Routinely, I am asked, "Why is DC *like that*?"
And I know exactly what they mean, and you know exactly what they mean, because DC really is *like that.*
And I am such a humanitarian, I will answer this question for you, if you subscribe to my newsletter.
Man every day I wonder if I shouldn’t just delete my account on here maybe. Opening Bluesky makes me want to actually walk in front of a truck. I don’t think people on here understand how crazy they’ve gotten
BREAKING: Platform Ventures, the development company that owns a south Kansas City warehouse that federal agents toured last month to consider for an immigrant detention center, announced today that it is not moving forward with the sale.
100%
Gonna go ahead and pour cold water on calls for rail transit. It's an almost always idle structure 20 miles from the center of the region partially through under- and undeveloped land that was leapfrogged to build a mall by the freeway.
Ain't happening.
Hannah Arendt said 'The death of human empathy is one of the earliest & most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism'
We saw the recent cruelty of MAGA denying empathy to Melissa Hortman
Empathy for Kirk—not because he ever acted like a decent human—but because we are decent humans
The people of Kansas City should be furious about what the Republicans are trying to do to them. Breaking up KC for more political power to Trump is outrageous. And wrong. KC is a crown jewel of MO and the Rs are treating it like dirt.
Missouri republicans want to redraw the congressional map to eliminate KC's D+12 district
Punchbowl calls it "perhaps the easiest place for the GOP to gain a seat"
punchbowl.news/article/camp...
I want inclusionary zoning for (only) bigfoot single family homes, the least affordable and sustainable building form. Like, want to build over 2,000 sqft? Then you gotta make a contribution to the affordable housing fund.
John Oliver said “Reagan talking points from a Whole Foods crowd” — I think that is in reference to homelessness but it works here too.
4. Finally, the old Redemptorist building was reopened in 2006 as a Cristo Rey HS, serving the fastest growing Catholic demographic in the region: upwardly mobile Latinos
You can see the shift outward on this map. JaCo's middle class families have now moved on from both the inner city and the first ring of suburbs (Raytown, South KC, Independence). Both LS and Blue Springs are growing sources of St Michaels enrollment.
3. Four decades later, the center of gravity of Catholic HS students had shifted again, as Raytown's aging housing stock lost favor with middle class families.
O'Hara was replaced in 2017 by St Michaels in Lees Summit, the next ring of suburbs.
2. By 1965, freeway and mortgage-access-driven suburbanization and neighborhood demographic change were taking a bite out of school enrollment. The archdiocese built a new school, O'Hara, on the border with the fast-growing suburb of Raytown.
A brief history of Catholic geography in Kansas City, explained through four high schools.
1. Redemptorist High School opened in Midtown in 1926 in the midst of a five-decade boom that took KC from a backwater to (when combined with KCK) the 14th largest city in the country.
I wish they broke out ebooks from other online resources. Curious if this is an indication that people are reading less
Surprising chart: library visits are still down 35% since the pandemic began, and book checkouts are down 30%. Does anyone have a theory that explains this?
The real problem with this platform isn't that it's politics posters are annoying scolds. It's that no normies have moved over. If you're on social media to see fun things (sports, pop culture, dumb humor), this platform sucks.
I'd love to see opinion polling on this idea. "we're not going after you, just reckless psychos" could really work
The average restaurant here is not as good as the average DC restaurant (though that may be a cultural divide as much as a quality divide—I have unusual tastes) but the very best are very, very good
Every midsized plus metro is like this. For example: I have been extremely pleasantly surprised by KC’s food scene.
There's still so much vacant land in greater midtown Kansas City
Map of Kansas City area highlighting selected roadways in the KC area with more than 18k vehicles per day. They include southwest trafficway, ward parkway, state line near I-435, metcalf Ave, Burlington/route 9, 135th, Shawnee mission parkway, and blue parkway
22,000 vehicles per day is generally considered the upper limit for a 3-lane road diet. Under 18k is a no-brainer.
According to Replica, here are the non-expressway roadways with more than 18k cars per day (bidirectional traffic, or 9k for a directional segment). Our streets are so over-built.
That's offset by the small number of people in that geographic area though. If you draw a simple 500km circle around KC we come in 34th of the 40 largest metros for population.
new post on my blog: we're in the center of the country. So why does Kansas City feel so isolated? kcisms.wordpress.com/2025/05/17/i...
A useful reminder that population growth is not guaranteed: St Louis lost more than 3,000 additional people last year
Shawnee +460, +2294 from 2020
Independence +569, -1216 (!!!) from 2020
Liberty +409, +1021 from 2020
...
Raytown +108, -703 from 2020
Prairie Village +68, -39 from 2020
KCK added 2284 and is now +450 residents from 2020
Lees Summit +2156, +4847 from 2020
Olathe +1890, +7475 from 2020
Overland Park +1670, +5041 from 2020
Lenexa +1023, +1898 from 2020
Raymore +674, +2941 from 2020
Blue Springs +655, +2366 from 2020
Gardner +491, +2408 from 2020
