Kansas Citians think their neighborhoods are going downhill.
In surveys year after year, residents’ satisfaction levels have plunged. Their feelings about safety, city services, the overall quality of life -- they’re all down, down, down.
So this may come as a surprise: Kansas City neighborhoods are actually doing a lot better since 2000.
Beginning today, The Kansas City Star kicks off an eight-day series on the state of Kansas City’s neighborhoods. It starts with the first-ever neighborhoods report card, perhaps the most thorough analysis of livability trends ever done in the city.
This covers three dozen quality-of-life trends, things like crime rates and school test scores, street conditions and retail growth, even traffic accidents and water-line breaks.
What it reveals: More than 60 percent of all the trends show improvement this decade.
Consider what’s happened since 2000 in a majority of neighborhoods. Violent crime has dropped. The number of streets pockmarked with potholes is lower. Most parts of town have more restaurants. Even the number of neighborhood block parties is up.
In essence, neighborhoods may be better off but residents don’t feel that and don’t believe that.
"It doesn’t surprise me," Mayor Kay Barnes said. "There’s a lag time often between how people perceive things and when they get better. Even if they see it with their own eyes, it doesn’t register for a while."
Now maybe it will.
The Star’s analysis covers neighborhoods within the city limits, not in the suburbs. The paper ranked the top suburbs in the metropolitan area last year. But suburbanites still have a big stake in how well city neighborhoods are doing.
That’s because while many people perceive cities and suburbs as entirely different worlds, the truth is they often prosper or decline together. Demographic researchers are finding ever-stronger connections, whether looking at population or property values: As a city goes, so go its suburbs.
"The more attractive the city is as a place to live, the more attractive the whole metro area will be, and that will draw more jobs and growth for everyone," said Jordan Rappaport, an economist who wrote about the shared fortunes of cities and suburbs for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City last fall.
Tracking progress
The heart of Kansas City, downtown, is beating a lot faster today. Look what’s being built: a new arena, an entertainment district, the long-awaited performing arts center, and down the road a few miles, renovations at the twin sports stadiums.
That progress can be seen and measured in terms of construction cranes and steel girders. But how is progress measured in neighborhoods?
It hasn’t been. According to city and neighborhood leaders, no organization has systematically tracked neighborhood performance. The city has 240 recognized neighborhoods, but they are too small in size to compare.
So The Star, after consulting with neighborhood leaders and city researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, grouped neighborhoods into 42 larger clusters. Then we compiled statistics for those clusters and for the city as a whole.
That provides proof for the kinds of progress that some residents are already seeing.
Look at Washington Wheatley near 18th and Vine. Residents for years didn’t feel comfortable doing the simplest things outside, like sitting on their porches, because of the rampant and rising violent crime.
But now someone like Barbara Mack-Johnson, president of a block club on Agnes Avenue, drives around and sees more people out walking, more senior citizens working in their yards, even more homeowners on their porches after dark.
Join the discussion
Share your observations and experiences about news. Lively, open debate is the goal, but please refrain from personal attacks or comments that are racist, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. If you see an inappropriate comment, please click the "Report as violation" link to notify a KansasCity.com editor. Thanks for your feedback.