A decade ago its city home prices were declining precipitously. By contrast, average home-sale prices in central Kansas City zip codes have jumped 28 percent since early 1996. The rate of home appreciation is higher even than fast-growing, affluent Johnson County, reports the Kansas City Star's Jeffrey Spivak. That translates into plenty of investment capital for new urban restaurants, museums, parks, entertainment centers. With prosperity, cities are hiring more police, providing cleaner streets, better services.
Crime is down sharply in practically every city, reducing peoples' fears.
And as people sit stuck in traffic, they have more time to behold the sheer ugliness of sprawling, sterile strip malls, big-box stores and roadways lined by forests of franchise signs. Then there's demographics. Every 7.5 seconds in America now, some baby boomer turns 50. The most affluent and populous generation in U.S. history, the folks who made suburbia succeed, are reaching empty nester stage. None of this spells an American urban Nirvana.