the 90s that was a bit of an exageration but wasn't too far off. You could drive anywhere in 20 minutes. What i noticed about kc when i was there, everything seemed so spread out.
@@senorpepper3405it’s no different than St. Louis.
The place is a train wreck. You can thank Democrat leaders like Lucas for the place being known as the armpit of the Midwest.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 gtfoh MAGtard. Kansas City is NOT known as the armpit of the midwest
St Joseph is a small city to the north of KC with a similar trajectory to its larger neighbor, however with none of the growth and optimism. The city has done nothing but been stagnant for over 100 years, yet it has grown to double its land area. There is so much rich history of architecture and human-oriented development throughout the area; yet today it's a bunch of decaying brick buildings and empty fields.
ouch
I was raised on a farm north of Kansas City and had cousins that lived near St. Joe. In high school (1970's), St. Joe was a hang out destination for us. I moved away years ago but I was back there last year and was surprised at how little had changed.
Living in St. Joseph nowadays is just depressing. The downtown is *kinda* trying to rebuild but it is super slow.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
Living in St. Joe sucks. Like, it’s literally a cultural black hole. The local “leadership” certainly doesn’t help and oozes corruption. Unless you’re a good ol boy of course.
Some of that before/after footage was absolutely shocking!
It’s funny how people act like they kept up with maintenance on these buildings and they didn’t get ruined by sitting there being vandalized. After a while you get sick of looking at all that, yes it’s a shame. You can’t keep everything the same, especially when it’s all decrepit.
The KC Star building is missing rows of copper siding already
What’s great is that the street car has expanded down Main Street to the Plaza. which initially has a lot of old buildings that are boarded up and now once that gets going, so many businesses will be revived in these old buildings. Come check out Kansas City it’s really growing.
Exactly. Both KCMO proper and the suburbs
Actually clear north to new soccer staduim.
Just in time for businesses to leave the Plaza due to all the crime. No one in their right mind wants to do business there anymore.
As a touring musician out of Kansas City, the traffic flow in KC is a blessing compared to just about every other city I have traveled to! And the current street car situation has had our streets in non functional government money waste and making the local traffic flows way worse than it was before they started this ridiculous project! We used to have music venues all over with good parking now it's mostly gone with rubbish street parking
exactly. Where am I supposed to park to get to Record Bar? and they wanna stuff a baseball stadium down here?
@RTFLDGR yep totally destroyed setting up shows and inviting people to come knowing they're going to have to walk from blocks away through dark alleys@@RTFLDGR
Thank you for sharing the actual purpose and benefits of the changes.
Side note: The many references to “beauty” as if it isn’t completely subjective annoyed me.
@@RTFLDGR park at union station bruh
If you take just the pre-1950 KC boundaries, it is actually the 3rd most shrunken US city (post-suburbanization), after St.
Louis and Detroit.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
We're usually used to seeing this type of destruction only in war zones. But America, we did this to ourselves. What were people thinking?!
We made it more car dependent
Gotta have those cars everywhere, or else you have walk or use public transportation, heaven forbid
@@t4squared I can't say I'm a fan of getting locked in a steel tube with a homeless guy who is willing to stab me for looking at him the wrong way.
So yes, unironically, heaven forbid.
@@ecurewitz What came first, the car, or the desire to own a home with a lawn?
@@dafunkmonsterthe desire to own a home. These cities should've attempted to keep people in them instead of becoming less desirable
Intresting points honestly, I'll be left thinking about this for a good few days
My great grandmother had a hotel in downtown KC in the 60s and 70s, gorgeous place with marble stairs. It got demolished in the 90s and it's still a parking lot today.
Which hotel was that? Downtown?
Man, all of those beautiful old buildings traded for parking lots. I've always hated Kansas City as someone living nearby, now I'll hate it even more. Hey, the antique stores are pretty good though! Still grateful for the West Bottoms.
There’s a lot of irony/hypocrisy when you’re making a video about the tragic loss of old beauty in favor of modern convenience, and you use an AI slop photo for the “jazz scene” instead of an actual photo of 18th and Vine
he should have started the video with "here is my arrogant and uninformed opinion about a place i know nothing about besides what other people have said on reddit"
You guys missed the point. He used those images to purposely exaggerate the modern "beauty" of the city. When in fact, the video is about the modern decline of beauty of the city.
As a born and raised Kansas Citian every time I see pictures of old Kansas City just think about “how they massacred my boy”
We used to have an extensive streetcar system, we used to have a regional *electrical* rail network, we used to have these dense walkable and beautiful neighborhoods.
We literally find ourselves in a position where we need to go backwards to go forwards.
And the sad reality is, that buildings like these will never once more be built.
@@Str3ltsov In my country, Sweden, there are examples of new houses being built in a classical style. Google Ekmansgatan 5 (especially for images). This building in Gothenburg/Göteborg was constructed only a few years ago.
theres a revival in traditional (pre-modernist) architecture happening right now. hopefully within the next decade it will gain traction and older styles will be built again
@dontwren In my country, Sweden, many people want more of classical architecture, but there's a resistance among project owners and architects. However, there are examples of new houses being built in a classical style. Ekmansgatan 5 in Gothenburg is a new building that has received a lot of praise.
I really hope this revival comes in full swing one day.
Theres a plan in motion to add onto the kc country club plaza in the traditional Spanish Architecture. Luckily seems like atleast some developers are against modern trends.
Lived in the area most of my life. The main reason for the deterioration of KC and the boom of it's suburbs was the huge crime rate and gang activity amongst a certain demographic. During the 70's and 80's due to that crime, the inner city started moving to the suburbs, and brining the crime and ghetto with them. To avoid this, cities like Lee's Summit would put a huge fee on getting utilities activated. If I remember correctly it was as high as $3000 just to get your water turned on. Grandview was a huge victim of the inner city migration. It became a crime haven overnight. Bannister mall and the Super Walmart both closed down due to the astronomical crime rates there. At that time, it was the only Walmart in the world that ever closed.
I was a little boy in Ruskin in the early '00s. I remember going to that Super Walmart and I remember when it closed down. Thankfully we cleared out of the zip code a couple years later. The area wasn't exactly "Detroit" but it was getting a bit rough.
I like the part of this is just the part where you're being racist for no reason.
@@JesusHammer That only makes sense if we first assume that the original comment was from a person of one ethnicity looking down on others who do not share that ethnicity, which is, in and of itself, prejudiced, as no one said anything about race.
Anyone can be a broke crook from the inner-city. Not just one or two ethnic groups.
I live about 3 miles from where Bannister Mall and the Super Walmart were. Bannister Mall was built on a landfill that had not set long enough to be stable. It was unsafe and big cracks were covered up, but the whole place was unsound. It had to be shut down. There’s a whole new business center being built. That whole area was always a mistake. And to further the collapse of that area, it was decided by management that there would be no security in the area - it cost money, it seems. Gangs of kids roamed the mall and Walmart once it got dark. It really got bad once the theaters came into the mall. Kids running and roughing shoppers up between shows. Then you’’d try to get to your car and get robbed. They put up “security stations” but they were not manned. I used to spend time shopping on my way home, but you had to be out of there before it got dark.
@@brynpookc1127 That walmart and surrounding area closed due to high crime rates, not structural damage. You must be thinking of the Bannister Complex which is where Bendix was vs Bannister mall. It was a landfill at one time. If the ground was unsafe, Cerner wouldn't have built huge multi billion dollar buildings where the mall was afterwards. Not to mention that land was owned by Benjamin Ranch for years and years before Bannister mall was built there.
There's a wiki page for Bannister Mall, you should read it. It clearly talks about the migration of the inner city to that area, and the high crime rates, and gang activity that followed.
I knew that this had happened, I hadn’t realized how much. It’s disgusting that some thought this was improvement
You should check out Jacksonville, Florida. I'm a native. Our modern downtown is awful. We had a terrible fall-off.
DT Jax never had a big city feel. Everything is spread out. I mostly would hang around the Baymeadows area 97-05.
I was raised in Kansas City, the title made me mad at first but the video is very valid.
Great video! I grew up in Kansas City and saw a lot of familiar places. Here's hoping we can do better in the next few decades compared to how we've done in the last few.
Thanks for the beautiful series of fallen cities. In love with old America's style.
Best wishes from Russia ❤
The fall of Kansas City, brought to you by redlining, the second segregation, jc Nicholls, and car centrism
You should interview Sebastian Treese, maybe he could talk about what makes a building beautiful and how much it costs to build beautiful
The worst thing that was done to Kansas City was putting the highway loop right through the middle. It has essentially blocked in the city and has squashed a lot of potential for growth and development.
They don't even have a daily newspaper anymore.
The interstates wrecked so many American cities. Most modern buildings leave me cold, they have no character and no history.
3:50 I'm really impressed he pronounced Olathe correctly.
The question does come up that can we ever get rid of our highway systems that destroyed the cities? It feels like they are so established to fully get rid of
Absolutely! It’s happened in many American cities like Seattle.
@ in all fairness the only cities I’ve seen this happen are places like Boston, but I don’t think it can really work anymore since most of our cities are broke/bankrupt
Both Seattle and Boston, which @Andrew-iw9th and @OliveOilFan bring up as examples, didn't actually "get rid" of their highways. They spent billions of dollars putting overground segements of their downtown freeways into tunnels.
The only American cities to truly get rid of their highways wihtout replacing them in an expensive manner is San Franscisco, with its Embarcadero Freeway, and Rochester, NY.
Answer: no, we will never get rid of urban freeways. We’ll get rid of some little-used loops and spurs here and there, but the mainline freeways will be sticking around until we’re too poor to rebuild them.
@@Andrew-iw9th Seattle didn't get rid of their freeway, just buried it underground
The suburbs of KC are great. Some of the best burbs to live in in the whole U.S. there is often one of them in the annual top 10 best places to live lists
Not Independence, that's for sure....more likely on the Kansas side.
65 and lived in KC all of my life. My family goes back well over 100 years here. It is was SO SAD to see them tear down all of the old beautiful warm architecture and put up these cold boxy looking buildings. It saddens us to no end.
Kansas Citian here 👋
While the physical boundaries of Kansas City, Missouri proper have expanded greatly over the last 50+ years, the graphic you provided at 4:10 is misleading - that is not the current city boundary. The graphic you showed is showing new growth / sprawl for the entire metro area, not just KCMO proper
I'll clarify since it probably wasn't clearly stated in the video. The graph is not of the city boundaries. Just the extent of the urban sprawl to show how the amount of urbanized land has greatly increased. I'm not concerned with political boundaries when it comes to this.
I'm in st louis county and it's very similar here. If you took a map of metro st louis from 30 years ago and compared it to what it is now, it would be significantly larger today. And the population hasn't gone up enough to justify that expansion. People just move farther and farther out.
@@alexanderrotmensz Several of the Urban Sprawl cities around Kansas City are as old, or older than Kansas City proper. I get that your schtick is all about doom and gloom, but honestly, the Kansas CIty area is a pretty great place to raise a family. I am very grateful it isn't a densely packed urban jungle. There is green everywhere!
Kansas City MO is undergoing a large resurgence. The Power & Light District or whatever it's called has brought a much younger population moving in and a great entertainment area.
It's more mirage than oasis.
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
P&L district is economically failing and putting the city into more debt
it's also why the city is broke. do you have any idea how much they wrote off in TIFs?
@@kbrewski1 power and light district is also a drain on the city. Constant debt and can’t pay for itself
I firmly believe that so many of our current problems are the result of urban renewal. Great video. I’m obsessed with topics like this. Subscribed!
Great video, just an important cause. Keep fighting
Amazing work
Redlining, white flight, gentrification. It's all so obvious in KC. I live in a suburb of KC that has absolutely boomed in the last 20 years. It's absolutely wild to learn about history then you can drive to troost and see the line. Awesome video. 👌🏾
really the line is 71. only people who haven't been in the city since 2010 think it's troost
I live in KC, very accurate video! Well done, subscribed!
Alexander, you have again prepared an excellent, informative video about an American city that once dazzled the senses. Kansas City teemed with exciting, mesmerising architecture. Its neighbourhoods exuded ambiance. As I watch from the Netherlands, I feel such sorrow for what has disappeared. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the '60s and '70s, I loathed the car centric communities. I told my parents in 1971 that I would return to the homeland where I would live in a beautiful, historic town--without a car. I realised that dream, and I now live in glorious Middelburg.
Love to see the Dutch watching our American urban planing youtubers. You guys really do things right over there and are an inspiration!
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
I agree!
As a native of Kansas City, Our downtown is changing in character.. At one time it was full of major department stores and banks and such.. As the Suburbs grew like around most cities that had room around them, the stores followed the people there. The downtown remained the home of mainly financial and banking businesses. What has happened in the last 10 years is that the downtown is growing back again.. They are building resident towers and converted many of the big buildings into condos and apartments. They have a very lively sports bar and eating places that are drawing in the 20-30 crowd.. They even have a full line suburban type grocery store right down town.. They have put in a lot of new hotels and such because we do a lot of conventions here. We have a wonderful performing arts center down town.. They built an arena downtown - it never attracted a sports team but it is full constantly with events - music, sports and lots of other events there. They are in the process of planning a large park that will be built over I-70 on the South side of the city that will make it better.. Just to the South side of the downtown area in the crossroads area are all kinds of small shops and eating places that attract a lot of the younger crowd (I'm over 70 so I can say that). further south but still part of basically Downtown is our Historic Union Station with our Science center, HUGE 3-D studio and ongoing traveling exhibits.. Also is the official WWI museum and monument for the country with it's own museum. A number of years ago they put in a street car from our City Market area to the Union Station.. They are about ready to open the extension of that to the Country Club plaza area to the south... They have started building an extension of it to the North and East that will end up at the new Womens Current's Soccer teams stadium - the first ever stadium devoted to Women's sports. I think Alexander Rotmensz is NOT seeing the city as it is and I expect has never been here.. His ideas of what is going on is very outdated. NOTE: Kansas City's Transit system (the buses and Street Car) are FREE TO RIDE...
Yes there is absolutely hope! Love to see all of these new, good things progressively being put into place
If you want to understand Kansas City, look into trying to desegregate a city that has a state line running down the middle of it. For more focus, look at racism in the 1960s and 1970s. If you want a nonracist view, if you had kids in the KC, MO. school district, which were once top of the nation, but began declining in the 60s and 70s, you ask yourself do you want your kid riding a bus for 30 minutes to attend a grade school, when one is right around your corner? If you had money, you could stay in KC and send your kid to a private school, or move across the state line to Kansas, or move out to Lees Summit, which were separate school districts and not subject to bussing. Once you eliminate the local school culture, you've destroyed the loom that weaves everyone together and builds communities.
KC was very segregated. Undoing that wasn't and isn't easy. I believe it is still a very segregated city. I was born in KC and when I was young, my sister went to a private school. I assume my folks thought she'd get a better education or they could avoid the hassle of bussing, idk the precise reason, but I suspect it was all of the above. When my grandfather died, my grandmother moved in, but the house in KC was too small, so my parents went shopping. Grandma infused some additional cash and when they looked at what was available, Leawood KS had a house that fit and we could walk to school, plus no additional cost of private school. It was called "white flight," but a better name would be capital flight. I mean that the people who created the remedies for desegregating KC assumed they could force desegregation by bussing, but failed to understand that everyone who disliked this remedy and could afford to move, would move. I may not remember this correctly, but all the families on my old block in KC with kids my age, moved to Kansas.
This hollowed out Kansas City MO, causing a glut of undesirable housing neighborhoods. It's a downward spiral and it feeds on itself. If you're in KC and want an example, drive down the Paseo and then Ward Parkway. Both of them have absolutely enormous houses, but the Paseo is in a wretched state of decline and Ward Parkway isn't.
As far as architecture goes, it's difficult to keep old buildings in good shape. You may love how the old buildings look, but as time passes, they become more outdated. I live in a house that was built in 1938. That's around the time a lot of your pictures were taken. At some point forced air was added. It can get very hot in the summer. If I want to keep my second floor cool with the main A/C, the main floor needs to be about 60 degrees. During the summer heat waves I close the main unit vents and use a window unit. Overall, it's cheaper. If I had the cash, I'd bulldoze it and build something more energy efficient with a floor plan that made sense. For example, I'd have a garage that went into a laundry/mud room then the kitchen, instead of going through the office, formerly a porch, into the living room, through the dining room to the kitchen. If I could, it would only be a step up from the garage floor, instead of seven steps up.
Newer houses fit better with today's lifestyle. Lamenting the demise of classic architecture is akin to whining about getting older. It's going to happen, but it doesn't change the outcome.
KC's downtown decline is a product of desegregation and all the pitfalls that come with trying that on a state line city. The cool thing about it is the downtown is going through a redevelopment. My hunch is in another 86 years no downtown in the US will look like they did in 2024 much less the 1930s. I am hopeful that a cool downtown will attract younger people and some will stay and have kids and then the schools will see a rebound in quality. I'll be dead by then.
The investment and development happening here is great, but there's an alarming tendency (quite recently) to submit proposals that would turn this into any other city. There are communities and unique traits of the city that should be empowered and celebrated. I'm glad downtown isn't dead in the evenings and weekends like it once was, but importing chain restaurants and a readymade "entertainment district" lacks charm. But also, it takes money to preserve vintage architecture, but that needs to be part of our priority list, not just if it's profitable. There's a lot of push and pull, but it's exciting when good decisions get made by people who "get it"...rather than "get away with it."
as a local, we suck at preserving history
you can find preserved history around the city (mainly downtown) but it wasn't fully shown in the video
You should make a video about Fall River, MA. In the late 19th/early 20th century, it was the most productive textile manufacturing center in North America (and second in the world behind Manchester), but competition from southern states created an economic downturn that led to a population decline of over 25%, going from the third most populous city in Massachusetts to currently tenth. The old urban core of the city is completely unrecognizable and there's a distinct lack of any form of community space for any of its residents. One of the few American cities outside the Rust Belt to have a population above 100,000 but fall below that from demographic decline.
They lost a few more buildings in the river market with the new Buck O’Neil bridge. Now you have some old loft space buildings stuck between bridge ramps and over passes
0:27 for those wondering, that’s AI… no where in KC looks that cool, safe, or vibrant lol
KC has correct spelling tho
You’re about 15 years late with the burn, bud. Wealth is moving in and paving over the life and soul of the city while crime and poverty get displaced into once fine neighborhoods.
This is breaking my heart! Grew up in KC and I rememver as a little girl in the 70's, the talk about tearing down buildings in KC and not sure why they did this? They were going to tear down Union station!!
as an Olathe native living in KC, I’m impressed with your pronunciation :)
Highlight the female Architect Nelle Peters, built much of the city and neighborhoods in the 1910s and 1920s.
I live in Dubuque, Iowa. We have, for the most part, retained much of our 19th-century architecture and city layout. We are actively reviving our millwork district and warehouses and making them into shops, bars, hotels, restaurants, and arcades. All while retaining the buildings' exterior and red brick vibe.
The same thing happened to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Its a shame, sometimes, remembering it, makes me wanna cry, what have they done to my beloved Rio...
When i went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, i had a hard shock. Its impressive how they preserved the city spirit
I'm in KC. Live in a house built in 1920 in the historic northeast. I grew up here. My first inclination was to defend the decisions made, but you make some really great points. Sometimes we have to look in the mirror to find the responsible party - many of the decisions were voted on by the people and we made our own beds with a lot of our own problems. I didn't like 71 highway when it first came in, but it's grown on me. Could we have put in an elevated train instead, or at least parallel to it, in the way DC or NYC or Chicago have? Yes. Absolutely. Is the streetcar a nice touristy thing that needs to be expanded? Absolutely yes. Do I wish that my town was way, way, way more bike and walking friendly? My goodness yes.
But we can only move forward, you know? We're building up in ways that are more progressive, we're expanding green spaces, we're building more efficiently with a lower footprint than those old buildings that ran on oil, coal, and steam. There is massive potential here, and in places like Tulsa and Spokane to be the next giants when the giants fall. The new airport is a huge success. Streetcar expansion.
One of the big problems, from my perspective, it that KC proper annexed a bunch of the areas surrounding Kansas City. Those are where more conservative voting blocks sit who are less progressively minded when it comes to city beautification and downtown revitalization - they live 30+ miles away, so for us in the downtown area, we're out of sight, out of mind. And that goes for things like giving city civilian services raises, and public school upgrades - and indeed - infrastructure. How I would love to see us become more like a Denver - where the surrounding areas have home rule. I thought it was crazy when I first moved to Denver, but now I've seen the logic of how well it can work.
Cannabis legalization is helping a ton with that, I feel. Areas long neglected by the city are starting to get new roads, sidewalks and such. The streetcar expansion plans are coming along (come east out of downtown, dammit!) but we're still 20-30 years out to be on the level of a Portland, Denver, Baltimore or Charlotte...it's coming though.
Great video.
Born and raised in KC, thanks for the different viewpoint
Kansas City was once known as the Paris of the Plains - drugs, sex, music, dancing, gambling, drink... we had several amusement parks and large recreation areas with swimming, skating, and ice skating, with shopping galore. You name it, we had it.
When my grandfather, a South-Central Kansas farmer passed, his funeral was slapped together by relatives with a fire-and-brimestone pastor. My older cousin asked me afterwards, "Do you think Grandpa would've liked that?" I thought a moment and answered, "No!" My cousin nodded, and said, "He would've liked them to play the song 'Kansas City' - he loved the place when he was younger." Kansas City was a heaven and a haven for some folks. We just have to keep working to preserve our history while growing our opportunities with creativity.
Very insightful. I’m a KC resident, and I wish we could go back to street cars. I used to truck fuel in the city, I hated it. The urban sprawl is very ugly.
It always amazes me how no one hates the world they live in more than people in positions of power.
You're right in your conclusion. Kansas City has always had a palpable spirit and pride in its history and overall scene. I honestly think that the sprawl is partially symptomatic of that pride. Just about anyone within 60 miles of the KC State Line would tell someone, if asked, that they're from Kansas City and they find themselves downtown for work or an event at least once or twice a year. They wave that flag.
A word to the wise: Arthur Bryant's is a fantastic place to eat, but it's really overrated. You can find plenty of superior BBQ joints in the Greater KC area. I recommend Big T's or LC's as far as downtown BBQ goes.
Joe’s Kansas City is the best.
KC resident here. I love the old photos & yes it’s sad that so many cool buildings are gone. But they became impractical. Progress & change is inevitable. KC is still a beautiful city with many beautiful areas. Super easy to travel around. I love how spacious so many housing developments are. Way better than the squished , cramped, & crowded cities that I’ve experienced elsewhere. I absolutely love KC! 💕
LOL, KC is a joke compared to most cities, there are many reasons why it is "cheap" to live there.
@ Sorry you feel that way. I’ve lived in cities in the east coast & west coast. KC is my favorite place. It’s all each person’s opinions. Good thing we each have the freedom to live where we choose. Lots of cool things everywhere.
@@lisalibeer7824 If you enjoy terrible weather most of the year, KC is a great fit. That is a dealbreaker for me and why I left for a nicer area of the country.
Well done Sir. I live two hours south of KC and even just working a couple days a week in the KC area and you feel your soul being crushed by the endless suburbia.
soul - less
I see what you’re saying as I live in the KC area too, but that’s honestly every American city since WW2
Americans just love suburbia. Deep down we know it's expensive, inefficient, and ugly, but most aren't willing to live anywhere else. The "American Dream" is litterally just growing up, starting a family, and making enough money to buy a house in the suburbs.
These are great videos. But, the reality is that a lot of these buildings were very outdated and weren't built to last long. Meaning that 1930's version of Kansas City, was built on top of the 1870's Kansas City, that looked completely differently. That "beauty" of the 1930's picture would not have existed without that previous destruction. Not to mention the world was different. The electrical wires and telephone wires were everywhere on electrical poles. Neighborhoods were dirty. There's a lot more than what these pictures show.
Not to mention, the people with cars in the 1950's were excited about superhighways. They saw it as an upgrade. They did not demonize cars or cities the way we do. They were looking forward to the new cities. Everyone moved to the suburbs. That means the entire way of life using the trolley cars, was gone. People wanted the security of the car over the New York City-lifestyle thst every city in America had prior. Fuel was cheap. Cars were cheap. Car repairs were simple. Cars were simple. Somehow we have become overengineered in our cars, which is ridiculous. We also are losing the fuel source, and cannot find an equivalent alternative. Electric Vehicles (EV's) are more expensive. It's making life more expensive for us. The entire world will lose wealth, which means it's more expensive to travel. We may have to move back into cities as fuel becomes too expensive. But that doesn't seem like the direction se're going in right now. Suburbs are still being built today.
Either way, I think because our entire 1930's economy was built by the private sector to cater to a 1930's lifestyle, it makes perfect sense that that would all close once that lifestyle was gone. Nobody wanted to live in these tenement houses anymore. Yes the interstate highways crisscrossed the entire Kansas City downtown, but at the same time, people saw it as beautiful back in the 1950's. If anything people wanted more cities to be like that.
People during the 1980's and 1990's also saw a futurism in cities and expected cities to evolve, but I think people didn't realize that our wealth would run out. Also, that there would be such an emphasis in nature and parks, which previous generations didn't value as much, at least not directly in city streets, like we do with trees and gardens everywhere. Basically, Kansas City is unfinished and should have continued to urbanism, but now people don't really want concrete jungles anymore, so we're regressing to what is fashionable today, pretending like it's a feature, but the reason why we can't continue the 1950's lifestyle, is because energy is too expensive and we don't feel the need to build that futuristic steel world of the Jetsons. Instead, we're just going to be simpler, and if anything our building will last even less than those of the 1930's. Houses and buildings are constantly built quickly and torn down quickly. They're not made and still are not made for longevity like European cities are.
True -- many urbanists tend to over-romanticize the past, even while making valid criticisms of the present. A lot of those beautiful older buildings probably would've been prohibitively expensive to update to modern standards of plumbing, HVAC, and electrical service.
What's your excuse for the way suburbs have been built? After W.W. II, suburban America was extremely prosperous, so why all the cheap, tacky, bland, architecture?
This a very long comment for a You Tube comment section. So few people will read the whole thing. But every word in it is well thought out and true. If viewers want to know what the rebuttal is to this rather negative video on Kanas City's "decline", this is that rebuttal. The bottom line is that Kanas City's decline is not a decline at all. Take the time to read @PromisingPod's comment, and you will see why.
@@Zalis116 "A lot of those beautiful older buildings probably would've been prohibitively expensive to update..."
Okay, so why couldn't the buildings that replaced them also have been beautiful? Did they have to be so monstrously ugly? What's the excuse for buildings like 5:46?
@@Zalis116 Yeah, huffing leaded gasoline exhaust in an open streetcar in the middle of February doesn't sound like fun to me.
And being forced to go to the grocery store every day because a day's groceries is all I can carry on the streetcar is also not something I would appreciate. I like keeping my shopping trips to a minimum.
I also like living amongst the trees, and having space for a garden, and not hearing sirens at all hours every night.
People talk about "human-centered design", as if a house with a yard to play in and host gatherings and such isn't human-centered.
In anthropological terms, living in a brick box with a thousand other people is about as far from "normal" as you can get. Suburban houses are more akin to "normal" than that.
Cities like Kansas City are an artifact of the industrial revolution. They wouldn't exist otherwise. And most of human history occurred prior to the industrial revolution.
"A lot of those beautiful older buildings probably would've been prohibitively expensive to update to modern standards of plumbing, HVAC, and electrical service."
Forget about retrofitting. These buildings were often torn down because they had fallen into such disrepair that it was prohibitively expensive to keep them from falling down.
St. Joseph Missouri was a much smaller city, but the damage there is somehow even more tragic
It's so bad now lol prolly dopehead central
While I agree with the suburban sprawl, I honestly love the revitalization of downtown. The buildings look better, and are definitely more efficient.
Most underrated channel on RUclips
I enjoy your videos but I'd prefer learning the history of what was in this series. I get the rant, and I agree, but there's already so much of that on RUclips. What there isn't is the history that inspires the next generation to remember that things weren't always this way. That even though we've forgotten, we can always remember
As a proud kc native, thanks for making a video on this. Urban sprawl, or more accurately white flight" really did kill the city. But its exciting to see KC redevelope in the past decade or so
Inner cities are too often appreciared too late.
I visited KC about 10 years ago and was impressed from what I was expecting but seeing this is absolutely shocking to know what it once was. As an architect and an urban aficionado I hope it continues to crawl back to its former architectural urban paradise. I live in a 100 y.o. house in a streetcar suburb with a compact but amazing terraced garden and three minute walk away from a vibrant urban village, transit and dt. We rarely get in cars and a live very social and active lifestyle as it should be.
Here is an explanation of what caused this and most of our problems as a country:
List of who decides the government in various countries:
France: French Voters
Canada: Canadian Voters
Germany: German Voters
Japan: Japanese Voters
United States: Automotive industry, oil industry, healthcare industry, airline industry
Us Statespeople never even voted for government since Lewis Powell became a judge of the SCOTUS system.
Lol right, because Airbus, Volkswagen, Shell, BP, Honda, etc. don't exist. /s
This was really good!
Nobody ever wants to admit why this happens. You said why at the first of the video though. Great work.
The part about traffic makes me laugh pretty hard. I've lived in Kansas City my whole life and I've been to plenty of other major metropolitan areas. Kansas City has some of the best traffic in the entire United States as far as major metropolitan areas go. Even in the worst part of rush hour, The longest it would take to get from one end of the sprawling metro to the other is 45 minutes. Of course there are slowdowns, but traffic keeps moving and usually the worst that can happen is your commute will take an extra 10 minutes. Not a big deal.
Yeah.. try rush hour in Dallas or San Antonio.. Kansas City is a breeze.
And now they want to stick an MLB ball park in the heart of downtown. Half the year traffic will suck and the other half will feature a giant, empty structure.
It’s like they said ‘hey, let’s put a brick wall around that beautiful public park and fill it with empty bleachers.’🙄
I thought that proposal was voted down
@@justinwillard76 yeah that got voted down months and months ago
I understand all of this...But will say KC has one of the best lit up skylines there is..Especially at Christmas..
You can pay extra money to one of the worst utility companies in the US, Evergy, to enjoy it too.
A lot of the city has been stretched thin, but there are still some of the nicest neighborhoods in the country both in KC, MO proper and in the suburbs.
I moved to KC in 2009, living in either central or Southern JoCo. It's true sprawl here. The post 2016 construction trend of only building high-end homes is exacerbating it. I'm happy to see downtown rebuild itself and grow and old neighborhoods like Westside North where Chez Elle is see lots of revitalization.
But that feel of the "old times" is lost. Here's to hoping the downtown and riverside projects create great, walkable spaces without making everything there so expensive to live around that only the cities wealthiest get to really enjoy.
DFW and greater Houston are the 4th and 5th largest population centers in USA do one of those next?
Not the first time I see these comparisons of old/new Kansas City.
A silly conspiracy theory - the city was actually nuked but the whole world was brainwashed into forgetting it
i wouldn’t doubt it
Not a Kansas City native myself but I've lived here most of my life and my family is from the area so I think I count. It's such a shame to see all that historic Beauty going to waste or being destroyed. I remember the first house we lived in when we moved here it was in the historic Northeast neighborhood used to be predominantly Italian beautiful old houses very stacked up on top of each other narrow streets that were obviously originally built for carriages most of them one way and nine times out of 10 you sure the driveway with your neighbor but those neighborhoods had so much character. Unfortunately it's not just the infrastructure but the schools that are causing problems and reasons people are moving away. Hoping things continue to improve we've got to work on getting our crime statistics down and helping our homeless population mostly the mentally ill who don't have anywhere else to go and can't manage shelters. I love telling people about my City's history especially the Roaring Twenties and the Pendergast years
none of this would hurt so much if we didnt throw away all of our damn style. if something needs demolished it doesnt mean we cant build with good looks for gods sake
Yeah, most newer construction is just thrown up and will age like trash.
I did research about this a while back and it legit just made me sad, such a big part of my city's soul that could've been midtown or a historic extension of downtown was torn down because of the minor modern convinience of having a highway right next to downtown that could've been moved 10-15 blocks down. Luckily the city building and modern restoration of older buildings and structures has been on the rise especially recently.
Just stumbled into this channel by accident and watched with interest. As someone who’s lived in the KC area for over 50 years I can’t say that I subscribe to the premise that the old architecture and infrastructure was better. I think the city and surroundings have changed in a way that most people want. So if there are some that don’t like it, that’s not surprising but personally I am glad that it has developed the way it has - very livable and full of opportunities - plenty of old AND new. And to even hint that Kansas City sits in the category of “Fallen Cities” to me seems a little over-blown.
KC is a bypassed city that doesn't even have one Fortune 500 company. The sprawl is ridiculous as the massive amount of highways in every direction have destroyed any type of cohesion across the metro area, along with the fact that the state line messes things up even more. Most of the migration will continue to go to the Sunbelt, Coasts, and Mountain West.
@@KS5040 As a point of clarification SEB (NYSE) still on Fortune 500 last I looked. Granted, KC's not New York. The population continues to grow at a little under 1% / year and sprawl seems to be driven by what people want -- life close to, but not necessarily in the city. Highways are what enable tourism and trade. I get that your viewpoint isn't favorable but it's great that our country is so large and varied that you can find somewhere else that's more in line with your expectations.
@@Dogfather66227 Yes, I'm well aware that the sprawl seems to be "what people want" in KC. It's the typical US mentality of "quantity over quality" as the newer housing construction at many price points there is absolutely atrocious. KC is a place you either really like or really dislike.. I lived in the region for 20 years and there are far better places to live elsewhere fortunately...
@@KS5040 It it took 20 years to drive you out it couldn't have been too bad. No one would disagree about housing prices, but it's not unique to KC. Heck, I'm probably part of that. Would it be appropriate to ask what region you live in presently? Not that my bags are already packed or anything but always open to suggestion.
I've lived in Chicago and Dallas and have lived in KC for nearly the last 20 years. Kansas City really is the biggest suburb I have ever seen. It's considerably larger in land mass than Chicago but has a fraction of the population.
My brother and I were talking about this, that the US doesn’t preserve any historic buildings or districts. Let’s not go far, when I went to the Zocalo in Mexico City, it’s the same as it was hundreds of years ago. And the same with many other cities throughout Latin America and Europe. But here, if it’s old, it has to be demolished and replaced with a modern building. There’s not much here that’s historic, other than the damn Liberty Bell.
And that modern building is too often cookie cutter cheap and ugly.
The city needs to renovate that good sized area by the river with a bunch of really old big building that would make a super cool art, shopping, and restaurant district if they keep the old building aesthetic. Instead the city is just letting the buildings rot away last time I checked.
I lived in KC suburb (Independence) from 1960-1978 and moved back here in 2005. I can count the times I've been downtown on one hand. No thank You! Traffic, parking and the 'criminal element' are a huge turnoff. Sad...because in the 60's my friends and I would hop on a bus and go downtown and not worry about anything.....
Honestly almost cry seeing these pictures every time such a carless waste of culture, beauty, identity from our cities for basically no reason at all.
Kcmo native here, funny seeing my old “luxury” apartment building-River Market paid $1800 a month to live in one of the the few “walkable” neighborhoods. Kcmo also has a severe housing crisis that no one seems to be talking about
I moved away from KC a few years ago. when I first moved there in 76, anyone that lived there then will know what I'm talking about. When you went down College Blvd from Metcalf traveling west, and tried to go south, most of the streets were gravel road. Antioch, and a few other main streets were paved, but it was farmland most of the way to the county line, which is a 120 blocks to the south. Overland Park, where I lived , is now the second most populated city in Kansas (200k). No one outside the area has ever heard of it probably. OPO is out of control too. They annexed land that chopped Leawood off to the state line, basically ending their city, then annexed Stanley Township, which is now gone, and are now trying to get Stillwell, who are fighting back against this. OP is less than twenty blocks from from the Miami county line. Take a look at the map I linked below see what they did on the state line to Leawood. They are also annexing all the way down Metcalf/69, and surrounding all of the townships that will have no choice to surrender in the next 5-10 years. For all of this, you would think taxes would be cheaper, but they are also out of control, and Kansas is now considered an unfriendly tax state because of this. property tax is nuts, and the sales tax is almost 10 percent. WTF.
maps.opkansas.org/property-map/
Amen! Property tax is going up so fast every year it's crazy! I'm by the Old Overland Park area and you'd think I was living in a manor house - not a 50s ranch with no garage - if you looked at my tax bill. They're also tearing down all out old cool building and putting up ugly luxury high rise apartments. They could have at least made them fit the Old Overland Park theme. It's breaking my heart, I've lived here for decades and it's losing it's soul. Metcalf South was just the beginning. 😥
Most the office space, wealth and overall density is in Johnson county Kansas now. Kcmo has a lower density and a higher single family housing rates than Overland Park and Lenexa Kansas now. Kcmo had more homicides than St. Louis in 2023.
Left Overland Park in 77, went back once in the 90's. That was enough for me.
@@fredrickmillstead2804 Overland Park is all about rubber stamping every single development project they can get their hands on, and they don't give one #$%$ about what the residents have to say about anything. It's all about quantity and not enough quality.
@KS5040 I remember the Katz drug store at 75th and Metcalf. 2 stories, had most everything. Mission had a Woolworths with a lunch counter (?). Went to Santa Fe Trail elem. School at 71st and Lamar. Don't miss it at all.