Radial node arrangement in Forest

This answer is based on How to combine a top-down and bottom-up binary tree in one picture?

It draws five trees, one each for the north, east, south, west and northwest groups of cities. Each tree is saved using \savebox. Each tree has customized growth directions and anchors to suit its design. For example, the north tree uses grow'=north, child anchor=south, parent anchor=north, and so on for each tree. For the tree growing north west, it may be necessary to play with the anchors to get a preferred arrangement of the nodes and edges. The individual trees are then drawn using \node, and positioned using the positioning library syntax. Each tree is connected to the root node, Kansas City, using \draw commands.

This is the result:

This is the MWE:

% http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/213770/how-to-combine-a-top-down-and-bottom-up-binary-tree-in-one-picture
\documentclass[12pt,crop=true,border=1cm]{standalone}

\usepackage[edges]{forest}
\usepackage[none]{hyphenat}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes,positioning,arrows.meta,calc}
\tikzset{
    mynodes/.style={inner sep=0pt,draw=none}
}

\forestset{
mytree/.style={
  forked edges,
    for tree={
    draw,
    rounded corners,
    node options={align=center},
    text width=2cm
    }
  }
}

\newsavebox\North
\newsavebox\East
\newsavebox\South
\newsavebox\West
\newsavebox\NorthWest

\savebox\North{\begin{forest}
    mytree,
    for tree={
        child anchor=south,
        parent anchor=north,
        grow'=north,
        anchor=south,
}
    [North
            [Minnesota]
            [Wisconsin]
    ]
   \end{forest}
}
\savebox\East{\begin{forest}
    mytree,
    for tree={
        child anchor=west,
        parent anchor=east,
        grow'=east,
        anchor=west,
}
        [East
          [South Carolina]
          [North Carolina]
        ]
    \end{forest}
}
\savebox\South{\begin{forest}
    mytree,
    for tree={
        child anchor=north,
        parent anchor=south,
        grow'=south,
        anchor=north,
}
        [South
          [Texas]
          [Mexico]
    ]
    \end{forest}
}
\savebox\West{\begin{forest}
    mytree,
    for tree={
        child anchor=east,
        parent anchor=west,
        grow'=west,
        anchor=east,
}
        [West
            [Los Angeles
              [Santa Monica]
              [West Hollywood]
            ]
            [San Francisco
              [The Castro]
            ]
        ]
    \end{forest}
}
\savebox\NorthWest{\begin{forest}
    mytree,
    for tree={
        child anchor=south east,
        parent anchor=north west,
        grow'=north west,
        anchor=east,
}
        [North West
            [Portland]
            [Seattle
              [Redmond]
            ]
        ]
    \end{forest}
}

\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[node distance=2cm]
    \node (Kansas) at (0,0) [shape=ellipse,x radius=2cm,draw,align=center] {Kansas City};
    \node (North) [mynodes,above=of Kansas] {\usebox\North};
    \node (East)  [mynodes,right=of Kansas] {\usebox\East};
    \node (South) [mynodes,below=of Kansas] {\usebox\South};
    \node (West)  [mynodes,left=of Kansas,xshift=3mm,yshift=-3mm] {\usebox\West};
    \node (NorthWest)  [mynodes,above left=1.85cm and 2.0cm of Kansas] {\usebox\NorthWest};
%
    \draw[thick] (Kansas.north) --  (North.south);
    \draw[thick] (Kansas.east)  --  (East.west);
    \draw[thick] (Kansas.south) --  (South.north);
    \draw[thick] (Kansas.west)  -- ++(-1.85,0) ;%  (West.east);
    \draw[thick] (Kansas.north west) -- ++(-2.2,1.9) ;%  (NorthWest.south east);
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

Conceptionally very similar to Ross' nice answer but instead of saveboxes I use Ulrike Fischers subnode trick. This allows one to connect the nodes rather than saveboxes. Still some manual adjustments necessary. EDIT: replaced the grows by grow' such that north carolina is north of south carolina, and also added makeboxes to save some space.

\documentclass[border=5pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{forest}
\usetikzlibrary{tikzmark} % subnode trick from https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/393656/121799
\usepackage[LGR,T1]{fontenc}           % these three lines added
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}             % so that greek symbols will show
\begin{document}
\forestset{universal/.style={rounded corners=0.3em,
      draw,rectangle,
      minimum width=2.5em,
      l sep+=1.5em,
      s sep+=1em,
      anchor=center,}
}
$
\begin{array}{ccc}
&\makebox[3.5cm][c]{\begin{forest}
for tree={
      universal,
      grow'=north
     },
    [\subnode{north}{north}
        [wisconsin]
        [minnesota]
    ]
\end{forest}} & \\
\vcenter{\hbox{\begin{forest}
for tree={
      universal,
      grow'=west
     },
    [\subnode{west}{west}
        [los angeles,
            [santa monica]
            [west hollywood]
        ]
        [san francisco,
            [the castro]
        ]
    ]
\end{forest}}}   
& 
\vcenter{\hbox{\begin{forest}
for tree={
      universal,
      grow'=0
     },
[\subnode{kansas}{kansas city}   
]
\end{forest}}} &
\vcenter{\hbox{\begin{forest}
for tree={
      universal,
      grow'=east
     },
    [\subnode{east}{east}
        [north carolina]
        [south carolina]
    ]
\end{forest}}} \\
&
\makebox[3em][c]{\begin{forest}
for tree={
      universal,
      grow'=south
     },
    [\subnode{south}{south}
        [texas]
        [mexico]
    ]
\end{forest}}
 &
\end{array}$
\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
\draw (kansas) -- (north);
\draw (kansas) -- (west);
\draw (kansas) -- (south);
\draw (kansas) -- (east);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}