District safety · Kansas City · data through September 2026
How safe is Heart of the City, Kansas City?
Heart of the City, Kansas City covers 21 neighborhoods in SafeRoute's Kansas City index. Its median safety index is 24/100 — below the citywide median of 55, so more is reported around a typical neighborhood here than across Kansas City. Vineyard Estates scores highest at 68/100; Santa Fe lowest at 14/100.
These figures describe reported crime around each neighborhood's center — they are informational, not a judgment of any community. 0 of 21 neighborhoods here rate low risk, 1 moderate, 7 elevated and 13 high risk.
Every neighborhood in Heart of the City, safest first
| Neighborhood | Index | Band | Incidents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Vineyard Estates | 68/100 | Moderate | 82 |
| 2 Dunbar | 48/100 | Elevated | 201 |
| 3 Vineyard | 48/100 | Elevated | 192 |
| 4 Knoches Park | 47/100 | Elevated | 210 |
| 5 Vineyard Northwest | 36/100 | Elevated | 341 |
| 6 Boulevard Village | 34/100 | Elevated | 362 |
| 7 Oak Park Southeast | 29/100 | Elevated | 470 |
| 8 Oak Park Southwest | 26/100 | Elevated | 547 |
| 9 18th and Vine and Downtown East | 24/100 | High risk | 644 |
| 10 Ivanhoe Southwest | 24/100 | High risk | 636 |
| 11 Washington Wheatley | 24/100 | High risk | 611 |
| 12 Wendell Phillips | 24/100 | High risk | 618 |
| 13 Ingleside | 23/100 | High risk | 631 |
| 14 Ivanhoe Southeast | 23/100 | High risk | 655 |
| 15 Palestine East | 23/100 | High risk | 639 |
| 16 Ivanhoe Northeast | 20/100 | High risk | 736 |
| 17 Linwood Homeowners-Ivanhoe | 19/100 | High risk | 822 |
| 18 Palestine West and Oak Park Northeast | 19/100 | High risk | 794 |
| 19 Key Coalition | 16/100 | High risk | 1,032 |
| 20 Oak Park Northwest | 16/100 | High risk | 1,015 |
| 21 Santa Fe | 14/100 | High risk | 1,259 |
Walking in Heart of the City, Kansas City at night?
SafeRoute scores every walking route against the same live crime data on this page — and shows how much of each route runs on lit streets. Pick the safer way, share your walk, and check in when you arrive. Free, no account.
Get SafeRoute on the App StoreHow Heart of the City compares across Kansas City
| Districts (safest first) | Median index | Neighborhoods |
|---|---|---|
| Little Blue Valley | 85/100 | 9 |
| Gashland/Nashua | 80/100 | 8 |
| Riverfront Industrial | 78/100 | 8 |
| Line Creek | 74/100 | 17 |
| Blue Ridge | 70/100 | 19 |
| Red Bridge | 68/100 | 22 |
| Briarcliff/Winnwood | 67/100 | 24 |
| Country Club/Waldo | 67/100 | 23 |
| Hickman Mills | 57/100 | 14 |
| Swope | 31/100 | 18 |
| Truman Plaza | 27/100 | 14 |
| Midtown/Plaza | 26/100 | 24 |
| Heart of the City (this page) | 24/100 | 21 |
| Greater Downtown | 22/100 | 19 |
Common questions
What is the safest neighborhood in Heart of the City, Kansas City?
Vineyard Estates has the highest SafeRoute safety index in Heart of the City, Kansas City, at 68/100 (moderate), from 82 reported incidents within 1 km of its center. Dunbar (48/100) and Vineyard (48/100) follow.
Which neighborhood in Heart of the City, Kansas City has the most reported crime?
Santa Fe has the lowest index in Heart of the City, Kansas City, at 14/100, with 1,259 reported incidents within 1 km of its center. A low score means more is reported around that center, which busy commercial and transport areas produce simply by having more people in them — it is not a measure of how dangerous a resident's street is.
Is Heart of the City, Kansas City safe?
Across its 21 neighborhoods the median SafeRoute safety index is 24/100, against 55 across Kansas City. 0 rate low risk, 1 moderate, 7 elevated and 13 high risk. These describe reported crime only and vary widely within the district — check the individual neighborhood rather than reading one number for the whole of it.
How is the SafeRoute safety index calculated?
SafeRoute weights each incident reported to the Kansas City Police Department by severity (violence weighs more than shoplifting), sums the last available period within 1 km of the neighborhood center, and normalizes against citywide crime rates onto a 0–100 scale — higher is safer. It describes reported crime only; it is not a guarantee of safety. The figure shown for Heart of the City, Kansas City is the median of its 21 neighborhoods — the district is not measured separately.
Methodology
Each incident reported to the Kansas City Police Department is weighted by severity — violence counts for more than shoplifting. For every neighborhood we sum weighted incidents within 1 km of its center, and normalize against citywide rates onto a 0–100 index, higher = safer. Boundaries are the city's own 246 neighborhoods, grouped by the 18 Area Plans the city itself plans against. Two are not scored: KCI & 2nd Creek, which is the airport, and Longview, which wraps Longview Lake and carries almost no recorded incidents anywhere inside it — a page there could only have said “0 incidents, 100/100”, which is missing data dressed as proven safety. Kansas City covers a lot of ground, and several neighborhoods along the Missouri and Blue river bottoms are industrial or largely undeveloped; those pages say so rather than letting an empty count read as a quiet street. Time-of-day charts use KCPD incident timestamps, severity-weighted. Pages regenerate as new data is published.
The index compares neighborhoods within Kansas City. It is not comparable between cities: each police force publishes a different set of offences over a different period — Kansas City's figures cannot be read against another city's on the same 0–100 scale.