Quality of Life: Affordability allows residents to enjoy KC amenities

Almost without fail, executives raised in other parts of the country offer effusive praise for the quality of life they discovered when they came to Kansas City.

 

 

 

But what makes for a great quality of life? Is it affordability of housing and food, or something higher up Mr. Maslow’s scale, where you get into arts and culture? Is it defined by one’s work—good roads to get to it, good companies to work for? Are good schools a key determinant, or are night-life options for young singles the critical factors in a community’s quality of life?

Short answer to all is … yes. To have a great quality of life, a city needs to be able to meet the diverse needs of a diverse population. And Kansas City—particularly Downtown Kansas City—passes that test on multiple levels.

Start with housing affordability, as so many people do when they compare potential places to live. While rents in Downtown are pressured by demand—the apartment vacancy rate Downtown is as low as 2 percent or less—at a median price of $725, they trail rents in other similar markets by considerable margins. As for owner-occupied housing, the Kansas City median of $135,000 recorded in the 2010 Census represented a discount of nearly 29 percent over the national median—and often much more than that when compared to other metro areas.

That affordability is key, because it drives the ability of Downtown residents to enjoy the rich array of cultural and entertainment options that are packed into an area of only 3 square miles, from the Missouri River to 31st Street. Other factors that define Kansas City as a market are lower-than-national figures for costs of food, health care, utilities and transportation.

Safety, too, is a concern for many, and FBI statistics do show that Kansas City proper has a higher rate of violent crime than a number of cities, but not appreciably higher than what one would find in Tulsa, Nashville or Cincinnati—and certainly nothing approaching the levels found in Detroit, St. Louis or Oakland. Again, though, incidents of the most violent crime largely are concentrated in areas well removed from Downtown.

A recent factor that has enhanced the region’s overall quality of life—at least in the eyes of national observers in the tech realm—is the city’s selection by Google Fiber as the first market for its ultra high-speed Internet service. At 100 times traditional broadband speeds, it has the capacity to dramatically improve the quality of free time in video applications, and eventually with the types of companies that might emerge here to capitalize on that advantage.

That plays into a strength of an area with an average age of 36.2, still relatively young. And yet Kansas City is also considered a top draw for seniors for both its quality of life, wealth of health-care services and its generally temperate climate. The latter is significant for those who appreciate the variety of four distinct seasons.

The region may lack ocean beaches and mountain vistas, but it does have easy access to outdoor venues for hikers, bikers, boaters, anglers and hunters.

And, while on-field performance hasn’t been what pro sports fans here might have hoped for in recent years, Kansas City is a major-league town with both Major League Baseball’s Royals, the NFL’s Chiefs and pro soccer’s Sporting Kansas City, as well as top-tier major-college basketball and football with nearby universities in both the Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences.

 

 

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