Stupid non-american question: Is any of these Kansas?
It’s a common pub quiz factoid that Kansas City is not in Kansas
“Left geographically”. Damn, such a mouthful. If only there were a word for that… /s
Kansas state is the rectangle on the right; Kansas City is one of those weird things which exists in both Kansas and Missouri next to each other, one was named after the other. Technically one is a small suburb of the other (150k ppl vs 2m ppl) - but for pub trivia, it does exist by name as an incorporated city in the state of Kansas.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City,_Kansas
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City,_Missouri
The Missouri one is the bigger, more populated well known “KC” which is probably why it gets added to foreign pub trivia incorrectly (just a guess).
Additional fun fact, Kansas has in the past attempted to annex Kansas City, Missouri.
The metro area being split between MO and KS has also caused a race to the bottom for certain kinds of regulations and taxes because for many businesses the cost of moving between the two states was essentially moving from one side of State Line Rd to the other.
Such a strange metro area.
The cities also indexed their streets off of the same river, but at different places along the curving bank. As a result, traveling south in KCMO increments the street numbers, but in KCK, the numbers increment when you travel west.
For more hilarity, the cities to the south of KCK adopted the KCMO street number designations, so KCK is the odd city out.
Several border cities in the Midwestern United States are this way.
From the map at https://kchistory.org/faq/why-there-kansas-city-both-kansas-and-missouri, it looks like ~90% of Kansas City is in Missouri:-) (I dunno about differential population density though)
And in the same state a good portion of the greater city area surrounding St. Louis lies in Illinois (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis)
The area around Chicago - TIL it is called “Chicagoland”, can anyone comment how often that is used by people in the region? - likewise extends into multiple (more than just two) states!
can anyone comment how often that is used by people in the region?
Frequently, though it’s mostly informal shorthand for “the greater Chicago metropolitan area”, you probably wouldn’t say “I live in Chicagoland” unless you were intentionally being vague.
Kansas City, MO founded before the state of Kansas is older and larger than Kansas City, KS. You can cross from one state to the other and not realize it.
There is literally a road running right up the middle called State Line Road, lol. In the right place you could probably drive in both states at the same time.
Most of Kansas city is in Missouri. It’s more a joke to outsiders than people who actually live there.
KC Missouri is the fun side. KC Kansas is for the folks who want to live in a somewhat urban setting, but still be WASP-y about it.
Maybe Johnson County, like Lenexa or Overland Park are waspy, but at least when I lived in the area, KCK itself was where you went if you wanted to develop a meth problem.
Granted it has been a decade or so since I lived there.
KCK is pit while Johnson county is WASP Central. Jackson County was for cool kids. We also love meth, but are chill about it
Much like a lot of cities you wouldn’t notice they were two different cities unless you knew there was a border there. My hometown of Omaha has a similar relationship with Council Bluffs on the Iowa side, plus a half dozen or so other small towns and cities that it more or less grew right up to the border of.
Yeah it doesn’t matter. I just say I live in the KC Metro so I don’t have to explain this. And when I’m talking to my family back home, it’s just Kansas City. Technically I don’t live in KC, but they don’t care.
I imagine it’s like being from NYC. If you’re from there you tell someone what borough but to everyone else it’s just NYC
