Kansas City’s path forward is simple yet powerful. It needs to recommit to its own strengths—the same ones that built the city in the first place.
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To have enduring prosperity, a community cannot squander its land; it must develop in ways that are financially productive.
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The test used to evaluate tax incentives is full of holes. Not surprisingly, this has led to problems, and not just in Kansas City. Here’s how to know whether tax incentives will be generating new economic activity…or just moving money around.
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Tax incentives are a powerful weapon to attack urban problems. But Kansas City—like many cities—has a history of using them recklessly and ineffectively: more “Ready, Fire, Aim” than “Ready, Aim, Fire.”
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There is nothing stopping local leaders from addressing their community’s legacy of racial injustice. Here is a credible plan for getting started.
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Parking is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to see just how much we have of it. But the data shows us. The data also reveals what a waste of precious resources all that parking is.
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We’ve never been able to afford the Suburban Experiment. But now that our 20th-century infrastructure needs to be repaired or replaced, the bills are coming due in an obvious way.
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The choice to carve up Kansas City with freeways ranks among the worst planning mistakes in the region's history. Many decades later, the city is still is suffering the consequences.
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Before the age of the freeway, Kansas City was famously a streetcar city. The pattern of development that streetcars fostered was a highly productive one that has stood the test of time. In fact, it still generates an outsized share of the city’s wealth today.
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Kansas City was once described as the “Paris of the Plains.” Today it is the freeway capital of America. A look at the city’s history of gobbling up land on its outskirts shows why Kansas City could be considered a poster child for America’s radical experiment in suburbanization.
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