[dionidium]

"Suburb" is a pretty generic term. My hometown has older, inner-ring suburbs that are built more or less on a street grid, with local shops, connections to transit, and walkable corridors.

It also has far-flung, residential-only, cul-de-sac communities where literally nothing is within safe walking distance. [0]

We call both "suburbs," but they're very different places.

[0] What would somebody who lives here walk to, for example: https://goo.gl/maps/nX5ttfsYJBq

[mcny]

Thank you. Moreover, it feels like suburbs (I’m calling the town of Overland Park, Kansas a suburb) can’t or don’t clean sidewalks and crosswalks as quickly (if at all) or worse use the sidewalk as a dumping ground for snow from the road. Even on a normal day, a walk to the post office and back home can easily take half an hour, probably closer to an hour if you’re walking. That being said, it feels cramped to live in a city. There are other reasons to not get a pet (allegedly my fear of commitment) but I hesitate getting a proper desktop computer because it will occupy space. It feels illogical and wasteful (and unhealthy?) of brain cycles to worry about space that much. (What if I have to move... )

[tjr225]

The entire KC metro is offensively anti pedestrian and anti cyclist. It is one of the reasons I decided to leave.

Fun fact- there are more highway miles per capita in KC than any other city in the US: http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-tti99ratio.htm

[dionidium]

I don't strongly disagree with your point here, but like all city statistics that aren't normalized for area and density (e.g. by using the MSA/CSA or some equivalent), this one is potentially quite misleading. Kansas City draws its borders around an awful lot of rural land that wouldn't be (indeed, isn't) counted inside the borders of most cities. This is all well within the city limits, for example:

https://goo.gl/maps/Dm76roteRbx

All of which is just to say: political borders are drawn differently in every city, so you can't meaningfully compare cities using political borders.

Does Kansas City (as a region) actually have more highways than most equivalent cities? Maybe. I don't know. That table doesn't tell us that.