A recent Associated Press story makes Johnson County sound like Portland with better schools.
The story outlined the vision for the National Museum of Suburban History, an idea that's being promoted by the officials at the Johnson County Museum and the Arts Council of Johnson County. The AP story began by declaring Johnson County an "economic powerhouse that has eclipsed its big-city neighbor in political influence."
The writer of the story, Alan Scher Zagier, took a few liberties. He describes Johnson County as a "cultural melting pot." Yes, it's possible to find a good Thai place in Mission and other enclaves. But Johnson County is 89.8
percent white, according to Census data, making it less brown than even other parts of Kansas.
The AP story about the dynamism of Johnson County and its ilk comes at a time when one of suburbia's most prominent chroniclers, David Brooks, has come to the conclusion that it's not all that invigorating.
Brooks, the author and New York Times columnist, is featured in the current New York magazine. He tells his profiler, Christopher Beam, that he's changed his mostly positive view of suburban and exurban places.
"Now I'm much more skeptical," Brooks says.
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Mo -
I didn't listen to that particular broadcast; I'm not at all surprised it turned into a self-back-patting exercise.
Regarding where we were, and what happened: I started a project of mapping where my grandfather and his 7 siblings lived from the late 1930s through 1980s. I've tried to index by where they lived, when, and where they moved. I've gotten this information from state and county records, along with information from relatives. The results are mostly ho-hum. They lived mostly between Prospect and Swope Pkway, starting out as far north as 41st street, drifting south to Gregory over the years. Then, relatively suddenly they all jumped to the inner-ring suburbs to the east or west, with the exception of one who moved to the old northeast, and one who moved to St. Joesph. The time frame is 1964-1968, with the volume skewed to 1968. I'd bet these migration patterns are not unusual for this era.
I think, to be fair, the 1968 riots in KC put the accelerator petal down on white flight; but greedy real estate actors (developers, agents, financing, builders, etc) were putting on the meaningful long-term pressure. It was in their financial interest, after all. I do have a suspicion that the papers-of-record got *some* of the root cause of the 68 riots wrong. I'm sure the trigger was the MLK assassination by a white guy, but there were a handful of other issues which were already nearing boiling point. However, I'm not a historian, and simply don't have the resources to investigate on my own... but I digress.
I think the reason that suburbanites don't want to talk about some of this is that it would draw away from their opinions on why their "community" is so successful. (Hint: It isn't because they piss excellence every morning) Instead, their success is largely a function of who they're excluding from their "community" (minorities, disabled, poor, new immigrants) and relatively clever economic externalization (make the central city pay for airports, transit, art, zoo, parks, and sometimes even sewer/water).
Yeah, did you hear KCUR the other day when they were talking about Jo. Co's 50th anninversary? A guy called in and asked about whether they were also covering this issue--"white flight"--as one of the significant reasons for the suburbs and the guy from Jo. Co. (old, white dude) starts mumbling about how it was created because of flooding so long ago and blah, blah, blah. Wow. So I immediately tried to phone in and not let them evade this question as they were so successfully doing and I got a line BUT THEY HUNG UP ON ME BEFORE I COULD EVEN SAY HELLO.
Man, it sucked.
I wanted to ask then what I will ask now: Could we please address race and racism and our history in this country/state/area/city, please?
Maybe we'll find out where we were, what happened and what we should do about it all.
Mo Rage
the blog
I wonder if the museum will include successful suburban planning tools such as inner-city blockbusting, red-lining, and racial covenants?
However, I'm sure they'll mention what a huge boom the desegregation of public schools was for Johnson county? After-all, the gift of JoCo is that there's a city, county and state political border between dirty old KCMO proper and their "community", making things such as desegregation-era busing nearly impossible.
Oh well, at least they'll have the "White Haven" neon sigh, right?
This idea originally surfaced during the last campaign for the humongous $600 million bi-state tax proposal when the proponents suddenly realized that they had to come up lots and lots of ways to spend the money if the thing passed. Of course, such an excessive and poorly thought-out idea failed at the polls.
Considering that there are countless suburbs that are exactly the same all across the country, it's a bit hard to imagine who is supposed to visit JoCo to study the origins of Big Boy restaurants and beige subdivisions.
And as with many similar projects that are supported by small groups, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the notion of "private donations" to die and the push for public money begins.
Probably best to stick with the 1950s all-electric house and leave it at that.
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