Live from Crow’s Coffee: 435 Magazine. I was reading 435 Magazine (offices at 11775 W. 112th Street, Suite 200, Overland Park, KS 66210, ten miles away from here) on the airplane on my way back from California to Kansas City. I found myself getting scared.
The scary thing is that Los Angeles is not that very much larger than Kansas City. And yet it has about nine times the population.
From Independence to Olathe is about 45 miles.
From San Bernardino to the beach at Malibu is about 80.
As I figure it, LA has about 3 times the area and 9 times the population of Kansas City. And it is not as though Kansas City as any kind of walkable urban core. To the extent that Kansas City these days has a main street at all, that main street is Interstate 435: a beltway with a total circumference of 81 miles . 435 is at an average radial distance of 13 miles from the center, if there were still a real center.
Someday we will get our act together to impose the carbon tax we need if we want to keep the Chinese, the Indians, and the Africans who are in the first line of those at risk from global warming from classifying us as enemies of humanity.
When we do, this region will be under serious threat of becoming toast. Houston, Denver, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and even Dallas all look to be in considerably better shape for when that day comes.
