I've been here 8 years. Living out Dianchi Lu. While better than most of Kunming, it is nothing to get excited about. Kunming is in a slow downward spiral. Air quality is a big problem and will only get worse. I think it mostly stems from the now 4 year drought. Construction will never stop here. It has no direction or ending, other than the subway project. Everything else is just build it and tear it back down a year later. This is politics, and it will never go away.
I realized Kunming was shifting to an overall declining trend a few years ago, so I made my plans. Now I am a mere few months away for my solution. My house will be ready to move in at Chenggong, and I will be out of Kunming's dust, noise and traffic mess. I will have Kunming on my terms. 30 minutes into the city when I need, otherwise just chillin in clear air, peace and quiet. A few years ago people thought I was nuts to buy in Chenggong. Inside 10 years from now, it will be the jewel of Yunnan. Thats my plan and I'm sticking to it.

Does anybody remember any of the bad things about Kunming 12-13 years ago that have changed for the better?
Used to be you couldn't use your foreign credit card to take out cash from an ATM. Visas and MasterCards were utterly useless here. (Unless you felt like standing in line and gesticulating wildly at the clueless clerks in Bank of China's main branch for an hour, and then fill out paperwork for another two and a half hours while on the phone with your credit card company...)
Used to be only one bank branch that would exchange USD for RMB. (And you had to prove where you got the bills from.)
Used to be only be one post office branch that could send packages internationally. (And it cost twice as much as it does now!)
Used to be only a select few hotels that would even ACCEPT foreigners, and they were all in the same area of town. And men couldn't stay in the same room with (unmarried) women, and Chinese couldn't share with foreigners even if they were married.

Used to take 14 hours to get to Lijiang by bus, and the roads were one lane, full of craters, frequently washed out in places, and very dangerous. All the buses were filled with cigarette smoke, live chickens, and had no A/C or shocks. (And not just to Lijiang, but to anywhere around Yunnan.)
Used to be very few internet cafes, and you had to give them your passport and student ID, and they were really slow (and small).
You couldn't find an authentic mixed drink anywhere,
real chocolate and cheese was almost too much to ask, and
the only job you could have was English teacher, English teacher, or... English teacher.

And don't even get me started on the state of Kunming dentistry in 2001!

Kunming has come a long way since then, and it's much easier to live like an adult here now. Foreigners used to be sequestered, but now we can actually be independent and manage our own accommodations, finances, transportation, employment, education, and healthcare without having to be dependent on third-party entities like home-stay families, exchange programs or sponsorships. It's easy to take these improvements for granted if all you focus on is traffic, construction, and pollution.

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and I think that with the completion of the subway lines and the end to this drought we will see some of our beloved former Kunming creep back in.

(But then they'll probably start working on a huge monorail project to Chenggong Qu...:)

I know what you are saying, but if you look at it in terms of ease of living as a foreigner then better to leave to Shanghai ASAP

I'm sick of cities in general. Not just Kunming.

Cities are horrendous soulless monstrocities.

Cities need to be completely scrapped and re-designed.

@jinjen For me, you've hit the nail on the head. Of course Kunming isn't perfect and there has been some degradation on life quality of late (pollution and drought spring to mind). But it's much better in many ways than it was and better in many ways than most other Chinese cities. Suddenly comparing it to Shanghai seems as irrelevant as comparing it to New York or London. Most people come to KM to escape those sort of places, for fairly obvious reasons.

@jinjen I agree.

That is why I want to stay in the Kunming area. While I do like the benefits of a city, I prefer to be outside it's core. I've always lived in the rural outskirts of a city.
Changgong here I come.