Rapper John “Stik Figa” Westbrook Jr. has no problem admitting he’s from Topeka.

Problem is, other people do. Especially those who live in Lawrence or Kansas City. Westbrook has been told he couldn’t possibly be from Kansas’ capital, because he’s cool.

“Some people are like, ‘Why do you say you’re from Topeka? Just say you’re from Kansas City,’?” Westbrook, 28, said.

Westbrook admitted his hometown isn’t perfect. The city is too spread out, he said, so the sense of community suffers. Downtown dies after 5 p.m., and the idea of nightlife means getting drunk in a dive bar.

But Topeka has positives, he said. The cost of living is cheap, the people are nice, the hole-in-the-wall restaurants are awesome, and those dive bars are pretty fun.

Westbrook is part of a growing movement of enthusiastic young Topekans working to pioneer their city’s cultural frontier by supporting local businesses, planning art shows, revamping downtown, courting Google’s fiber network experiment and banishing Topeka’s uncool image in general.

Karl Fundenberger, a 24-year-old lifelong Topekan, is trying to improve that image with his website, topekaisgreat.com. The site generates random quotes from the 70 or so young Topeka professionals he surveyed about what they liked and disliked about the town.

Only a handful had nothing good to say, Fundenberger said.

“Those people were very jaded,” he said. “You could tell they were totally closed to the idea that Topeka could ever have anything to offer them.”

Fundenberger used to think that way.

“I used to be one of the complainers,” he said. “I wanted out — and I mean, far out.”

Then Fundenberger got a good job as social media director at a Topeka ad agency. He found a camaraderie among young artists and musicians living in Topeka, which he and his friends mobilized by organizing once-a-month art and music shows. They called their group Chords & Oil and once secured the rock band Cowboy Indian Bear — whose members grew up in Topeka — to perform in a downtown Topeka bus station to draw attention to public transportation.

Through his survey, Fundenberger found out other young people liked living in Topeka, just as he did. Most of those he surveyed commended the city for its growing arts scene and comfortable small-town feel.

“It’s small enough that you can make a difference,” one person wrote, “and big enough that it matters.”

Fundenberger, for example, wants Topeka to become more bike-friendly. He rides five miles to work every day, even in snowstorms and rush hour, despite frequent shouts of phrases like, “Get your ass off the street!”

He’s trying to raise awareness about cycling by blogging on his site, biketopeka.com, and volunteering for the Topeka Community Cycle Project, a nonprofit bike shop that accepts donations and volunteer time in exchange for bikes and repairs.

Like Fundenberger, John Ary is trying to improve Topeka in his own way.

Ary, 32, runs a marketing firm called Robot Monster Creative and wants to make Topeka’s downtown a destination. So he volunteers with Capital District Project, a group working to revitalize downtown by attracting local businesses and working with the city to make the streets and parking situation more visitor-friendly.

Ary grew up in Topeka but spent most of his adult life elsewhere, in cities such as Lawrence, Little Rock, Ark., and Tuscon, Ariz.

“When I left, Topeka felt like it was dying,” Ary said. “It was constricting. Stodgy. Old.”

A year and a half ago, Ary and his wife, Stacey, set out to move closer to home. They considered Kansas City and Lawrence. But Topeka, with its affordable housing and its placement on the cusp of a new beginning, won out.

Ary looked at his hometown and saw people working together to improve it. He saw new, locally owned restaurants opening up. He saw art galleries downtown. He saw a new generation of Topekans trying to reshape their city, and he wanted to be a part of it.

Those involved say the movement began in 2008, when Topeka and Shawnee County founded Heartland Visioning, a foundation whose goal was to spark discussion among citizens to figure out how to improve the city’s quality of life. That discussion spawned a bumper crop of task forces such as Capital District Project and NOTO, a group of Topekans who want to convert vacant buildings in north Topeka to art studios.

After the Arys moved back, John joined Capital District Project and began to blog about his newfound hometown love at a site he built called ilovetopekaks.com.

Ary found more to love about Topeka when, in February 2010, the city came down with Google fever.

That month, Google announced it was looking for cities interested in testing the company’s multimillion-dollar, super-high-speed fiber network. The announcement sparked the formation of a Facebook page — “Bring Google’s Fiber Experiment to Topeka!” — that now has more than 17,000 members. Similar sites for San Jose, Calif., and Chapel Hill, N.C., have fewer than 2,000 members. A similar grassroots movement in Kansas City, the GoogleKC Coalition, fizzled within weeks of forming.

The popularity of the “Bring Google’s Fiber Experiment to Topeka!” page led to the formation of Think Big Topeka, a group whose main purpose is to get Google to choose Topeka.

Ary joined that group and, last March, helped convince Mayor Bill Bunten to temporarily change the city’s name to Google. Google returned the favor on April Fools’ Day by changing its name to Topeka.

Ary and others with Think Big Topeka are hoping for an announcement soon, buoyed by a post on Google’s official blog that said the company will announce the target city for its fiber network experiment sometime early this year.

Grabbing Google’s attention gave Topekans a much-needed self-esteem boost, said Brendan Jensen, 28, who volunteers with Think Big Topeka and Capital District Project.

“It showed our community we’re capable of changing ourselves,” Jensen said. And even if the Google experiment doesn’t work out, he said, “we’re still going to create a whole new Topeka, and it’ll be fantastic.”

It won’t be easy, though.

Downtown empties out at around 5 p.m. on weekdays as government workers head home. The area has only a handful of shops, restaurants and bars, and many don’t stay open at night.

Near Washburn University, money problems have plagued the redevelopment of College Hill, a historic neighborhood. The mixed-use development spans several blocks and contains condos, town homes and retail space, most of which remain empty.

Last year, the project’s developer announced the opening of several new, locally owned businesses. Included were outposts of The Burger Stand, a popular gourmet burger restaurant and bar in Lawrence, and Uprise Bakery, based in Columbia.

Those openings were repeatedly pushed back. And in December, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported that CoreFirst Bank and Trust was suing the developer, Washburn-Lane Parkway, for $22 million.

But business owners aren’t letting the obstacles stop them. Burger Stand co-owner Molly Krause said they’re still planning to open in the College Hill area in May. Gizmo Pictures, a Topeka production company, recently renovated and moved into a historic building downtown. Downstairs from Gizmo is Blue Planet Café, a new coffee shop and eatery that sells vegetarian-friendly wraps and sandwiches and coffee from PT’s, a Topeka-based coffee company that roasts 100 tons of beans annually and sells them to specialty stores such as Whole Foods.

It’s the small businesses and individuals who will make the biggest difference, said Justin and Bailey Marable, a married couple who moved to Topeka from Lawrence five years ago when she got a job as an art teacher at a local high school.

The Marables said Topeka has changed a lot in five years. They didn’t like living there at first, so they decided to create the community they wanted. They formed an art group called ReThink Topeka and began planning shows and community get-togethers downtown.

One Tuesday last summer, they gathered a group of street musicians and set them loose downtown during lunch hour. Workers came down from their government offices to mill about in the street, enjoy the weather and listen to music.

The city was hungry for an event like that, the Marables said.

That single ReThink Topeka event inspired a group of downtown businesses to organize “Top City Thursdays,” a weekly summer showcase that features live music and discounts at local stores, bars and restaurants.

So yes, there’s lots of evidence that young Topekans are empowering themselves and rethinking their community. But are outsiders?

Not yet, at least on a large scale. Among the haters is Bailey Marable’s brother, Joel Kivett, who lives in Olathe.

He said Topeka’s main drag, Wanamaker Road, with its big-box stores and chain restaurants, looks just like any other mid-size city in the country. Kivett said Topeka can’t compete with the culture of nearby Lawrence and Kansas City, which boast long-established arts, music and food scenes.

When Kivett considered whether he’d move to Topeka, he paused for a long time, as if he’d never viewed that as an option.

“I would definitely do it very, very begrudgingly,” he said.

The Marables said they don’t mind when Kivett teases them. They’re happy living in their beautiful bungalow, an $89,000 find nestled in a historic neighborhood. The low cost of living allows Justin to work from home full time as an artist and stay with the couple’s daughters, Willow, 3, and Olive, 9 weeks.

In his art, Justin uses color and perspective to make Topeka buildings or Kansas landscapes unexpectedly beautiful.

“It’s about looking at the familiar and taking what you can from where you’re at,” Marable said.

“If you’re not content with where you’re at, change it.”