I'm a Missourian who grew up in the central part of the state, but who lived in St Louis for 7 years and have visited KC many times and know both cities pretty well. Probably St Louis more than KC since I have never lived in KC. So just to play devil's advocate, let me take a pro-KC stance in my response...Originally posted by indieouting17
I dont know the names of all of KC's neighborhoods, but the area around Westport/Country Club Plaza seems to be a wonderful area to live in if you want an eclectic urban experience.
I didnt see anything special about the Hill and Dogtown areas of St Louis. The Hill is an Italian neighborhood with some nice Italian restaurants, but there wasnt much noteworthy about the aesthetics or the housing in the area. Dogtown is an Irish area that is centrally located and close to everything, but the housing stock is mostly ugly. Didnt see the charm to the area. Lots of rough people that dont keep up their properties in that part of town.
Tower Grove area has a lot of nice housing, but also some crummy, crime-ridden streets that I wouldnt care to live by. You can literally have $200-300,000 houses on one street, then have the street right behind it be filled with run-down 2 or 4 families with less than desireable tenants.
Soulard has wonderful housing that is unique, and not found in many cities, including KC. And many corner pubs too, and right next to downtown. But its a very high maintenance area to live in. Not convenient to shopping, noisy, parking can sometimes be a problem, not a good area for kids, etc. But as an urban neighborhood for younger carousing professionals, its a cool area.
CWE is about like the Westport/Country Club Plaza area of KC, but I'll take Westport/CC Plaza over CWE any day of the week as far as the beauty of the area and the selection of bars/restaurants/shopping/places to live.
Metrolink is a good start, but St Louis still has more traffic problems than KC does. St Louis keeps building more bridges over the Missouri River into St Charles county, which only increases white flight, leading to further sprawl and deterioration/neglect of the older urban core.
I'll give St Louis props over KC on their stadiums. KC picked a bad suburban location for their stadiums, and now they at least acknowledge that. A new baseball and/or football stadium in an urban setting (Like Baltimore's ballpark) would be a wonderful addition to KC.
Midtown St Louis is about like Midtown KC (Crown Center/Union Station area)
The Loop is very similar to Westport.
Forest Park is indeed a nice park, only thing comparable in KC is Swope Park, but I'll still take Forest Park. Though they need to keep it in better shape.
I'll also give the 'Lou props on suburbs like Clayton, Webster, and Kirkwood- and I'll add University City to those three. There are really no such areas in KC. The closest to those places, which all have their own downtown areas and a beautiful and charming older housing stock would be perhaps Parkville, and thats tiny compared to those places. The KC suburbs, for the most part, are mostly redundant and generic places built mainly in the 50's, 60's, and 70's and newer.
St Louis also has it over KC when it comes to brick row houses/flats. But so what? Brick row houses and flats are largely obsolete in St Louis. Most of them are filled with the type of tenants that you'll typically get when rent is only $300-400 a month tops, and it is far from the first choice to live for the majority of well-to-do people. Typically neighborhoods in St Louis get worse when undesireables start moving into two and four family flats and bring their baggage with them. It also increases density, which isnt good if you have a lot of undesireables in an area.
Yep St Louis has Anheuser Busch, where you can go on a free tour and drink free and fresh beer at the end of the tour. But that gets old after a while.
Kansas City is a faster growing area than St Louis, and it seems more modern with more high-tech jobs. The area isnt choked off by geographical features like rivers, flood plains, hills, etc, like St Louis is. The main roads are also much better kept up in KC than in St Louis. Try driving down any major street in the Midtown-CWE area of St Louis, or downtown. You'll hit many bumps and potholes, and oftentimes the lane configurations make no sense. KC is better laid out, with many boulevards with aesthetic appeal and that arent bumpy to drive on.
I also believe that the people in KC are nicer and have more of a sense of civic pride than St Louis people do. I also tend to believe that St Louis folks are more parochial and stick to their own kind, particularly since most of the people that live there happened to grow up there. Because KC has more people that moved there from elsewhere, it doesnt have the same parochialism. I think KC would tend to be more welcoming to outsiders and newcomers than St Louis would be.
KC is in general a nicer and cleaner city, easier to get around in with less traffic problems, and more of the city and surrounding area is desireable to live in than in St Louis, where you have to pick your area to live in very carefully
I'll end this, to be fair and balanced, by giving two more areas that St Louis is better in than KC - pro sports (combo of teams, following/attendance, and facilities) and higher institutions of learning.
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