Seventy per cent of the world’s business jets are made in Wichita, Kansas – a Midwestern cow town where the bar talk is all about Lears, not steers, reports Eric Enno Tamm for Wallpaper*.

Wichita isn’t much to look at. Even Marvin Krout, the outgoing city planning director, says so. He recently blasted officials in a parting memo. Slack building codes and a “throwaway culture,” he wrote, “are producing a collection of characterless pressed-metal and synthetic-stucco buildings along our major streets whose only saving grace is that they probably are not built well enough to last another generation.”

Yet this, the largest city in Kansas, isn’t nearly as unremarkable as its flimsy architecture and relentlessly flat topography mark it seem. Consider, for instance, its new “Ditch The Drive” campaign. An enlightened urban plan to persuade townsfolk to abandon their wicked autos for eco-friendly public transportation? Hardly. The city mayor has dished out tax subsidies of some $3 million since May in an attempt to attract discount airlines to the city’s airports, drive down ticket prices and have people “ditch” roads for runways. So while the rest of the United States has seen air traffic plummet by 10 to 15 percent post-Sept 11th, passenger volumes at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport have improved 20 per cent from last year. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, this anonymous Kansas city now styles itself as the “Air Capital of the World.”

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