Snobby Suburbs

The Kansas City Star recently did a series on the best KC suburbs. As we are currently looking for a suburb to move to, I read the series with great interest. Leawood, Kansas, one of the suburbs we are particularly interested in was ranked number two largely because of the very low crime rate:

South of the Missouri River in Kansas City, violent and major property crimes occur so often that a resident will be victimized, on average, once a decade. Just across the state line into suburban Leawood, however, that threat nearly disappears. [snip]

Why is Leawood so safe? A big part of it is that Leawood simply does more police patrolling than other cities do.

And what do these patrols do, besides making frequent appearances on every street in Leawood? Crack down on moving violations:

Indeed, Leawood’s police have a long-standing reputation for stopping cars coming through town. It even dates back decades to when Police Chief Sid Mitchell was growing up in south Kansas City and attending Center High School.

“I was scared to death to come across the state line because you’d get stopped for going a mile over the speed limit,” Mitchell says. And all these years later, he insists one thing hasn’t changed: “We’re tough on traffic.”

So you get a reputation for being tough on traffic and suddenly, people who have no particular business in your town start to avoid it. Criminals go where they are less likely to encounter police. Sounds like a pretty good idea, right? But no:

...the city has been seen by some as insensitive toward minorities and even as holding a “keep out” attitude toward outsiders.

More derision is heaped on Leawood for traffic control measures it has taken in the past even though they are no longer in effect.

This is one of those things we don't like to talk about. When a town does snobby things like having few large roads connecting to other cites (or particular cities), having fewer and smaller parks to avoid attracting outsiders, and having lots of police poking around... well, then the residents are accused of being snobs, of thinking their town is better than the others. Snobbishness is bad. Snobby people are mean and stupid. Of course.

One inconvienent fact remains. According to The Star's search for the best places to live in the KC Metro, Leawood ranked #2 of 40 suburbs surveyed. Number one was the snobby city just south of Leawood. Number 4, #7 and #8: Snobby. And the rest are too far flung to worry much about criminals driving out from the city (no public transport to speak of here in KC) So presumably, these places are better. They are undeniably better in terms of low crime and good schools, which are the 2 most important thing for people with kids (along with price).

So we laud a city for having low crime and good schools, but we deride a city for doing what it takes to get low crime and good schools.

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