Kansas City has no center and it lost its periphery long ago. Its metropolitan region contains a gamut of American life:the rich, the poor, white, black, Latino, 5th generation Kansas Citians, new immigrants, the suburban, the urban, the rural, the criminal, the righteous, nostalgic and adventurous. Kansas City shelters these strata both in surprisingly flat stereotypes, stock-still and all-too-same, and in stunningly nuanced hybrids that splinter and cavort, accelerating through their own dissimilation. Rather than seeking to promote its real treasures, too often the city organizes and conforms around entrenched divisions, hierarchies, fault lines, economic and racial segregation.
Hesse McGraw