urbanSTL

StlAlex wrote: ↑

5:04 AM - 23 days ago

Dev7 wrote:I don' t think that assessment is completely fair. Most cities are below expectations. Even the two largest cities in the country are 60+% below expectations. So if those kind of percentages are being seen for larger and more prominent cities, it makes since that KC is seing the numbers that they're seeing. If you think these numbers show that KC shouldn't have been selected, then most of the cities shouldn't have been chosen, because they are all seeing weak numbers. 

Edit: This is the largest sporting event in the world, so these cities, especially the major ones,  should not be even 40% below expectation for bookings. 

There's lots of obvious reasons KC shouldn't have been selected lol.

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I think Kansas City hasn't even had many issues like some of the other cities. Boston has had major conflicts in their preparations, and they held a soccer match last month that caused chaos in the municipality that their stadium is in. Neighbors were witnessing people that had been in their cars for hours use the bathroom in their back yards. People were leaving their rideshare vehicles to walk. I haven't even mentioned the funding problems that they have had for basic things like security. KC has made a sufficiently planned transportation plan that is fairly priced (especially compared to other hosts), the stadium is a lot closer to DTKC than many of the other stadiums. I know people like to talk about cleanliness and other things, but LA smells like straight pee and is far from clean, even in its most popular areas and has very bad traffic which makes it harder to get around (even in Uber, Lyft, etc).  Each city has its problems, I'm just not understanding why everyone here is jumping on KC as the big failure of the tournament, when all of the host cities are sounding the alarm on this being a "non-event" for hotels and has local issues of their own. 

Dev7 wrote:

StlAlex wrote: ↑

5:04 AM - 23 days ago

Dev7 wrote:I don' t think that assessment is completely fair. Most cities are below expectations. Even the two largest cities in the country are 60+% below expectations. So if those kind of percentages are being seen for larger and more prominent cities, it makes since that KC is seing the numbers that they're seeing. If you think these numbers show that KC shouldn't have been selected, then most of the cities shouldn't have been chosen, because they are all seeing weak numbers. 

Edit: This is the largest sporting event in the world, so these cities, especially the major ones,  should not be even 40% below expectation for bookings. 

There's lots of obvious reasons KC shouldn't have been selected lol.

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I think Kansas City hasn't even had many issues like some of the other cities. Boston has had major conflicts in their preparations, and they held a soccer match last month that caused chaos in the municipality that their stadium is in. Neighbors were witnessing people that had been in their cars for hours use the bathroom in their back yards. People were leaving their rideshare vehicles to walk. I haven't even mentioned the funding problems that they have had for basic things like security. KC has made a sufficiently planned transportation plan that is fairly priced (especially compared to other hosts), the stadium is a lot closer to DTKC than many of the other stadiums. I know people like to talk about cleanliness and other things, but LA smells like straight pee and is far from clean, even in its most popular areas and has very bad traffic which makes it harder to get around (even in Uber, Lyft, etc).  Each city has its problems, I'm just not understanding why everyone here is jumping on KC as the big failure of the tournament, when all of the host cities are sounding the alarm on this being a "non-event" for hotels and has local issues of their own. 

Host cities population:

-Toronto: 7.1 million
-Vancouver: 3.1 million
-Guadalajara: 5.3 million
-Mexico City: 23 million
-Monterrey: 5.3 million
-Atlanta: 6.5 million
-Boston: 5 million
-Dallas: 8.5 million
-Houston: 7.9 million
-Los Angeles: 12.8 million
-Miami: 6.4 million
-New York: 20.1 million
-Philadelphia: 6.3 million
-San Francisco: 4.6 million
-Seattle: 4.2 million

-Kansas City: 2.3 million

This is a pretty big factor as to why people will be harsher in KC than others, KC is clearly out of its league.

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StlAlex wrote: ↑

7:12 PM - 22 days ago

Dev7 wrote:

StlAlex wrote: ↑

5:04 AM - 23 days ago

There's lots of obvious reasons KC shouldn't have been selected lol.

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I think Kansas City hasn't even had many issues like some of the other cities. Boston has had major conflicts in their preparations, and they held a soccer match last month that caused chaos in the municipality that their stadium is in. Neighbors were witnessing people that had been in their cars for hours use the bathroom in their back yards. People were leaving their rideshare vehicles to walk. I haven't even mentioned the funding problems that they have had for basic things like security. KC has made a sufficiently planned transportation plan that is fairly priced (especially compared to other hosts), the stadium is a lot closer to DTKC than many of the other stadiums. I know people like to talk about cleanliness and other things, but LA smells like straight pee and is far from clean, even in its most popular areas and has very bad traffic which makes it harder to get around (even in Uber, Lyft, etc).  Each city has its problems, I'm just not understanding why everyone here is jumping on KC as the big failure of the tournament, when all of the host cities are sounding the alarm on this being a "non-event" for hotels and has local issues of their own. 

Host cities population:

-Toronto: 7.1 million
-Vancouver: 3.1 million
-Guadalajara: 5.3 million
-Mexico City: 23 million
-Monterrey: 5.3 million
-Atlanta: 6.5 million
-Boston: 5 million
-Dallas: 8.5 million
-Houston: 7.9 million
-Los Angeles: 12.8 million
-Miami: 6.4 million
-New York: 20.1 million
-Philadelphia: 6.3 million
-San Francisco: 4.6 million
-Seattle: 4.2 million

-Kansas City: 2.3 million

This is a pretty big factor as to why people will be harsher in KC than others, KC is clearly out of its league.

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Kansas City pushing above its weight doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve to be a host. All of the US cities are seeing well below satisfactory numbers in terms of bookings. I do think it’s okay to be harsher on KC, because it is pushing above its weight. However, to say only one city doesn’t deserve to host for a problem that every US host city is facing is unfair.

ICE Is Coming to the World Cup
https://migrantinsider.com/p/ice-is-coming-to-the-world-cup

Dev7 wrote: ↑

7:26 PM - 22 days ago

StlAlex wrote: ↑

7:12 PM - 22 days ago

Dev7 wrote: I think Kansas City hasn't even had many issues like some of the other cities. Boston has had major conflicts in their preparations, and they held a soccer match last month that caused chaos in the municipality that their stadium is in. Neighbors were witnessing people that had been in their cars for hours use the bathroom in their back yards. People were leaving their rideshare vehicles to walk. I haven't even mentioned the funding problems that they have had for basic things like security. KC has made a sufficiently planned transportation plan that is fairly priced (especially compared to other hosts), the stadium is a lot closer to DTKC than many of the other stadiums. I know people like to talk about cleanliness and other things, but LA smells like straight pee and is far from clean, even in its most popular areas and has very bad traffic which makes it harder to get around (even in Uber, Lyft, etc).  Each city has its problems, I'm just not understanding why everyone here is jumping on KC as the big failure of the tournament, when all of the host cities are sounding the alarm on this being a "non-event" for hotels and has local issues of their own. 

Host cities population:

-Toronto: 7.1 million
-Vancouver: 3.1 million
-Guadalajara: 5.3 million
-Mexico City: 23 million
-Monterrey: 5.3 million
-Atlanta: 6.5 million
-Boston: 5 million
-Dallas: 8.5 million
-Houston: 7.9 million
-Los Angeles: 12.8 million
-Miami: 6.4 million
-New York: 20.1 million
-Philadelphia: 6.3 million
-San Francisco: 4.6 million
-Seattle: 4.2 million

-Kansas City: 2.3 million

This is a pretty big factor as to why people will be harsher in KC than others, KC is clearly out of its league.

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Kansas City pushing above its weight doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deserve to be a host. All of the US cities are seeing well below satisfactory numbers in terms of bookings. I do think it’s okay to be harsher on KC, because it is pushing above its weight. However, to say only one city doesn’t deserve to host for a problem that every US host city is facing is unfair.

poor bookings or not, "deserve" may not be appropriate, agreed.  Still, KC is relatively tiny and really doesn't have the infrastructure to support large events (transit to/from Arrowhead, hotels by Arrowhead), zero international flights, super isolated, etc. Poor choice to me.  Really *odd* choice actually. So odd, makes me wonder why they were selected at all.

No matter, enjoy the fun (even if more limited that touted). I wish it were in STL!

https://fox4kc.com/sports/2026-world-cu ... d-cup/amp/

Demand for short-term rentals is up over 300% YoY.

https://www.kshb.com/sports/world-cup/k ... e-sold-out
According to KSHB, KC is seeing the highest demand with short-term rentals than all other US host cities. KC2026 also said that all of the games are expected to be sold out with most tickets being bought from outside of KC. “Fan registration data for FIFA Fan Fest coming from 112 countries and every state in the U.S.” Will the number be 650K? Maybe, maybe not. However, there is demand for KC games, there will be a lot of tourist descending onto the city, and the games will be filled.

Dev7 wrote: ↑

5:58 PM - 21 days ago

https://fox4kc.com/sports/2026-world-cu ... d-cup/amp/

Demand for short-term rentals is up over 300% YoY.

https://www.kshb.com/sports/world-cup/k ... e-sold-out
According to KSHB, KC is seeing the highest demand with short-term rentals than all other US host cities. KC2026 also said that all of the games are expected to be sold out with most tickets being bought from outside of KC. “Fan registration data for FIFA Fan Fest coming from 112 countries and every state in the U.S.” Will the number be 650K? Maybe, maybe not. However, there is demand for KC games, there will be a lot of tourist descending onto the city, and the games will be filled.

I don’t think anyone ever doubted games would be full. I shouldn’t say “anyone” but most. I doubt many if any games all around aren’t full. Locals will fill any seats once prices come down close to kickoff.

NY Times write up on KC World Cup Transit

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/us/k ... -ios-share

Hundreds of thousands ….

Imagine traveling from Europe and going to this…


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Cannot be anyworse than the time I flew to Europe to go to this (which just hosted the Olympics this year):

Sorry not following. Comparing Kansas City venue with a sea of parking to Milan, Italy situated near the Alps is not a meaningful or equivalent comparison in any measurable sense. Or saying that Milan was inferior to the Kansas City user experience


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Dbehrens0111 wrote:Sorry not following. Comparing Kansas City venue with a sea of parking to Milan, Italy situated near the Alps is not a meaningful or equivalent comparison in any measurable sense. Or saying that Milan was inferior to the Kansas City user experience


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Europe has some really decrepit but famous stadiums. San Siro in Milan is a drastically worse in-stadium experience than anything in the NFL and the surroundings are very similar to Arrowhead (a smaller sea of parking with people cooking food on grills). Doesn’t prevent it from hosting marquee events (like the Olympics) and being beloved. Milan you either love or hate, seems like people are 30-70 on that one.

I have not been there, but I'm looking at the Wikipedia article. Is it the best stadium in Europe? No, probably not. They seem to be in the process of demolishing it, actually. But the access and environment seem to be in a completely different league than your usual NFL stadium. There's a subway station a thousand feet away. There's a streetcar loop a couple hundred feet from the front door. There's homes and businesses less than a half mile away in literally every direction. There is simply no comparison, and this is a bad European stadium. That's isolated by big ring roads and an unusually large amount of parking. In what looks to be a rather poor neighborhood. And it's being demolished because it's not regarded as good enough to be competitive. It's a different world. Frankly, our own former NFL stadium would be one of the very, very few where access and environment might, almost be up to European standards. (Almost.)

That said, FIFA is accustomed to playing in places with questionable infrastructure and horrid weather, so I expect they'll cope. KC seems to be making the effort to make it work, so good for them. I'm sure they'll paper over the problems well enough, and the experience will probably be fine for anyone attending. The only real shame here is that we can't make this stuff permanent, and I suspect folks in Kansas City are well aware of that. And hey, the thing is slated to be demolished, which . . . seems familiar somehow.

KC will do fine, I expect. If the thing is a failure it'll be so largely because of US economic, foreign policy, and immigration decisions. All of which are outside any of our control until November at the earliest.

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/clypw107dqzo

The BBC released a fun little video testing out Argentina's and England's practice facilites. 

On kcrag, UrbanSTL users are chastised for having a “complex” for discussing the World Cup. Yet its KcRag users who don’t have anything better to do than create UrbanStl accounts and post content that is irrelevant to urbanism in St. Louis.

addxb2 wrote:On kcrag, UrbanSTL users are chastised for having a “complex” for discussing the World Cup. Yet its KcRag users who don’t have anything better to do than create UrbanStl accounts and post content that is irrelevant to urbanism in St. Louis.

I’ve mostly just seen infighting amongst users but not really anyone saying your are an STL person your voice doesn’t matter. For the most part, I don’t think self identified STL peeps have really posted on the topic. Could be wrong as I don’t read every single post over there

addxb2 wrote: ↑

6:39 PM - 13 days ago

On kcrag, UrbanSTL users are chastised for having a “complex” for discussing the World Cup. Yet its KcRag users who don’t have anything better to do than create UrbanStl accounts and post content that is irrelevant to urbanism in St. Louis.

This is a channel about the World Cup, which doesn't have much of anything to do with urbanism in St. Louis. 

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

6:46 PM - 13 days ago

addxb2 wrote:On kcrag, UrbanSTL users are chastised for having a “complex” for discussing the World Cup. Yet its KcRag users who don’t have anything better to do than create UrbanStl accounts and post content that is irrelevant to urbanism in St. Louis.

I’ve mostly just seen infighting amongst users but not really anyone saying your are an STL person your voice doesn’t matter. For the most part, I don’t think self identified STL peeps have really posted on the topic. Could be wrong as I don’t read every single post over there

No, there are newer/infrequent users on UrbanSTL forum (dev7 included) who are just here to discuss KC. They run back to KCrag crying if challenged. I'm not sure what they're expecting posting KC hope-core on a STL urbanism forum. Why are KC peeps so desperate for a pat on the head? 

addxb2 wrote:

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

6:46 PM - 13 days ago

addxb2 wrote:On kcrag, UrbanSTL users are chastised for having a “complex” for discussing the World Cup. Yet its KcRag users who don’t have anything better to do than create UrbanStl accounts and post content that is irrelevant to urbanism in St. Louis.

I’ve mostly just seen infighting amongst users but not really anyone saying your are an STL person your voice doesn’t matter. For the most part, I don’t think self identified STL peeps have really posted on the topic. Could be wrong as I don’t read every single post over there

No, there are newer/infrequent users on UrbanSTL forum (dev7 included) who are just here to discuss KC. They run back to KCrag crying if challenged. I'm not sure what they're expecting posting KC hope-core on a STL urbanism forum. Why are KC peeps so desperate for a pat on the head? 

I thought the articles were interesting. It’s all temporary but I don’t think they were out of line. Going and saying “KC is better than STL” would have been too much.

Maybe best reserved for the KC specific thread?

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

7:16 PM - 13 days ago

addxb2 wrote:

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

6:46 PM - 13 days ago

I’ve mostly just seen infighting amongst users but not really anyone saying your are an STL person your voice doesn’t matter. For the most part, I don’t think self identified STL peeps have really posted on the topic. Could be wrong as I don’t read every single post over there

No, there are newer/infrequent users on UrbanSTL forum (dev7 included) who are just here to discuss KC. They run back to KCrag crying if challenged. I'm not sure what they're expecting posting KC hope-core on a STL urbanism forum. Why are KC peeps so desperate for a pat on the head? 

I thought the articles were interesting. It’s all temporary but I don’t think they were out of line. Going and saying “KC is better than STL” would have been too much.

Maybe best reserved for the KC specific thread?

We don't need a KC specific thread that updates every time an east/west coast publication realizes KC exists. There have been multiple glowing articles about STL, developments, airline or corporate expansions this year and no one from UrbanSTL feels compelled to create a St. Louis specific space on KCRag to talk about it.

addxb2 wrote: ↑

7:12 PM - 13 days ago

Dev7 wrote: ↑

6:53 PM - 13 days ago

addxb2 wrote: ↑

6:39 PM - 13 days ago

On kcrag, UrbanSTL users are chastised for having a “complex” for discussing the World Cup. Yet its KcRag users who don’t have anything better to do than create UrbanStl accounts and post content that is irrelevant to urbanism in St. Louis.

This is a channel about the World Cup, which doesn't have much of anything to do with urbanism in St. Louis. 

Sure, although UrbanSTL is historically very well informed and users enjoy talking about the logistics or large events locally and nationally. St. Louis also put together an impressive calendar of events to celebrate the World Cup, all worth discussing. The point is you're here to troll on behalf of KC. Defending KC when users are throwing shade (as any sister City does) is one thing but collecting articles about KCs temporary press is intended to spark a reaction.

I would expect KCRag users to treat me the same way if I joined KCRag to exclusively post STL content.

I'm trolling? I have had legitimate discussions in this thread with people. I don't post much about other host cities, because they don't impact us as much. If KC does well, then the state does well (reputation wise and economically). While I do defend KC, I also conceded to StlAlex (further up on this page) that it was okay to be harsher on KC, because it is the smallest host city and deserves to have a lot of pressure on it to perform. 

Dev7 wrote: ↑

7:32 PM - 13 days ago

addxb2 wrote: ↑

7:12 PM - 13 days ago

Dev7 wrote: ↑

6:53 PM - 13 days ago

This is a channel about the World Cup, which doesn't have much of anything to do with urbanism in St. Louis. 

Sure, although UrbanSTL is historically very well informed and users enjoy talking about the logistics or large events locally and nationally. St. Louis also put together an impressive calendar of events to celebrate the World Cup, all worth discussing. The point is you're here to troll on behalf of KC. Defending KC when users are throwing shade (as any sister City does) is one thing but collecting articles about KCs temporary press is intended to spark a reaction.

I would expect KCRag users to treat me the same way if I joined KCRag to exclusively post STL content.

I'm trolling? I have had legitimate discussions in this thread with people. I don't post much about other host cities, because they don't impact us as much. If KC does well, then the state does well (reputation wise and economically). While I do defend KC, I also conceded to StlAlex (further up on this page) that it was okay to be harsher on KC, because it is the smallest host city and deserves to have a lot of pressure on it to perform. 

You have 25 posts on UrbanSTL, nearly all of them are on the KC or World Cup thread. You're not here to talk STL and you're not alone. I'm happy you're here and would love to see authentic engagement about STL but I'm just calling it as I see it. There are KCRag users on UrbanSTL for the sole purpose of talking KC. The same is not true of UrbanSTL users on KCRag.

Empty rooms and Fifa cancellations - US hotels fear World Cup washout
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/c9q34pxv79eo