Perfect Cities

I spent this fall break touring the Midwest with Cantorei. We sang visited three cities (Kansas City, Topeka, and Lincoln) in three beautiful cathedrals with talented choirs from each community. Now of course, I'm struggling to fight off a cold while stage managing a show and preparing for two major tests happening in the next three days. But that's just me whining about my workload. Suffice to say, I'm overwhelmed, but alas, I'll just have to deal with it.

It was interesting reading Perfect Cities while traveling through run down farm towns, staying in villages with populations under 200, and singing in some of the other major cities of the Midwest. I'm sure I could spend a thesis discussing each of their differences. But I'll only highlight a few here:

In Kansas city we stayed in the church we sang at, so at night we were able to go out on the town! Unfortunately, in the neighborhood we were in there was nothing but bars and clubs. Since most of us were under 21, it didn't leave a lot to be done. Eventually were were let into a swanky hotel where they were playing swing music in the lobby. We danced the night away, sipping on Kidie Cocktails and avoiding the few creepers that were at the bar.

In this one portion of the city, there was a booming nightlife, some fancy hotels and the historic district. I was only exposed to this one area, so the conclusion I drew was that most of Kansas City was well off. Our bus driver said otherwise. Where he stayed and what he saw suggested that it was a fairly dirty city, run down, and lacking funds. It's almost as if we each saw the "black" or "white" part of the town, and we need to do more research to find the "grey" area in between.

Topeka and Lincoln are the capitals of Kansas and Nebraska, respectively. While these cities are supposed to be the epicenter of their states, both looked fairly run down. Their capital buildings were in need of repair and the surrounding business districts were rather lacking. This is also comparing to Springfield, IL, which is rather run down itself. It was almost as if the only capitol the capitals could pull in was in the fact they were capitals. It made me wonder about what was missing- what made these cities less prosperous than their more economically-central counterparts, like Omaha or Chicago?

I spent some time with someone aspiring to be an Urban Planner. Maybe she would know better than I would.