Believe it or not, KCK was incorporated in 1850 - years before sprawl joined the two together. KCK has always been its own city - it's not a burb - just a town with a name that reflects its geographic location.
I didn’t mean to demean KCK by calling it a suburb. It’s an economic designation — I’d bet a lot more people commute from KCK to KCM than vise versa.
I’m sitting here writing this in Decatur, Georgia, which is a suburb, functionally speaking, of Atlanta. Decatur existed decades before Atlanta, and according to local lore — the historical accuracy of which is doubtful — Decatur was offered the railroad hub that would ultimately grow into Atlanta, but turned it down, because the residents didn’t want the noise and smoke. So the surveyors moved a few miles west.