Kansas City: The Quintessential American City? 

With me living in Columbia, which is 125 miles to both Kansas City and St. Louis. I have to say Kansas City is by far the better city to go and have fun in.

Actually, the Power and Light district is happening place with lots of bars and restaurants. Sometimes at work, people will be like, "Hey weren't going to the Power and Light district after work, you wanna come?"

True Story. This is how nice Kansas City is. Last weekend, I was on a side street in downtown KC and was taking a break from ubering. I was sitting in the passenger set of my car with the door open smoking but I was coughing up a storm. This woman was parked opposite me in her car. She opened her trunk and walked over to me and handed me a whole roll of paper towels. I was like "You're just giving out paper towels huh?" She was like "Dude, I thought you were throwing up. Just trying to help." KC hospitality. A woman helping a throwing up driver on a dark side street in downtown KC.

You must take into account that while KCMO is in fact the largest city in MO, it covers more than 5 times the land area of St Louis but on the Metro level St Louis has a much larger population. Atlanta has a similar city population to KC, but no one would say its the same size as Atlanta because it's metro is considerably smaller...facts

Fun fact: Kansas City has almost 3 times the land mass of Atlanta and Mesa with a slighly smaller population. It's a city that defines sprawl, along with Jacksonville and Oklahoma City.

You can tell this dude hasn't ever been to Kansas city lol

It’s actually the biggest city in MO. It’s the second largest metro.

To better understand the city you see on the aerial view in your video you must dig into the early history of Kansas city. The many parking lots, big buildings, extensive highways, trainyards-galore, and so on, literally evolved around a few river landings, cattle depots, trading posts, and one railroad bridge. It's not the most lucrative beginnings of a city but it's a very modest one (not the city of gold). Today KC is still a work in progress.

KCMO, the City of Fountains, more fountains than any city except Rome. More miles of boulevard than any other city. Fabulous Country Club Plaza, world-class Nelson-Atkins Museum. KCMO is a wonderful city. This person should actually visit there!

KCMO has the best people ever, lots of great history, arts, beautiful trees and rolling hills, views of MO River and the best BBQ ever! Anyone visiting or living here is blessed! We have it all!

I just visited Kansas City for the first time 3 weeks ago and I surprisingly really liked it!!! I've lived down town Denver for the last 24 years and have visited most of all the big cities around America, so I'm very familiar with city life. A lot of things I noticed in Kansas City made me a little upset about how much more money we pay for everything in Denver. Kansas City in a nutshell, "IT'S LIKE DENVER 20 YEARS AGO," which I miss! The people were super friendly, the city is clean and well kept, the art scene is blowing up and EVERYTHING is crazy cheap compared to Denver! If you get a chance to spend a little time there, check it out, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Look out, Kansas City is up and coming and it's only a matter of time until the same thing that happened to Denver, will happen there. P.S. The Kansas City art museum is the best I've ever seen and a must visit for everyone, plus it's FREE!!! :)

This series is seriously some of the most interesting, unique, and educative content on youtube. Thank you for this incredible backlog, and for future episodes to come.

You actually couldn’t be more wrong about dowtown KC. 15 years ago- yea- it was dead after 5pm, but today there in not a single block unsafe to walk during the night & there are tens of thousands of residences of mostly middle and upper class housing, not to mention 10+ Large hotels, & at least 40 restaurants and untold number of bars and local businesses. I should know- its where i live- most of the vacant parking lots and other spaces are being built on or being used as staging areas for building- 2000 new residences have been added in the last year- 4000 more to be built in the next 4 years, several new Large hotels are being built now- 15 years ago- there were only a few broken down slum buildings- they are all long gone. You should get off the map and do a little research so ur not spewing BS thinking you’ve got it pegged.

Not gonna lie, I’ve watched all of your videos see real times, mostly while I play Cities Skylines. It’s good background noise and your critiques are actually really helpful with city planning. Your most recent video was pretty awesome and I hope it means that you’re back to making amazing content. Stay safe!

I from kcmo, Kansas City is the town if you did not know 👊

Question. Did you do any research before making this video? Or did you just find a city on Google maps and judge it based on the aerial view? You clearly need to do more research.

My home town. One of the safest cities to live in. No hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, landslides, tornadoes go around but not into the city, and the winter weather is mild. A good place to have a family. Some schools are rated some of the best in the country. Just wish they had a metro rail system like Omaha and Saint Louis.

A lot of construction of luxury apartments and lofts. You can live downtown now. A lot of restaurants now and they are building more stores.

Salina is pronounced like sa-line-a, I’ll let that one slide though

If you love KC its hard to hear but this guy is spot on. KC is in transition and correcting the things Michael aptly points out. Very good work Micheal.

KCMO is beautiful now. It’s chock full of cheap ass luxury apartments, plenty of night life, and amazing food everywhere you go. I like the size. I consider it a big ass city when you include all the towns around KC. We all function together, and you still live in KC even if you’re outside of it. I like the vibe. The closest thing to compare it to would be Atlanta, but more western. It’s a very western city, in my opinion. KCMO is the town. Everyone knows everyone!

Surprisingly accurate, after living in KC for 20 years and living in SF for the last 7 I didn’t realizing how woefully over classed KC is by these other properly planned cities. Walking between neighborhoods and having everything you need in 4 square blocks is amazing

KcMo baby !!! Only question I ask is how could you not mention the placement sports complex for the royals and chiefs Right off I-70 in the perfect spot

Wrong about dead downtown. Large # of renovated lofts, apartment complexes, etc...that you cant see from a map.

Kansas city has been booming, and has been more connected after the street car, which will be expanding all the way to the plaza on Main street. Parking lots are being filled up by apartments and businesses to shop. Old buildings being renewed. Millenials are moving in.

Yes classic American city in design. But the thing to note about Kansas City is why it is there. It was considered the Gateway to the West as the Missouri River reaches there before turning North. This also brought the railroads in later and became a hub when a lot of the cattle trails of Texas went through there. That is why it has so much rail access, but also in the 20th century rail fell out of use and the flatness of the area otherwise allowed freeways and suburbs in the industrialized city that likely wasn't growing at the time.

You obviously don't have any idea about Kansas city, I would not say anything about something you don't know about.

It's the biggest city in Missouri.

This is so entertaining! You’ve got it all wrong about KC and are missing so much info, but it’s funny to hear what outsiders think about the place.

as someone who lives in KC this is not a well informed video

I always liked Kansas City for some reason even though I never been there. I’m from Pittsburgh, but if Pittsburgh isn’t playing or winning in a game I always root for Kansas City.

Great interpretation. People from KC were totally triggered that you objectively critiqued their planning and highways.

the dislikes miss how the complaints here are representative of common mistakes in US/Canada city planning. KCMO is the first city comes to my mind when listing american cities correcting these mistakes, at least in fixing downtown

City heavily shaped by post-desegregation racism. I love the place and all (I lived there until 24), but the place is still sharply segregated along Troost - look up a map of households by race in KC online, it's kind of ridiculous. The 50s onward also sees the proliferation of white strongholds in the suburbs that are just now being more thoroughly integrated in southern Independence and Shawnee Mission on the Kansas side, but Overland Park, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs, and Liberty to the north haven't changed too much in that regard. Additionally, gentrification is starting to bring heavier white presences in West Bottoms, southwestern Riverside, and especially The Crossroads district. Public transportation continues to be a major headache for the underprivileged; the introduction of the rail line running from just south of Crown Center to Riverside quite literally benefits no one but tourists and people too lazy to find a parking spot in Riverside. Additional interesting factoid about Kansas City; the tax bases all around the metropolitan area are massively different than what you'd think. The most notable of these are the 39th street shopping corridor in southeast Independence - which was ceded to Blue Springs in the 1970s for no reason, permanently ensuring Blue Springs would have higher property values and better funded schools - and the eastern Kansas City/northwestern Independence area, where in the late 00s Kansas City ceded around a dozen schools and their associated tax bases to Independence primarily due to Kansas City's school district performing abysmally in standardized testing, which threatened their accreditation. Of note, many of the students who should've benefited from being brought into the Independence school district, namely the black neighborhoods just west of Van Horn, ended up having their students retained in the Kansas City school district, increasing the populations of already packed high schools toward the inner city and further hurting the Kansas City school district. Kansas City is ironically a city where black culture is championed (barbecue and the history of Jazz, Blues, and baseball in Kansas City all owe heavily or entirely to post-reconstruction black migrants) while black people are routinely f***ed over. They have a ton of Quiktrips, which are the best place on the planet, but they also have places like Truman High (my high school), which wasn't desegregated until the 1980s even though it was build in 1964 - *a full decade after Brown v Board of Education* . And pretty much nobody talks about any of that outside minorities and inner-city liberals. Kind of like the rest of America. So, in a way, yeah; Kansas City is the quintessential American city. Here's a source on the Troost divide for those curious. While it's data from 2012, not much has changed demographic-wise in that time. www.kcur.org/post/data-maps-show-troost-racial-economic-and-educational-divide#stream/0

Every time I see something like this I am so thankful to be european. Both sides got pros and cons but our cities are just soooo much better

We used to have a great streetcar system great rail system used to be a train hub, without a car in Kansas City you will starve to death the statist have destroyed it

Kansas City: where the best part of the city is in Missouri

Hey Mike, these are great. You should do Vancouver.

I enjoyed this video a lot, as well as all the others. I would really appreciate it if you could suggest some good resources for urban planning/development for a layman audience

Could you do something about Dallas, Tx?

Interesting info. We definitely love Kansas City today!

Can i just mention to everyone saying he has never been to Kansas city - the series is called Mike Looks at a Map

it’s a racial thing, and we have to address that before anything will be done east of troost or the “highway.” The street car being expanded to the plaza from the river market has me super excited about my new apt in the financial district in Commerce Tower. I will be super connected using that street car and highway connection in the middle of the city when it is completed in 2025. Even now, the line to Union station and crown center is a great convenience to get me across the highway without having to walk it all. *edit* I want to add, the highways of kansas city are what allowed me to fall in love with it. i grew up almost an hour away, and I drove as delivery driver through the city in the mid 2000’s until 2008. I have mixed feelings about the highways, but I do want us to stop using federal tax dollars to pay for suburban expansion.

There is actually a small town right by the Missouri River called Missouri City 😂

Kansas City is by far the biggest city in Missouri 😂 And the baseball team is called Royals. People who hate baseball knows that

Your correct in pointing out the car priority. The latest mistake was stealing via a million dollar paint job, two lanes for a bike on gutter with the continuous question : Where are the bikes?

This is insanely ignorant. You speculate on KC by only maps, when you have no grasp on the culture. Your opinions are unfounded and you don't have any background information on why Kansas City is structured the way it is, much less on its current state.

I'm researching for my podcast and was surprised to learn a lot watching this video. Thanks for making!

My home town so not trolling with my cons: Pros: much forest land so u often feel close to nature, much opportunity for those in tech, some suburbs and Westport are a good escape from high crime areas. FOOD EVERYWHERE. Cons: Eat is all there is to do. Eating is the culture. You don't talk to people, you eat and drive. It's sprawling so to live in KC is to drive many miles. No matter what they do to improve downtown it's hopelessly claustrophobic as the roads are narrow. Speaking of roads you'll need GPS for years, trust me. Musically, blues, tired old blues still prevails. "I woke up this mornin..." kind of blues. Every suburb looks exactly the same. I should stop. Never going back but see for yourself and good luck!

Micheal Westrich is correct along NE Underground Drive is one the largest commercial underground complexes in North America. Several companies do warehousing and distribution from "the caves" as truck drivers call it. Hundreds of trucks a day drive into the side of a ridge facing the Missouri River. These trucks are loaded with refrigerated cargo for nation wide distribution. There's even 2 active (there used to be 3) rail spurs that enter the complex. There are other businesses also located there. I have driven inside the complex a couple of times. There is a smaller similar complex in Springfield Missouri.

20:42 I am happy someone finally got it right, that many industrial jobs that left Detroit didn't just leave the country, but also moved into the surrounding suburbs, we still have industrial jobs here, they're mostly in surrounding suburbs like Lovnia, Wixom, Warren, and Canton!

Ha! Great video man i just moved to Kansas less than a month ago and i agree with alot of what you're saying but it is a beautiful city. I suggest you do Houston (where i moved from) if you think the highways are tangled in KC then you're in for a surprise haha. Anyways awesome video, you've earned a new sub!

I enjoyed watching it. :)

At least we have the cheapest gas in the country.

Kansas city is the biggest city and has the biggest population in Missouri

Downtown is actually booming most of the time. Millenials are buying property near downtown and previously "ghetto" areas like near Penn Valley and turning it into a nicer area. It's an area that was anxiety ridden to walk out and about just a few years ago and now its a pretty busy area.

Ive lived in 3 cities. St. Louis, Nashville TN, and now in KC for school. I grew up in STL and there’s a lot to do when you’re a kid, but it’s culturally dead outside of UCity (Washington University campus and The Loop). Nashville has definite culture but it’s a tourist town as well. There’s nothing much to do if you’re under 21 and hate country music (the music scene otherwise is insanely good) It’s so so expensive to live there despite the fact there are hundreds of apartment complexes going up everyday. Lots of good food. KCMO is a waaaaay more laid back town. They have a crazy good arts district and downtown is becoming more hip and happening. It has a good Zoo, venues, and newly built up businesses. There’s good food, you just have to look for it. The Nelson Atkins museum is phenomenal, they got great schools here too. Lots of good neighborhoods.The ghetto starts when you go East of 71. Also I met a couple of the guys from Queer Eye when they were filming last summer. I’m waiting to turn 21 so I can hit the bars and heavy music scene...

Los Angeles, would love to see your take on how a Kansas City style land grab and highway layout actually impedes the ability of a city that is bursting with life.

How many beverages did you have before you did the commentary to this video Mike? I hear a slur, hic and a burp here and there.

I live in downtown Kansas City and have to agree on the highways and parking lots. They really hurt the character and walkability of the city. It's isolating. The city expanded out to suburbia while their are still many empty lots and parking lots in the downtown area itself. It's a waste of space. There have been improvements at least in recent years - it used to be a total ghost town downtown and now people ate starting to live in downtown apartments and lofts. I heard they were considering removing the section of I-70 that cuts through the downtown area and rerouting it too, which would be an improvement. We need way better public transportation as well. The streetcar somewhat helped with that and they're expanding it to run to the plaza. It's an OK city, but eventually I'll be moving to a bigger city like New York or Chicago

I really liked how you used the Detroit/Hamtrck example as a way to explain how outlying communities either allowed themselves to be civically annexed or not and what happens when the metro area goes thru a financial shift that gets the whole area stuck or, on the flipside, allows wealthy annexed suburbs to be a potential source of revenue and talent that can be more invested in fixing the downtown areas that are often left behind when white-flight events have let exurb communities to self-isolate and not deal with the harder systemic problems of how to fix the cities for every cross-section of its population.

Freeways to be removed: I-70 north of 670 (670 becomes 70) I-35 between new I-70 and I-29 If a freeway hits a beltway, it should enter, so as not to stress the highway system, with *responsibility* . Jane Jacobs did not save New York from freeways, she saved it from sloppy work. LOMEX should have been a tunnel, and the Williamsburg line should have housed the expressway, not a sloppy alignment through urban areas.

You’ll be even more surprised to learn that the real Missouri City is actually in Texas

Try visiting Kansas City dude. Nothing like you described at all.

This dude doesn’t know nothing about Kansas City 😂

That quarry is home to the largest underground business complex in the world

1st largest in missouri 2nd largest metro

16:36 Kansas City looks like a little elf dude with a big chin and a big nose holding a can of beer.

I’m currently working on getting into urban planning and design/political science and can’t wait to start tackling these problems in Kansas City. So much potential.

I love how I’m from Kansas City and this popped up in my recommendations and I’m like hmmmm sir

Hey the downtown hasn’t been great in the past but it is changing for the better and also I doubt you have been there before because you really don’t know what the city is actually like

It's the biggest city. St. Louis is only bigger including the burbs.

Love your voice. You probably could do voice overs for animated films. Your voice reminds me of a voice from a anamiated show but cant put my finger on it lol.

Mike, you are wrong about one thing, the Kansas side is still Kansas City, just known as Kansas City Kansas, instead of Missouri. I know many people get confused about that, especially when we from th KC region say things like KCMO, or KCK to referance the different sides of the state line. Guess you kinda have to live here to really understand it the way we here in Chiefs Kingdome do.

Psst, btw on maps use 94 from Detroit to Chicago, 55 to St Louis, 70 to KC. ;)

I'm always gasping at american citys, because there are just about 5 parking lots in the whole downtown of my 2 Mio. City.

Very few people live in downtown Kansas City. Shopping and commercial districts are very decentralized, Westport, 39th Street, and the Plaza are a lot more popular.

Kansas City is the most populous city in Missouri

Kansas City is actually the LARGEST city in the State of MO, and has been for a very long time.

Do a full episode on Detroit please. If you haven't. :)

Longview lake did not exist when KC took that stretch of 150. Longview Farms, as it was known, was supposed to be more suburban sprawl but ended up being a big park instead. The lake itself was ceded to the county which manages the entire lake park.

You pronounced Salina wrong

I love the idea of exploring cities more closely to find what they do well and what they don't. I think it would be more useful to visit the city yourself, interview some locals, etc. I appreciate that you've been delving more into historical reasoning for certain elements in recent videos. That said, scrubbing around on Google Maps isn't particularly interesting and it's easy to make assumptions that way. Take some tips from City Beautiful and the way he approaches things in a more objective manner. Also, write a more concise script so you can cut down on rambling and make the videos shorter. You have a lot of potential here, I'd hate to see it go to waste.

Kansas City took a big hit when George Brett retired from the Royals.

KC is the biggest city it MO. Why you didn’t mention the Chiefs 😓

I’m not sure if I missed it, but the fact that there is a Kansas City, KS is a pretty unique quirk that plays a big role in how the metro operates and it wasn’t really mentioned.

I would have enjoyed a little more content actually dealing with Kansas City instead of using it as an example of urban issues and then going to other cities to further explain your point and not use that time actually looking into Kansas City itself as your title would seem to indicate that's the topic.

The songs at the endmade it worth sitting through this. Thanks for not bashing my city..

(28:30) The City didn't Annex the quarry because it's a liability. Industrial waste. Heavy metals, and lead pollution. "You can't sue us!"

To help us understand how people move in each city and the problems it offers would be interesting if it showed the means of transportation in it. Things like subway lines, monorail, train, etc. Or maybe I'm playing too many Cities Skyline.

I just discovered and subscribed to your channel. I have always been interested in the topics discussed in your videos. You should check out Manhattan KS. It is very interesting medium sized town with a great city layout. It is a college town so lots of pedestrian traffic and minimal large highways. You would definitely like it!

The dreaded Troost Ave. is the split between the nice middle class and upper class and the ghetto.

Big cities need to annex the suburbs and make them pay for the roads and highways built to service only them. The suburbs suck to much off the cities. Kansas City did the right thing there.

Did you read que cards off of Wikipedia? None of this is true lol except for the fact that Kansas City is a real place

Is it just me, or does every map that is used to document any place in the USA, has an "Escape Room". It's like, you MUST know where that is if you are new to a place. Not where the hospital, college, university, bars, shopping malls, or health clubs, nope, you gotta factor the Escape Room into how you attack any American city.

wtf catch these hands. power and light is popping and so is most of downtown during the day and weekend. power and light is right near sprint center and it's pretty nice with one light and two light which are high end apartments. it seems like a tangled mess of highway but it's easy to go from river market right to central downtown without even getting on one, same with going to other neighborhoods like westport. they just built the streetcar a few years ago and this was recorded a year ago but it had already been built so at the time you made this (and now) you could travel from midkc, to crown center and union station, to river market by the streetcar. there are some dreary parts of the city that i hate but i'm proud of its growth and the improvements being made. 23:02 you zoomed right into my neighborhood, your mouse was almost on my house. come on over let's fight. you said some good things and taught me some stuff i didn't know about kc so it'll be a soft fight. there are also some pretty nice parts of north kc. new housing and cute older homes with nice parks. some of it's a pit but it's a generally nice area. the one thing i love is that you can go from suburbs, to urban city, to rural parts that are still in the city. i took a wrong turn and it went from suburbs to country real fast lol

It’s Missouri’s biggest city not the second biggest. Do your research

"Downtown" KC streets are suprisingly empty, and you only see dozens of people walking at at time.

Correction, subburbs, even reasonably wealth ones don't actually produce enough tax income to maintain the infrastructure.

No mention of the abandoned west bottoms? Kansas City was defined by the cattle industry but that subject is entirety forgotten about in this video. Still some excellent points made about highways and parking lot spaces though.