AFFLUENT BEDROOM Leawood, Kans.

To examine the four types of suburbs delineated in the Harris studies, TIME correspondents visited an example of each. Chicago Bureau Chief Champ Clark, who worked for six years on the Kansas City Star, went back for this report on a typical affluent bedroom community:

MORE than a decade ago, a bridge over a ravine carried heavy traffic outbound from Kansas City to Leawood and points west. Then the bridge collapsed under the weight of a truck. Though insurance money was available, the bridge was never rebuilt. The street now stops at one edge of the ravine, then starts again on the other: it takes a two-mile detour to get across.

That is the way they like things in Leawood. A local editor and publisher, Tom Leathers, says that he has been trying for years to get West 95th Street, one of the main thoroughfares, widened. "It's inconvenient and dangerous even for our own people," he says, "but I haven't made any headway. It's as though they think improvements would bring in a lot of riffraff from Kansas City." "It's a bodacious street," allows Mayor V.M. ("Doc") Dostal. After their day's work in K.C., the people of Leawood obviously want nothing more than to come home to their handsome houses in their manicured suburb and slam the door. They might as well put up a sign reading PRIVATE--KEEP OUT.

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Some of the houses in Leawood are more than 40 years old, but the town only began to blossom in the late 1930s when the Kroh Bros, real estate company undertook a major development. Now there are nearly 11,000 residents in just over 3,000 houses--ranch-styles and split-levels with a good sprinkling of two-stories. The lawns are spacious, and there is often a paddock with two or three horses gamboling about. Some of the original houses that once sold for less than $25,000 would probably be worth twice that today; newer houses range from $65,000 to $125,000--and up.

About 90% of Leawood's working population, including a growing number of restive housewives, commute by car to Kansas City. They are heavily Republican, many of them professional people, lawyers and doctors. A majority of the newer, more transient residents are often-transferred executives of major U.S. corporations. In many cases, their company helps foot the homeowner's bill just for the prestige of having a Leawood address for its man in Kansas City. As soon as a family settles, the wife is recruited into the Leawood Welcomers Club: for the next two years she meets other newcomers and learns the local ropes along with them. The men join neighborhood associations that meet weekly or monthly to talk over questions like the status of garbage collections before they adjourn for a hand of cards.

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Leawood has three Protestant churches (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian), one Roman Catholic church and no synagogues. Perhaps 3% of the population are Jewish. There are few black families. Once deeds in Leawood forbade resale to Negroes, Jews--or Arabs. Now Leawood gets nearly the same results by defter means: a local ordinance bars For Sale signs on houses, and Leawood brokers can easily avoid showing to someone they consider undesirable. Tom Leathers remembers that a couple of years ago, Bobby Bell, the Kansas City Chiefs' great linebacker, wanted to buy in Leawood. Bell is black. Leathers telephoned a member of the Kroh family and appealed with all the eloquence of a dedicated Chiefs fan: he was told that nothing was up for sale at the time, so Bell went elsewhere.

Of those who can and do settle in Leawood, Mayor Dostal says: "At least 85% of them are the salt of the earth." Maybe so, but Police Chief Martin ("Jack") Kelly says that his two major problems are booze--with adults--and drugs --with kids. (Kelly is the only member of his 18-man force who can afford to live in Leawood, and only because he has a retired Army officer's pension on top of his salary.) Leawood's two country clubs have private liquor lockers for members, and things tend to get lively on Saturday night. The teen-agers face what everyone agrees is a serious drug problem, though it is probably no worse than it is, say, at Mamaroneck High School in New York's Westchester County or at New Trier East High School near Chicago.

There are other threats to the community. Because the suburb is so rigidly residential, it has no industrial tax base: one result is inadequate public services, including a wretched sewer system that would cost at least $1,000,000 to modernize. In a heavy rain the sewers back up into the prosperous residents' basements. In addition, there is what Mrs. Margaret Jordan, lawyer and city councilwoman, calls "the specter of Tomahawk Creek Reservoir"--a proposed federal flood-control project that would create recreational facilities open to nonresidents. Another city council member puts the dilemma of Leawood's future neatly: "We know that change is inevitable, but we want to keep things the way they are."

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