Yes, there really is a Kalamazoo (and it gives kids free college)

The name has launched a thousand songs and one running joke — “yes, there really is a Kalamazoo” — but the county’s real distinctions beat the punchlines. In 1959, downtown Kalamazoo closed Burdick Street to cars and created the Kalamazoo Mall, the first outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in the United States, a half-century ahead of the walkable-downtown movement. The city has been quietly ahead of the curve ever since: craft brewing took early root here, the downtown is one of Michigan’s liveliest, and Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College keep it young.

Then in 2005 came the announcement that changed everything: a group of anonymous donors created the Kalamazoo Promise, guaranteeing up to full college tuition at Michigan’s public universities and colleges for graduates of Kalamazoo Public Schools — forever. Two decades on, the Promise has sent thousands of kids to college and made the county a national case study in what a community can do for its children. Families literally move here for it. A town people thought was made up keeps proving it’s ahead of the real ones.