FXCollaborative Podium: Orchestrated Urbanism

Orchestrated Urbanism

The Race-Built City

Author’s Update The murder of unarmed Black man George Floyd and Black woman Breonna Taylor by police, the murder of unarmed Black man Ahmaud Arbery while on a jog, the murder of two Black transgender women Riah Milton and Dominique Fells, the callous treatment of unarmed Black man Christian Cooper in Central Park, and countless other instances of racial profiling and violence have sparked needed protest and revolution. Time will tell if this outrage lives after media coverage wanes. Regardless, each person and industry must be held accountable, design professions included. Architecture, planning, and their design-related partners play integral roles in shaping the spaces and neighborhoods which have been built from a foundation of systemic racism. Designers must act. Four years ago, “Orchestrated Urbanism” presented a process for designers, especially white designers, to begin addressing systemic racism.

The three As: Awareness, Advocacy, and Action—this call to action intensified and is increasingly urgent in 2020.

An acknowledgement: My voice should not be the one amplified. The light must shine on Black designers, thinkers, and doers; they must be elevated within the profession. I use the platform, access, and credibility afforded to me via privilege as a cisgender white man, to impact the audience I have.

Now is the time for Action.

Time and patience are gone. Designers must build awareness, learn to advocate, and manifest tangible action simultaneously. In the years since writing “Orchestrated Urbanism,” it remains abundantly clear that there is a lack of comprehension to the systemic nature of racism in the country. Designers work with diverse communities; we must understand that race and social equity are common threads in the challenges we address. Public health, economic mobility, and housing affordability are each racial justice issues. Both the climate crisis and public space are racial justice issues. Each intertwined and built on the same racist foundations as much of the country.

COVID-19, and the response, is a racial justice issue.

The events of 2020 have illuminated the grave injustices in our country, while simultaneously allowing many Americans the time to focus on the race issues at hand. The COVID-19 data shows that the hardest hit communities are primarily neighborhoods with high concentrations of Black and people of color. These are the same communities which have suffered from systemic oppression for generations. These communities have the highest number of essential workers, are the least likely to work from home, least financially secure, have the highest public transit use, least amount of street trees, and the largest deficit of public space. Even New York City’s response, closing streets to traffic, missed many Black communities with the highest number of COVID cases; see Flatbush 11226 and 11203. All of these issues make COVID-19 prevention more challenging. Compounding this, these same communities suffer from blatant over-policing, severe deficits of affordable housing, markedly underfunded schools, and indifference by designers and city agencies. The system continues to fail these communities—and design plays a role.

Design must address racial inequity.

Design professions alone cannot solve racism; however, they are key players. Equitable design requires an ability to design outside of one’s own perspective, an approach rooted in an understanding of how a place came to be. It requires an empathetic approach, striving to work with—not simply for—a community, and the courage to act on it. Equitable design has no formula, it is not LEED. The three As still apply.

Build awareness: listen, learn, and educate yourself and others. Advocate: put marginalized communities first, donate time and money, be an ally, elevate black voices. Tangible action is less clear. “Exclusion by Design,” a workshop and lecture series created by Catherine Joseph and myself, developed a set of standards that designers can apply within their firms and on projects: confront bias, accommodate identities, set project specific goals, react explicitly to history, and center community needs. Designers must maintain that inclusion is not the absence of exclusion. Inclusion must be as intentional as exclusion has been.

Silence = Violence. Black Lives Matter. Say Their Names.

—Tyler Cukar, June 2020

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Orchestrated Urbanism

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Foreword Tyler Cukar’s Orchestrated Urbanism is a must-read for city designers, planners, public policy makers, developers, and neighborhood leaders, especially those who want to gain insights into how Kansas City became a city divided, and how they can work together to tear down the structurally divisive barriers that have persisted for centuries. Ranked ninth on 24/7 Wall Street’s list of the most segregated cities in America, Kansas City, like all highly segregated urban areas, did not achieve this dishonorable distinction by accident. Tracing Kansas City’s history from the mid-1800s to the present, Tyler peels back the layers and reveals quite poignantly how we got where we are today.

Why, one might ask, does our history matter? Why should we dredge up the racially motivated, discriminatory, and egregious actions of our ancestors in our discourse about urban planning? Sir Winston Churchill said: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Though it may be difficult for some to come face-to-face with the historical realities detailed in Orchestrated Urbanism, an understanding of how developers like J.C. Nichols intentionally and strategically instituted systems and policies that were designed to separate Kansas Citians by race and class is necessary if we hope to write a different future. Tyler makes it abundantly clear: “To design the equitable cities of the future, designers must acknowledge and address head-on the racial drivers of past events.”

Orchestrated Urbanism is more than a history lesson. It is a call to action with recommendations for redefining marginalized communities as assets and repositioning them as targets for equitable redevelopment.

The path forward requires that we acknowledge that race was a problem then and it remains a problem today. Acknowledging the economics of race allows us to move from denial to awareness, from awareness to advocacy, and from advocacy to action. Just as J.C. Nichols used racially exclusive policies to orchestrate Kansas City’s east-west divide, today’s developers, designers, planners, and policy makers must act in concert with community stakeholders to create inclusive policies that can supplant the structural barriers that impede our progress.

We have all the tools at our disposal. The only things lacking are collective will and unity of purpose. Orchestrated Urbanism is a catalyst for action. There is no better time than now to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

— Gwendolyn Grant, president and CEO Urban League of Greater Kansas City

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Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Orchestrated Urbanism

The Race-Built City

Tyler Cukar, AICP, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP ND, Associate, FXCollaborative

In the summer of 2015, my wife’s parents were en route to Kansas City to meet my family and see my childhood home. It was their first time seeing the United States outside the East Coast. As they flew into Kansas City from Oman, I found myself wondering: what will I show them to highlight how great Kansas City is?

I felt an inherent pressure to impress global travelers, already versed in cuisine, culture, and lifestyle. I thought back to my childhood in Kansas City, remembering unique food, special events, school trips, music, and icons throughout the city. What had left an impression on me? (Figure 1) I plotted an itinerary for the few days I had with my in-laws. Mealtimes were easy, we focused on barbecue:

Arthur Bryant’s, Gates, Joe’s Kansas City, Q39—the options were plenty.

Between meals I showed off the rich culture and history of the city. The Country Club Plaza and the grand homes along Ward Parkway were an obvious destination. The 18th and Vine District was a stop for both The American Jazz Museum and The Negro League Baseball Museum.

Following another barbecue pit stop we hopped over to the Nelson Atkins Museum. To burn off our lunch we walked around Union Station, the Liberty Memorial, and the parks connecting them. We saw other highlights, like the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and The Power and Light District; however, these more recent icons did not

have the same richness or inspire the same excitement as the historic art deco architecture of downtown, the picturesque Spanish-inspired Country Club Plaza, or the energy of the Crossroads Art District. They did not speak to the history and character of the city but rather to contemporary aspirations meant to attract newcomers and entertain longtime residents.

As the days wore on and our belts could expand no further, a theme to our conversations arose; why does this mix of history exist in Kansas City? Why are these historical and cultural places, all seemingly unrelated, located here? Having these conversations with my inlaws, focused on the relationships of Kansas City’s places to historic

Figure 1

1870 aerial view of Kansas City on a bluff.

Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

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events, highlighted the need for a tool to tell the full story; a tool that allows places, events, and their causes to be understood as an interrelated and interdependent system. Multifaceted American cities, like Kansas City, are not happenstance: they are the well-orchestrated result of centuries of surreptitiously implemented racebased policies, social ethos, and long-lasting systemic ramifications.

Patterns resulting from decades of racially motivated policies have become ingrained in our cities and the way we view them. As their origins are forgotten, their perpetually selfreinforcing impacts are not understood.

This paper establishes a lens through which the contemporary American city can be viewed. This lens becomes a tool for viewing the cause-and-effect relationships of racial policies and built urban form which have fundamentally shaped typical American cities, leaving behind recognizable cultural icons and social ills with which cities still grapple with today.

of Kansas City can be applied to countless American cities, delivering unique results by identifying a series of cause-and-effect relationships resulting in a timeline of the physical roots of the city. A city’s history is commonly viewed in a linear, sequential timeline; however, this method of viewing history is limited by failing to illustrate the non-linear patterning of events and their impact on one another. Instead, these timelines should be rendered as a web of interconnected points showing the impact each event has on future outcomes. The webbed timeline (Figure 2) will show a cyclical patterning of three types of events: policy, built form and community. Policies react to existing communities, resulting in built form. The combination of built form and policy allows for the evolution of a neighborhood and community. As each community elicits a response and reaction, a new cycle begins. This is the generative formula for the creation of the American city.

Like an onion, the city’s current form and culture must be peeled back for a layered relationship of events to be understood. Kansas City is an ideal place to illustrate this process: it is one of the most distinctly segregated cities in the United States, it has lasting cultural touchstones as a result of persistent, racially inequitable development, and it is a prototypical American city in terms of development, size, and demographics. The analysis

The American city is at a transformative moment; urban cores are being rethought, re-worked, and revitalized for a new residential population who want to live, work, and entertain themselves in one place. An influx of investment and people has put enormous pressure on land and property. As a result, the displacement of historically marginalized Black communities is on the rise, repeating patterns of the past. Designers,

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

1925 Tom Pendergast Controls the City

1912 First Sicilian Mafia Family Arrives 1914 WW1 Sparks Great Migration

1883 Porters Plantation Transitions to Millionaires Row

1893 Economic Collapse

1878 Kansas City Stockyard Expansion

1906 Nichols Begins Sunset Hill

1923 First Zoning Ordinances

1890-1908 Eastside of Troost Growth

1865 Civil War Ends

1945 WW2 Ends

1944 G.I. Bill

1934 FHA Created 1933 HOLC Created

1935 Redlining

1934 Housing Act 1949 Housing Act

1956 City Limit Expansion

1970s-2000s Suburban Boom 1968-1974 Realtor Induced Panic Selling

1945 Suburban Growth

1956 Federal Aid Highway Act

Figure 2 Web timeline.

developers, and city agencies are all looking to capitalize on this moment to shape the future of their cities. To ensure this is done in socially, racially, and economically equitable ways, comprehending how cities arrived at this moment is a critical step in moving forward. This paper ultimately aims to both inform and transform the discourse on American cities into a more open, empathetic conversation between policy makers, designers, and the public. Through this discourse, any urban project should react not only to its physical context, but to

2011 Beacon Hill Development

1960s-1990s White Flight 2008 The Great Recession

1968 Kansas City Race Riot

2017 Kansas City East Side Taxi Initiative

1971 War on Drugs

1950s-1980s Lack of Business and Jobs 1949-1969 Rezoning and Highway Construction

The Formation

Physical result or response Policy or legal reaction or result Other/interrelated but non dependent The East Side’s Critical Path

2010 City Market Housing

1987 Wayne Miner Houses Demolished

1968 Fair Housing Act

1949-1970 Blight, Urban Renewal and Public Housing

1939

1973 Nixon’s Moratorium on all public housing

1990s Broken Window Policing

1968-1974 Section 235

1954 School Desegregation

1954 Housing Act

The Foundation 1910

1970-1974 Grassroots Community Associates Begin Fight for Fair Housing

1968 MLK Assasinated

1937 First Slum Clearance Attempt

1936 No Public or Private Investment in Redlined Areas

1904 Streetcar Begins

The Roots 1865

1939 WW2 Begins

1929 The Great Depression

1908 Racially Restrictive Covenants

1940 L.P. Cookingham City Manager

1945 Harry S. Truman Elected President

1920 NAREB Created

1932 FHLB Created

1893 Banks Panic Drop Housing Prices

1925-1939 Over 300 Speak Easys Clubs and Jazz Halls

1919 Volstead Act “Prohibition”

1909 George Kessler Parks & Blvd. Construction 1880-1930 Large Population Shift in Kansas City

1939 Tom Pendergast Arrested

1975 118% Increase in Crime on East Side

The Resultant 1968

what created that context, and for whom. Any re-populating city should ask not only who will live there in the future, but who was there in the past.

A meaningful definition of “city” should incorporate the notion that a city is something that actively functions, rather than something that is simply there. With this narrative in hand, the conversation surrounding equitable city growth and policy decisions can be directed towards a more strategic and solution-focused question: “What do we do now?” Using this tool, highlevel approaches and strategies can be evaluated with a pointed focus on “undesigning” this racially divisive legacy.

By illuminating a city’s collective memories, Orchestrated Urbanism hopes to empower a city’s collective aspirations.

2016 Kansas City Streetcar

2008 Kansas City Power and Light District

The Return 2008

2017

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12th St.

18th St.

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The Roots

Historic neighborhoods guiding the early locations of communities.

Prospect Ave.

The Paseo

Troost Ave.

t./W orn all Rd .

Ma in S

Missouri

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Kansas

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% Black by Census Block Group 1 Porters Plantation 2 Hell’s Half Acre 3 Church Hill 4 Millionaires Row 5 Quality Hill 6 The North End 7 Belividere 8 Hicks Hollow 9 Vinegar Gulch

10 Black Core 11 Hyde Park 12 Roanoke 13 Westport 14 Rockhill 15 The Wards Property 16 Sunset Hills 17 East Side Development

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

The Roots The racial divide and inequity in our cities today is as extreme as it ever has been. To begin to analyze how cyclical events shaped the modern city, we need a baseline against which to measure development and racial patterns. Racial policies shaping cities in the United States can be traced back to the beginning of the country.

When discussing the creation of the modern city, and the legal segregation of Blacks, the baseline can be set around 1865, at the end of the Civil War, when a great shift occurred in the way Americans lived and distributed themselves throughout the country.

Kansas City was in its infancy in 1865, having only become a city two years before, and housing a modest population of 4,418 people, 190 of whom were Black.1 Perched high on a bluff between the Missouri and the Kansas Rivers, the area that became Kansas City had principally been an outpost for settlers heading west. Though Kansas City sat on the westernmost edge of Missouri, one of only a few union slave states, it did not have many plantations nor slaves. Blacks were distributed throughout the city, with the largest concentration south of Independence Avenue between Grand and Baltimore.

The most notable plantation was the 365-acre Porter Plantation, centered on Troost Avenue.2 Following the civil war, as the city’s population boomed, Blacks dispersed and integrated

amongst White and European enclaves.

By 1870 the population was 32,260 people, 3,770 of whom were Black.3 At this time, many Blacks and newly arrived European immigrants settled in “Hell’s Half Acre,” an area in the West Bottoms near the Stockyards and rail depot; this neighborhood located laborers close to their primary work: constructing the Hannibal Bridge.

Completed in 1869, the Hannibal Bridge was the first bridge to span the Missouri River catapulting Kansas City into a position as a national railroad hub, allowing the city’s stockyards to expand. By 1878, housing patterns shifted away from the west bottoms, so residents in Hell’s Half Acre pushed up the adjacent bluff to follow urban development south, away from the river.

While railroad construction and stockyard expansion thrived, a handful of wealthy entrepreneurs made Kansas City home. The initial location of the estates and subsequent developments of Kersey Coates, Webster Withers, William Rockhill Nelson, and Charles Morse would shape the physical and social geography of the city for the next 150 years. Between 1857 and 1886, these families created multiple iconic neighborhoods including Quality Hill, “Millionaires Row,” (Figure 3) and Rockhill. In 1871, the Wards, a family critical to shaping modern Kansas City, arrived. The Wards bought 450 acres to the east of Nelson’s property near Brush Creek, south

1 Numbers from Kansas City Public Library and Special Collections Staff.

2 Porters Plantation had between 40 and 100 slaves. The Big House sat at 2709 Tracy and was surrounded in a semi-circle by slave quarters. The plantation had livestock, a fruit orchard, and a cornfield that sat at 31st and Troost.

3 T he Ward’s bought their initial 450 acres from a trading friend, William Bent. He would keep and live in William Bent’s home. It still stands on its original location today at 1032 W. 55th St.

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Figure 3

L.V. Harkness home. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

of Morse’s community, and abutting the Kansas state line.4 These pivotal developments would be used as leverage to create the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City’s most notable development in the early 1900s.

The final piece in this framework of city development arrived in 1903, when J.C. Nichols made plans to work in land subdivision and test new landvalue ideas. Nichols began buying tracts of land on the far south side of the city, wedged south of Westport between the Nelsons and the Wards.

He admittedly began there because the land was inexpensive, but later conceded that the location played off the financial lure of the surrounding developments. By 1908 he was acquiring tracts of land from the Wards and started the early stages of the Sunset Hill Neighborhood.

He began implementing his land-value ideals which were nested in a belief that deed restrictions were one of the main drivers in the long-term success of subdivisions. Nichols noted that sub-divisions began to lose quality around the time the deed restrictions expired. In Sunset Hill, Nichols would tie the deed restrictions5 to the plats, as opposed to the typical approach tying the deed to the building, and

4 Worley, William S. J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities. Columbia, Miss.: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1990.

5 Deed restrictions are rules and regulations that govern lots or parcels of land. They are typically bound to land. They were meant to protect property value and control types of housing, setbacks, house sizes, colors, ownership, dues, etc. They would generally expire after a set amount of time.

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Figure 4

Church Hill. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

installed them as self-renewing lifetime deeds. These restrictions were initially used as a selling advantage as they indicated lasting quality; but as the restrictions grew increasingly strict they would serve as the backbone to a much larger organizing system of racial divide and segregation.

While white elites were expanding their land grab, the Black population was growing at a feverish rate, from a modest 190 residents in 1860 to 23,566 in 1910, an increase of 12,400%. Early on, their housing

was integrated throughout the city.

From Hell’s Half acre to the North End and Belvidere Hollow, Black, Irish, and German enclaves were intermixed. The Black core, however, was in “Church Hill,” (Figure 4) running from 8th to 12th streets along Troost.

Church Hill evolved from the Perry Place neighborhood which existed at the same intersections in 1857. Perry Place had been established by Kersey Coates, who was active in the Free State movement.6 Here, property was only sold to Blacks and focus was on community-building by preserving lots for schools and churches.7 Black population growth was accompanied by a housing boom in 1883. Willard Winner8 developed the largest area,

6 T he Free-State Movement was a group of settlers, many times abolitionists from New England, who opposed the expansion of slavery into Kansas and would forcibly resist proslavery forces attempted expansion.

7 Within Perry Place three major institutions were located here: The Allen Chapel AME Church, the Second Baptist Church, and Lincoln School.

8 Willard Winner subdivided 2,000 acres on the East Side between 1883 and 1886. In 1886 he purchased an additional 2,400 acres along a planned boulevard towards Independence. The boulevard would be completed in 1887 becoming today’s Willard Road and would connect The East Side to Independence being flanked by 3 railways, parks, and residential development.

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Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Figure 6

A typical Negro residence district.

Figure 7

Asa E. Martins “Our Negro Population.”

Figures 6 & 7 courtesy of New York Public Library Digital Collections.

a 4,400 acre parcel on the city’s East Side, extending from Troost Avenue towards the town of Independence.

Winner’s development was entirely built on speculation. Following the financial panic of 18939 and the ensuing run on banks, the prices of homes plummeted on the East Side, creating a homeownership opportunity for middle-class citizens, especially the Black community, who were in dire need of housing. As a result, development on the East Side of the city, from Troost Avenue to the Blue River, exploded.

Looking back at the development patterns at the beginning of the 20th century, the major organizational

strategies were driven by white upper-class entrepreneurs creating homes and enclaves for their own demographic. The white middle class had yet to establish an identity or distinct neighborhoods. Growth for Black and white middle and lower class within the established framework was driven by market forces and there were no regulatory practices controlling housing. There were, however, underlying social and racial drivers as Blacks did not have the same means of access to opportunities. Blacks, though “free” to choose where they lived, were becoming boxed into a few neighborhoods. Arriving initially on the East Side through the natural development of the city, Blacks would find themselves increasingly confined to small tracts of land by numerous conscious policies by both private and governmental entities.

Figure 5

1915 street map of Kansas City showing parks, cemeteries, park district boundaries, and street car lines. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

9 T he panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States. The panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and poor railroad financing. This in turn set off a series of bank failures, runs on the gold supply, and a drop in the U.S. Dollar.

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12th St.

18th St.

31st St.

39th St.

The Foundation Legal policy driving racial neighborhood boundaries.

Prospect Ave.

The Paseo

Troost Ave.

t./W orn all Rd .

Ma in S

Missouri

Broadway

47th St.

Kansas

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% Black by Census Block Group

Jazz Club Redlined Area: 1939 HOLC map

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

The Foundation While middle-class whites struggled to define an identity within the city and Black communities began to establish, the first wave of the Great Migration allowed Blacks’ physical and social presence to increase.10 As homeownership increasingly became a badge of social standing and middle-class domesticity was valued above all, middle-class whites grew anxious and sought ways to control where Blacks lived, resorting to social, political, and physical means to achieve that end. Developers like J.C. Nichols used policy to achieve this control, implementing the first racial covenant barring Blacks from most new residential developments in 1908.

Other middle-class whites resorted to physical means—bombings of Blacks’ homes became a frequent mechanism used to deter them from living in certain neighborhoods. The city itself used beautification projects as a controlling tool. The Parks and Boulevard System,11 (Figure 5) for example, plowed through Black neighborhoods, most notably the Paseo, ripping through the heart of the East Side and displacing thousands. The construction of a major railroad depot, Union Station, and multiple golf courses in tandem with the implementation of land-use changes began herding Blacks into specific neighborhoods.

Adding pressure to the white middle class were European immigrants, who were carving out their own neighborhoods. Many of these immigrants, especially Italians, settled in the North End immediately west of Belvidere Hollow, a Black enclave.

As a result of the white middle-class’ purposeful control of neighborhoods and this growing immigrant population, Blacks were forced into derelict neighborhoods with substandard housing (Figure 6) and reputations for deceit and promiscuity. Slowly, neighborhoods inhabited by Blacks began to be associated with the woes of urban life. By 1913, three major reports, (Figure 7) two Federal and one academic,12 had tied personal character to physical environment; this mentality became ingrained in members of the white middle class seeking stable property value.

This perception would further foster a propensity for residential homogeneity and spur the rise of aggressive forms of segregation in the city.

Kansas City established the Citizens League in 1917 to organize honest and efficient government, but following the Chicago Race Riots of 191913 became most concerned with preventing racial disturbances. The 1920s saw the city’s Black population balloon by 26%. This population increase demanded more

10 T he Great Migration saw the relocation of some 6 million Blacks from the rural south to the urban Northeast and Midwest. The migration took place in two waves, the first wave was 1916-1939, the second 1940-1970.

11 William Rockhill Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star, championed the City Beautiful movement in Kansas City and would advocate for and hire George Kessler to design and construct an initial 9.8 miles of boulevards and 323 acres of park space.

12 The three reports: The Board of Public Welfare’s 1912 Report on Housing, The Board of Public Welfare’s 1913 “The Social Prospectus of Kansas City”, and Asa E. Martins’ 1913 “Our Negro Population.”

13 T he 1919 Chicago Race Riots followed years of rising racial tensions culminating in a white man throwing rocks at a group of Black men, ultimately causing the death of Eugene Williams, and the white police officer arresting one of the Black men and not the white culprit. The following five days were marred by violence and anger, cities across the country were forced to respond.

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Jazz music structure:

The high demand for performers and overcrowding on the East Side created a unique music scene. Competition was high and the clubs stayed open all hours of the night.

Battles between musicians were common— each musician pushed the other, playing double time and going in and out of key. The dueling musicians, increased speed, and high level of competition all manifested in a time change in jazz, from 2/4 to 4/4, and ultimately fueled Charlie Parker’s creation of bebop.

Figure 8

Charlie Parker with Jay McShann band.

Ira Berger/Alamy Stock Photo

stores, churches, and business, all of which limited land available for residential development and resulted in an average of 4.5 families per residence in the Black East Side.

In hopes of mediating population growth and mounting tensions, the Citizens League created an interracial committee. The committee’s primary goal was to preserve communal peace and it believed maintaining racial separation within the city would prevent unwanted confrontation thus preventing riots. It proposed partitioning the city into homogenous

racial segments, deterring Blacks from moving into white neighborhoods by ensuring Blacks were satisfied with the physical condition of their neighborhoods.

In addition to the committee’s actions, white residents, who were alarmed by the rapid change in land use brought by the population influx, created an “anti-ugly” campaign to preserve residential districts and home values.

Believing the encroachment of nonresidential mixed-uses would detract from home value and attract Blacks, the committee advocated for singleuse development zones. To quell the outcry, the city passed an ordinance in 1922 restricting the locations

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Figure 9

REP24COL; RG 195/Home Owners Loan Corporation City Survey File.1939 Kansas City, Missouri Security Map—Location: 450, 68:3:6/Box 126.

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advocated that racial covenants were contracts between private individuals and were enforceable. As a result, Armour Hills was developed with deeds prohibiting the sale or occupancy of homes to Blacks, with a goal of selling an upper-class lifestyle to the white middle class. In line with these developments, a 1925 Federal Council of Churches report stating that Kansas City, Detroit, and Cleveland were experiencing the worst racial tensions in the country, and finding that most of the strife revolved around housing. Federal policy and societal changes would only exacerbate these conditions in the coming decades.

Figure 10

REP006C; RG 195/Home Owners Loan Corporation City Survey File. 1939 Kansas City, Missouri Area Descriptions—Location: 450, 68:3:6/Box 126.

of stores, cleaners, and service stations. J.C. Nichols’ new white middle-class development, Armour Hills, would manifest these new policies and community mentalities.

The 1917 Buchanan v. Warley case banned cities from segregating housing by race: however, the courts

While institutions and formal organizations were working to formally control the development patterns of the city, a series of key societal moments played out in coordination, exacerbating the ramifications of racially segregated housing: prohibition, Tom Pendergast’s reign, the Mafia, and jazz. In 1919, America said goodbye to alcohol with the passage of the Volstead Act. Kansas City, however, was run by Tom Pendergast, a power-wielding city manager with an eye for nightlife, gambling, and financial profit.14 Pendergast had an in with the Mafia15 on city’s north side, and would do anything he could to promote their business for his name’s sake.

The relationship of these two powers would make Kansas City one of the “wettest most wide-open towns

14 Kansas City was controlled by a city manager selected by the city council. Tom Pendergast had control of this council and thus gained control of the city easily. Pendergast ran many companies, like a ready-mix concrete company, that was awarded city contracts and build numerous civic buildings during the depression. He had close relationships with the mafia and each allowed the other to further prosper. He was finally arrested and convicted of tax evasion in 1939.

15 T he Kansas City Crime Family, or the Civella Family, arose out of the DiGiovanni brother’s arrival from Sicily in 1912. Originally profiting off of a variety of criminal operations their fortunes improved greatly with prohibition.

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

in the country”,16 and together they would establish and attract many illegal saloons and clubs. To locate these clubs with the least public resistance, areas were sought which already had debauchery or low property value; this fell primarily in Black neighborhoods, most notably along 12th and 18th streets. A high number of clubs demanded a high number of entertainers, so musicians like Count Basie, Bennie Morton, and Charlie Parker, flocked to Kansas City.

Additionally, in 1920, the Negro National Baseball League was established and the Kansas City Monarchs became one of its most popular teams.

The collision of these events is where policy, politics and culture meet.

The racially restrictive covenants and policies established in the preceding decades constricted where the influx of Black musicians could live; the Troost corridor became a city within a city. Due to the advantageous local musicians union17 and promising number of venues, musicians poured in. The high demand for performers and overcrowding on the East Side created a unique music scene. Black residents, who were charged double the going rate for housing, hosted rent parties to help pay. Between performances at clubs musicians would play at the parties drawing neighbors who were charged a cover to attend. Competition was high and the clubs stayed open all hours of the night. The racial segregation

of housing, rent gouging, and the defiance of prohibition led to a fundamental change in jazz: the birth of bebop, time signature change from 2/4 to 4/4, and the creation of the Kansas City Style. (Figure 8) Due to its illicit economy, Kansas City did not feel the Great Depression as badly as other similar cities.

However, federal housing policies implemented as a result of the Great Depression would alter the city’s landscape forever.

As part of the process to help America recover from the Depression, New Deal policies were put in place to spur the economy. Sparking the housing industry was a major component, both providing financial assistance for troubled loans and creating money for new construction. Various institutions were created, including the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) to increase funds for mortgages, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) to refinance mortgages, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to set standards for insuring loans. As part of the 1934 Housing Act, the FHLB asked the HOLC to study 239 cities and determine if a neighborhood was desirable for lending. The HOLC graded each neighborhood of a city by creating color coded maps ranging from green (A), the most desirable, to blue, yellow, and finally red (D), areas considered too risky for construction loans—a practice that would become known as “red lining.” (Figure 9) The

16 Hayde, Frank R. The Mafia and the Machine, The Story of the Kansas City Mob. Fort Lee: Barricade Books In, 2007. p 27-28.

17 Most musicians in the early 1900s were travelling musicians and played under a booking association, the most common being the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A). TOBA was notoriously harsh on black performers holding them to higher standards and charging them a higher fee if they did not show up to play. Many travelling artists found the easy ambience of Kansas City enjoyable and put down roots only strengthening Musicians Local 627. The lack of law enforcement during prohibition would only increase the influx of musicians under the Musicians Union.

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resulting maps were accompanied by write-ups for each neighborhood explicitly stating the reason for the grade. In Kansas City, the East Side neighborhoods, boundaries that had been established by developer and realtor practices and reinforced by public sentiment in the preceding 60 years, were, in their entirety given a D grade and redlined. The write-up of the 65% Black East Side justifies the grade, stating “a homogenous invasion of the negro … values were shot long ago.”18 (Figure 10) A D grade was also given to the area around Union Hill, with 0% Black residents the D was justified stating “hemmed in on all sides by heavy traffic business streets … there is virtually no demand for detached houses.” In short, this process guaranteed that no new money would be provided for home construction or renovation in Black neighborhoods, and any resident looking for a new home or moving to the city would not be able to locate in these neighborhoods. Investment in Black communities was officially over.

In line with this new national agenda, policies pushed the idea of suburbs on White America, though there was little evidence showing a desire for this lifestyle. An enduring theory in American urban studies posits that white migration to the suburbs was due to a preference for low-density single-family homes. This notion of “preference” asserts that urban development patterns resulted from

free choice and consumer demand; however, it fails to identify why Blacks did not move to suburban areas while millions of whites did.19 While the concept of “white flight,” is common, the notion of whites fleeing in fear is misrepresented.

The federal government provided no alternatives for housing locations.

Due to redlining, if whites wanted to construct a home, the only loans available were in the suburbs.

Similarly, banks would not provide loans for improvements within Black neighborhoods, and Blacks rarely were approved for loans outside of the city.

As World War II approached, new housing acts, renewal plans, and city limit expansion would ensue, and the physical landscape of the city would be drastically altered. Barriers to housing for Blacks would move beyond legal and social control and into physical design as an impediment.

The Formation Faced with a floundering city budget following Tom Pendergast’s arrest in 1939, new city manager, L.P. Cookingham looked to capitalize on the start of World War II. After lobbying President Roosevelt for wartime opportunities, the city saw many new manufacturing facilities, jobs, and housing. Racial disparity would be the norm in these opportunities as well. No matter the increase in production needs, the percentage of Black laborers

18 From Zone 25 of the 1937 Red Lining Map of Kansas City, MO. 19 Gotham, Kevin Fox. Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, State University of New York Press, 2002. p. 5-6.

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Physical construction and development constricting the locations of neighborhoods and race.

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1 Central Business District 2 Columbus Park 3 Guinotte Manor 4 Riverview 5 Garfield 6 Woodland 7 Independence Plaza 8 12th and Vine 9 Wayne Miner Court 10 T.B. Watkins Homes

11 Manual 12 Attucks & Attucks East 13 Pennway Plaza 14 West Bluff 15 Hospital Hill 16 Crown Center 17 Trinity—St. Marys 18 East 23rd Street 19 Oak Park 20 Town Fork Creek

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Figure 11

Interstate construction. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

in wartime factories never exceeded 6%.20 War time housing experienced similar inequality. In many instances, federally-provided housing for Black laborers was of inferior quality and located significantly farther away from factories, resulting in numerous riots across the country as Blacks penetrated white communities.

As the war ended, Federal housing bills were created to accommodate the influx of returning vets resulting in an increased dispersal from urban centers while increasing the level of segregation for Blacks.

To provide post-war veteran benefits, the G.I. Bill looked to afford returning military service men access to aid for college, low- interest mortgages, small-business loans, job training, hiring privileges, and unemployment payments. The most pivotal component, low-interest mortgages, were designed to provide widespread access to home ownership. But the bill, run by each cities’ local officials, still fell victim to the same lending policies established in the ’30s. Of the first 67,000 mortgages handed out nationwide, only 100 were provided to non-whites. New housing flew to the outer peripheries, forcing cities to think differently about housing and find ways to maintain their tax base as population moved beyond city limits.

20 Sherow, Jim, and Virgil W. Dean, eds. ““We All Had a Cause” Kansas City’s Bomber Plant, 1941-1945.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, 28 (2005): 244-61.

Accessed August 15, 2017.

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Figure 12

Urban renewal.

Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

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In Kansas City, Cookingham was implementing strategies to contain this phenomenon. In his 19 years, he expanded the Kansas City’s limits from 60 acres to 130 acres, an annexation that allowed the city’s tax base to stay strong, but further decimated the Black inner city as funds were pulled further away from the core. Priorities shifted to connecting downtown to these far-flung suburban enclaves.

With the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act, Kansas City implemented some of the earliest miles of the nation’s interstate system, much of which blasted through Black inner-city neighborhoods. (Figure 11) These infrastructure moves across the country evoked the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis, a D.C.-based committee from 1950s through the ’70s formed to advocate against the highways (and credited for coining the phrase, “white man’s roads through Black man’s homes”).

Blight, a term that originally referred to crop-killing bacteria, was suddenly used to designate areas for urban renewal, a process most heavily applied within Black communities.

The areas defined as blighted followed the same lines used for redlining, and those were the same boundaries and patterns established by racial residential covenants in the early 1900s. Blighted areas were demolished and re-established through urban renewal. To prevent

public backlash cities blanketed this designation on neighborhoods with low property value and decades of disinvestment. Proponents of renewal used these neighborhoods to illustrate the dangers of city living and to sell citizens on the modernity new development could bring. This allowed the entire East Side to be deemed blighted and slated for renewal.

(Figure 12) Highways and housing were urban renewal’s greatest tools. Cookingham encircled the whole of Kansas City’s downtown inside the depressed I-670 freeway loop, (Figures 13) bulldozing historic areas, such as Church Hill, to accommodate it. The city propelled I-70 east towards St. Louis, down what used to be 15th street, splitting the Black East Side in two. (Figures 14) Cookingham began housing renewal on the south side of I-70 around the jazz district at 18th and Vine, creating the Attucks neighborhood. The resulting 500 middle-income homes were far fewer than needed to house displaced residents. To rectify this while minimizing the destruction of revenue-generating land, dense apartment blocks were provided on small tracts of land. These federallyfunded housing projects were segregated by race, and two of the first four projects were for Blacks: the T.B. Watkins homes and Wayne Miner Court, (Figure 15) both located within historically Black neighborhoods.

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Figures 13

15th Street—before and after. Image courtesy of Kansas City Now and Then.

Figures 14

13th Street and Troost—before and after. Image (left) courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

These neighborhoods were now surrounded on three sides by freeways and land rezoned for industrial use, cutting off the East Side from the rest of the city in three ways: financially, by the refusal of lending from banks, physically, with highways

and destruction of homes, and socially, by decades of negative perception created by false associations. The isolation would prove destructive to a community who had previously thrived despite being forcefully located.

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Figure 15

Wayne Miner Court.

Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

The Resultant As racial strife reached its peak in the 1960s, the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Report, was established to determine the underlying causes. The report, released in 1968, would be critical of the federal government’s lack of equality in housing, economic opportunity, and education in the inner cities. The report famously states “our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one white— separate and unequal.” 21 Though the committee put forth numerous suggestions, President Johnson

ignored the report and its findings.

One month later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and rioting ensued in 100 cities, including Kansas City.

The end of the ’60s signaled an ominous direction for America’s urban cores. (Figure 16) By the end of the decade, it was clear to housing advocates and civil rights groups that the housing programs established by the government were one of the main drivers of racial segregation, inner city disinvestment, and suburbanization. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 looked to rectify this is in a number of ways, primarily by shifting funds away from city housing authorities and instead providing subsidies directly to lending institutions and relaxing mortgage standards to allow more

21 United States. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Washington, DC: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., US GPO, 1968.

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Income, home value, crime and other social indicators all align with historical legal and physical boundaries.

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Figure 16

Kansas City race riots.

Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

low-income residents to obtain them.22 Specifically, Section 235’s goal was to assist families with an annual income of between $3,000 and $5,000 to purchase new or renovated homes.

This action was meant to level the playing field, but when analyzing where and to whom the funds were

distributed it shows that 80% of new construction was provided to white families in the suburbs, while, 90% of existing housing was sold to Black residents in the city.23 This led to high racial turnover in urban neighborhoods and propelled white flight. In 1950, only three of the 33 census tracts bounded by Troost on the west had 90% or more Black population, 28 of 33 by 1970, and 33 of 33 by 1980. Real estate agents profited enormously from Section 235 by

22 Gotham, Fox Kevin. Separate and Unequal. The Housing Act of 1968 and Section 235.

Sociological Forum, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2000: 13-37. Kluwer Academic Publishing.

Accessed August 15, 2017.

23 Ibid.

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selling inflated properties with only cosmetic repairs to unsuspecting poor. Once the low-income residents were in shoddily “remodeled” homes, underlying issues would come to light; unable to keep up with repairs and mortgage payments, residents were forced to abandon their properties.

There was an 8.1% foreclosure rate on such homes, 99% of which occurred in the central city. FHA guidelines mandated that homes remained vacant during foreclosure, ensuring these homes were unoccupied through the ’70s and ’80s as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had little luck selling the dilapidated properties to investors. In 1973 Nixon put a moratorium on all public and subsidized housing programs.

The discontinuation of Section 235 essentially re-redlined the inner city, as private interests and banks would not invest in properties there without government backing. Through Section 235, poor whites could obtain the greatest asset in personal wealth accumulation, a home, while Blacks in the inner city were further segregated into an increasingly neglected and inhospitable environment.

The next 40 years would see the trend of disinvestment and a general perception of “the other side of the tracks” continue. Kansas City had become “hypersegregated,” 24 and out of necessity, residents of the poorest neighborhoods developed a new measure of success since

the traditional system25 had failed them time and again. In American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Douglas Massey points out that in the first few generations of impoverished classes, members of the neighborhood known as “old heads” “acted as a guidance counselor and moral cheerleader” 26 and represented traditional American ideals” of hard work and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Similarly, there were “neighborhood mothers” who corrected and ensured good behavior from children on the block.

As younger generations grew and saw their parents and their grandparents continually denied access to equal opportunity and financial growth, they grew skeptical of these neighborhood fixtures, and of the system as a whole.

This generation would begin to find its own way to financial prosperity and establishing stature in the community.

Ramifications like drug and gang culture came to be seen as rational economic decisions within this context.

This new industry led to violence, as defending livelihood meant defending a specific income territory. This spawned the infamous “war on drugs,” and an increased police presence in these same historically maligned neighborhoods that led to increased arrests and created many singleparent households. These outcomes only exacerbated existing inequality and lack of upward mobility within the Black inner city.

24 Massey, Douglas & Denton, Nancy. American Apartheid. There are 5 dimensions of segregation, scoring above a 60 on 4 out of 5 defines a place as hyper-segregated. Kansas City scored an average of 85.7.

25 “ Traditional system” refers to the understood network of schools, businesses, and municipal investment that allows an individual to succeed based on his or her own merits and measure success off of education attainment, financial prosperity, and stability of health and family. This system was not only dismantled it was never established within the Black neighborhoods. Black communities were left to fend for themselves from the beginning.

26 Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. pg. 173 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

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Naturally, many suburban whites’ perceptions of Blacks worsened; the economic and social conditions became intrinsically linked to race.

When income levels, education levels, crime and murder rates are analyzed in Kansas City, they most always align directly with the East Side of Troost and the areas which were slated as blight and bulldozed in the 1954. These modern statistics align with the areas that were red-lined to prevent loans and investment, with racial covenants, and with the early housing boom of the 1880s in which Black Kansas Citians moved to these neighborhoods out of necessity. This overlap is a perfect representation of structural racism and the normalized and legitimized range of policies and practices that produced cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color.

While the inner city continued to struggle, suburban growth ballooned as homeownership and exurban development continued to thrive for decades. Unfortunately, when the housing bubble burst in 2008, Black Americans were again disproportionately negatively affected, as Black high- and middleincome wage earners were 80% more likely to lose their homes than white homeowners of equal stature.

The Center for Responsible Lending uncovered that during the housing boom, 6.2% of whites with a credit score of 660 or higher received

high-interest mortgages but 21.4% of Blacks with the same score or higher received the same loans. Following a long history of policies that misled, misguided, and oppressed Black residents of the inner city, several major banks had purposely given Blacks subprime mortgages, including to those that would have qualified for a prime loan.27 Ironically, the 2008 collapse and its subsequent wake of foreclosures were what finally ripened urban cores for their current redevelopment.

The Return As the dust settled from the 2008 collapse and the country began to pull out of the recession, a new generation of professionals entered the workforce. They had lived through the recession and learned a unique set of values that would lead them to seek new living patterns. This younger generation didn’t place the same weight on homeownership as previous generations, and rejected the notion of long commutes. To adapt, cities began to reimagine themselves and focus on redeveloping their cores with entertainment, shopping, adequate housing, transportation, and worldclass public space. After a 100-year hiatus, cities began to reinvest in their urban cores.

In Kansas City, the Black residents of the East Side watched as newcomers came and “discovered” neighborhoods and city life; the same places that

27 “Staggering Loss of Black Wealth Due to Subprime Scandal Continues Unabated.” The American Prospect. Accessed October 30, 2017. http://prospect.org/article/staggeringloss-Black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated.

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Recent development reinforces historic boundaries.

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Figure 17

Beacon Hill land use.

Image courtesy of www.beaconhillkansascity.com

Blacks had been forced to live for decades, places they had made into thriving communities with little investment from the city. Black communities, however, remained supportive of plans that were good for the city. The East Side supported projects in districts the city legally

defined as “blighted” to get Tax Increment Financing (TIF) projects passed, including a new entertainment district, The Power and Light District, and the already world-class shopping district, the Plaza. The East Side continued to show support for city growth by voting in favor of fixed rail transit and new housing in the urban core. (In spite of this support, the city’s new streetcar line runs straight from the river to Union Station, completely bypassing low-income residential areas.) New housing was prioritized first in the picturesque City Market, then in converted office space within the central business district. White residents, looking for affordable neighborhoods, found themselves moving beyond the business district and south along Troost. Beacon Hill (Figure 17) has become the neighborhood most representative of this southward movement. Running along Troost from roughly 31st to 20th, the neighborhood matches the boundary of the Porter Plantation and Millionaires Row from the late 1800s. The neighborhood can be defined as New Urbanist, a mixed-use development with an array of singlefamily homes and townhomes, retail shops, and businesses. The mixeduse strategy is positive for the area; however, the target homeowner is 50% from out-of-town and 40% from the “Primary Market Area” west of Troost. Yet again, the primary market reinforces historical racial boundaries by defining a boundary

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that extends from Troost west towards Hyde Park and south towards the Country Club Plaza; the target area does not include the East Side. Kansas City has seen the largest change in available housing inventory in the Midwest,-55.4% between 2012 and 2017. With this growth comes the responsibility to form a new robust and expansive housing policy that is able to advocate and provide for new residents while ensuring housing for longtime residents is also a priority.

By default, new investment and development will instigate a demographic inversion, with the affluent moving to the urban core and the poor pushed to the suburbs, acting as an accelerant to gentrification. A hot-button term that connotes many of the underlying conditions and policies outlined in this paper, the word gentrification is often an over-simplification of complex conditions. The simplistic view fails to address a fundamental question: what causes cities to be suddenly prime for redevelopment? Once development is physical and visible, the wheels of change have already been in motion for a significant amount of time. The forces that shape the city and allow for ripe development conditions need to be understood so they can be harnessed and used as tools to shape and create an inclusive future; otherwise, if left to its own trajectory, the city will manifest in away beneficial only to those with the agency and means to guide the change.

Benchmark Policies and Taxes:

Kansas City is using a citizen-led tax initiative for the East Side, which imposes a 1/8th-cent sales tax for all city residents collecting $8 million a year for East Side investment. The revenue generated will target broad goals such as blight abatement, environmental remediation, and land acquisition—ultimately removing key barriers that prevent developments from getting off the ground. Additional uses will revolve around crime prevention through technology and streetscaping improvements that would provide increased security and confidence within the community.

New York City uses tax incentive and zoning ordinance to help provide more equitable growth. The city’s 421-A (Affordable New York Housing Plan as of 2017) program creates incentives to provide affordable housing within market-rate projects. As of 2017 the program has expanded to require a greater amount of housing and fair wages for construction workers. The city is simultaneously rezoning neighborhoods through inclusionary zoning to mandate affordable housing. The zoning requires set-asides of affordable units between 25% and 30%.

Community Groups:

Community partners are critical to the success of any development project. At the corner of 31st and Troost in Kansas City, Reconciliation Services was founded to build informed relationships and cultivate a community seeking reconciliation to transform Troost from a dividing line into a gathering place. With a small cafĂŠ and computers, the center welcomes the public, offering job placement and housing services, community meals, and therapeutic services for thousands of community members struggling to survive poverty and trauma.

The group acts as a unifier between the existing community and the newcomers, providing resources to those who are struggling and awareness to those unfamiliar with the area. The unique combination of community resources and education has helped Reconciliation begin to bridge a divide that has existed for nearly 200 years.

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Image

Community-oriented architecture: La Central.

Developing the Future of the American City With an understanding of the forces behind the creation of the current city, the question turns to: what now?

How do we design better cities and neighborhoods that position existing communities as focal points of development, as assets as opposed to liabilities? How can new development center on social and racial equity?

The lens that has been constructed highlights the level of purposeful

orchestration that occurred in the creation of the American city.

In order to address the ramifications of this orchestration, cities must make cognizant design and planning decisions that directly address the structured racism. American cities are in the early stages of a new cycle of growth and response, one of great tension and opportunity. With one side having experienced hundreds of years of systemic oppression while fighting to maintain their affordable communities, and the other seeking affordability and an urban lifestyle,

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Community-Oriented Architecture:

Architecture and design, in the end, are the physical manifestation of these policies and goals. FXCollaborative’s La Central, in the South Bronx, is a 1.1-million-square-foot development that is 100% affordable and embodies the ethos of designing with a community.

Developed with Hudson Companies, the project was rooted in community from the very beginning. The project offers 992 apartments, a 50,000-square-foot YMCA, a home for BronxNet public access television, a public skatepark, a GrowNYC urban rooftop farm, a partnership with Bronx High School of Science to operate a rooftop telescope, 124,000 square feet of community space, and 46,000 square feet of retail space. Additionally, 160 supportive units are set aside for the newly homeless, veterans, and adults living with HIV. These residents are provided access to resources beyond housing.

In Kansas City, a holistic planning approach is being undertaken in the Wendell Phillips neighborhood, where Kansas City’s Urban Neighborhood Initiative has joined the Purpose Built Community Group. A purpose-built community’s goal is to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by establishing a cradle-to-college education pipeline that ensures student growth, creates high-quality, mixed-income housing, and introduces community wellness programs that promote healthy living. The revitalization project is centered on a charter school that is overseen by the Kansas City public school district, allowing the neighborhood to then radiate out from this core.

how can these mesh? Today, there are numerous places and projects beginning to address inequality and racial division successfully. As with any design project, there is no single tangible solution that is applicable to all sites or cities; however, the successful projects are not rooted in design aesthetic, tax incentives, or community farms; they are driven by the unified collaboration of the design team, client, municipal agencies, and others building lasting relationships with existing communities and allowing projects to grow from the inside out.

Applying this lens to each project will

yield three overarching approaches— awareness, advocacy, and action— and if implemented can steer projects towards an equitable future.

Awareness must be the first step and is the primary purpose of this paper.

To have awareness means being conscious and informed of not only what happened but how something happened. This paper provided an awareness of Kansas City’s story as a way of showing the layers of inequity. A project team, city agency, and even the public should be aware of a neighborhood’s history, who lives there and why it has the characteristics and boundaries it does. The awareness moves deeper into developing an understanding of the consequences of past actions.

Developing an awareness for a city, a neighborhood, site, and community allows designers to more completely address shortcomings and propose solutions. It provides the tools needed to move beyond the physical environment and address the underlying conditions and causes. Developing an awareness may be the most challenging process as it requires a holistic questioning of motive and intent in the design of our cities.

In return, however, it provides the grandest “aha” moment and gives clarity to the currently invisible structure of the city.

The advocacy component may be the most vital piece of the puzzle.

Historically marginalized communities,

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with decades of oppression, do not always have the agency to fight for change. Generally, they are not in the room. These communities are not represented in the profession as professionals; for instance, the 2010 census showed that only 13% of city planners in the New York Metro are Black, making it even more challenging to have their needs heard, understood, and addressed. Designers, planners, government officials, and developers are the shapers of the city, it is our onus to fight for was is right in a given place. New housing or a gas station may have no explicit requirement to provide for the community, but each project must be seen as an opportunity and an investment in an existing community. The community must be seen as an asset, one with latent possibilities, and if positioned as the focus its untapped potential can become the driver and backbone of a project.

Taking action comes in many forms depending on the project. Most projects, however, begin with defining the problem or need of a place. This is where the biggest change can take place. Defining a problem is one of the first steps. Often, design teams show up at community meetings, unroll a map with already identified problems, and proceed to tell the community what its problem is and how they will fix it for them. Projects must move beyond designing for the community and into an attitude of designing with

the community through investigative design charrettes, mapping through storytelling, and personal engagement within the community. Communities are warranted the opportunity to share their intimate knowledge, understanding, and experience of a place and how it functions. Once a problem is defined, project boundaries can be established. There must be cognizant design interventions which run cross-grain against historic borders. By focusing only on improving within a community and not building bridges within and between communities a majority of projects with goals of bettering a neighborhood generally end up reinforcing historical boundaries; an effort must be made to blur these lines. Projects and design interventions should be set up in a way that the success of one neighborhood is reliant on the success of another. The project should be mutually beneficial with other development. This will create opportunities for physical interaction between communities, thus bringing awareness to the public and uniting people from all walks of life.

The three approaches work together.

They show that the success of a project is not the result of a single player but the intentional coordination of all those at the table. Architects, planners, developers, city agencies, and community groups must all be on the same page at the beginning.

Design, though it plays a role, is not what makes developments and

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spaces socially equitable. It is programs, opportunities, and policies that provide access for formerly underserved populations to be upwardly mobile that foster unity. This is what allows a project to be equitable for all and begin to bridge the racial divides endemic in our cities.

Cities are not static, they are living organisms that are constantly changing and reacting. To design the equitable cities of the future, designers must acknowledge and address head-on the racial drivers of past events. The city of today was built on prior events, and the success of cities in the future relies on the reconciliation of past decisions with present needs.

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Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Tyler Cukar is an urban designer and architect experienced in visioning, town-scaping, and master planning.

He has worked on a range of projects including regional growth strategies, district revitalizations, high-level reuse strategies, and transit networks and stations. Emphasizing the fundamental aspects that shape a place, Tyler strives to understand the particularities of every project’s social, economic, and physical constraints. He is adept at working with communities, promoting integration and connectivity, solving issues of isolation, and enhancing value while maintaining the integrity of a place and its people.

Tyler’s work has been published in Architect Magazine, Charter of the New Urbanism, City Vision, and many other publications.

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