[justanother]

To your point, I've watched with interest the redevelopment of the West Bottoms. I don't live anywhere near Kansas City anymore, but in the 1980s and 1990s, we teenagers used a large portion of the Bottoms around the 12th Street Bridge to play hide-and-seek at night, and we never encountered another soul (people were just too scared to be in the Bottoms at night, but we were young and crazy). Just a desolate area with tall neglected brick buildings from 1900, with some alleys that were still dirt. But I'm blown away now at how small businesses are taking it over block-by-block and turning it into a kinda pleasant place.

Surely this could not have been possible without some civic backing (the soil contamination in the Bottoms was simply awful and required extensive EPA cleanup and then some), but as you note, policy plus cheap prices appears to be turning it around.

[tylerFowler]

The redevelopment of downtown did push out many of the artists and so they packed up & moved to West Bottoms. In general KC is such an arts town that people genuinely like to go where the artists go, it's a very cool vibe. West Bottoms is packed with record stores and underground (literally) event venues though the Halloween event people still take up most of the space that might be good for living/working.