With all the political rhetoric floating around Kansas City, one would think the city is embracing high technology and forward-looking, well, everything. A closer examination reveals just the opposite. The city is using 19th-century politics and policymaking, and hoping for 21st-century results. It is as anachronistic as those future-looking movies of the past.
What old-timey look at the past would be complete without a monorail light trail streetcar? Kansas City politicians are determined to employ 19th-century fixed rail transit, thinking wrongly that it will solve our problems. We’ve written extensively about why rail is bad for Kansas City. You can read about it here.
The most jaw-droppingly insipid claim is that such policies will draw the creative class. Never mind that there is no research to back up this claim — Kansas City already is rapidly becoming a fact-free city. In fact, a vocal proponent of streetcars who claimed to speak for millennials just announced that he is leaving Kansas City for the East Coast to seek greater opportunities. This supports the writings of my Show-Me Institute colleague: the so-called creative class goes where the jobs are, not to streetcars or airports.
Meanwhile, city officials view actual future-looking technologies such as those that Lyft and Uber provide with hostility because officials are mired in 19th-century protectionist cronyism. How are Kansas City officials going to react to the inevitable arrival of driver-less Google cars? Demand that cars undergo a background check? Require that each one contain a detailed street map? This is not forward-thinking; in fact, it’s not thinking.
Speaking of Google, Kansas City Mayor Sly James and others love to extol Google Fiber, as if Kansas City, Mo., won that national bidding war to bring them here a few years ago. We didn’t. We lost to Kansas City, Kan. We were just lucky enough to be next door. Kansas City, Kan., won because they demonstrated small and efficient government, not heavy-handed regulation and federal money.
In looking to create density downtown, city officials are falling over themselves to offer up any sort of taxpayer subsidy, handout, or corporate welfare package to bring density — sometimes just to move jobs two blocks. Yet they are unable or unwilling to deliver basic services to the rest of the city. This is not forward-thinking, it is urban cannibalism.
If Kansas City officials are serious about building a brighter future, they need to shed the city’s knee-jerk tax-and-regulate policies and start doing the few things a city can do well: maintain the streets and parks, fight crime, provide quality education, and do so while keeping taxes low. Then the city won’t need to pick winners — because the winners will come to the city on their own.
