Forgive Susan Kurtenbach if she&#8217;s a little sensitive about the condition of her neighborhood sidewalks.</p><p>You see, when the weather is nice enough, she strolls barefooted through her neighborhood east of Troost Avenue.</p><p>In the past, she had to step around broken bottles, cracked concrete and scattered trash. Now the sidewalks are clean and smooth. Acorns and sticks cause her more concern than rubble or litter.</p><p>The fact that a woman feels comfortable there walking alone and barefoot goes a long way toward explaining why The Kansas City Star found the neighborhoods of 49/63 to be one of the top places to live in Kansas City. This cluster of neighborhoods takes its name from its boundaries, between 49th and 63rd streets, from Oak Street to the Paseo.</p><p>It&#8217;s all part of The Star&#8217;s research into the most livable residential areas in the city.</p><p>We are profiling the top-performing cluster in each section, one section each day. Today&#8217;s section is the Southeast Side, generally from Brush Creek to 85th Street.</p><p>In that section, 49/63 finished best in The Star&#8217;s analysis because 49/63 is almost a textbook example of what good urban neighborhoods are supposed to be.</p><p>It has aged well -- the middle-class homes have gone through a wave of rehabilitation, and the streets and sidewalks have been kept up.</p><p>It&#8217;s diverse -- one of the few neighborhood clusters that straddle Troost Avenue.</p><p>It&#8217;s got a personality -- kind of a mini college town around the campuses of Rockhurst University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City.</p><p>Plus, it offers the kind of urban milieu where people are often on the streets, walking. College faculty members walk to work. Commuters walk to bus stops lining Troost and the Paseo. And dog owners like Susan Kurtenbach go for evening strolls.</p><p>One warm fall evening, this rail-thin artist and Pilates instructor journeyed up and down the hills of Troostwood with her dachshund and Italian greyhound in tow. She pranced lightly on her toes -- walking barefoot may seem eccentric, but it feels natural and healthy to her. She passed homes with lushly landscaped front yards or wrap-around front porches or rehabbing work being done.</p><p>"People generally think &#8216;east of Troost,&#8217; and they don&#8217;t know how nice the neighborhood is," Kurtenbach said. "But there&#8217;s a lot of good here."</p><p>How it&#8217;s stayed that way serves as a lesson for other city neighborhoods.</p><p>Southeast Side</p><p>Kansas City&#8217;s Southeast Side falls between UMKC on one corner and Swope Park on another. Besides 49/63, it includes six other clusters of neighborhoods:</p><p>Blue Hills, Town Fork Creek and the Swope Parkway Corridor, East Meyer, Swope Park&#8217;s environs, the Sports Complex/Eastwood Hills, plus East Blue River between the Blue River and Raytown.</p><p>The Southeast Side can be picturesque -- blocks of neat, tidy, colorful bungalows line the wide, grassy Paseo. But it&#8217;s been down on its luck, even in ways it can&#8217;t control: Within the urban core, the Southeast Side has the most water-main breaks from old pipes.</p><p>Yet signs of improvement abound in this part of town, The Star found.</p><p>It&#8217;s had some success luring new retailers. Last year, the Swope Parkway Health Center complex added The Shops on Blue Parkway, a red- and brown-brick strip resembling the newest centers in suburbia. The Swope Parkway Corridor neighborhood cluster, in fact, had the ninth-best increase in the entire city in retail and service businesses this decade.</p><p>Now residents like Becky Forrest don&#8217;t have to drive upward of 10 miles just to get to a grocery.