Journal of Planning History 2003 Wagner 331 55
Journal of Planning History 2003 Wagner 331 55
Journal of Planning History 2003 Wagner 331 55
Planning History
http://jph.sagepub.com/
The Politics of Urban Design: The Center City Urban Renewal Project in Kansas City, Kansas
Jacob A. Wagner
Journal of Planning History 2003 2: 331
DOI: 10.1177/1538513203259225
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10.1177/1538513203259225
JOURNAL
Wagner
/ THE
OF PLANNING
POLITICS OF
HISTORY
URBAN /DESIGN
November 2003
ARTICLE
In contrast to other urban renewal projects that erased the presence of minority and
working-class residents, the design of the Center City Plaza in downtown Kansas City,
Kansas, was an attempt to provide a democratic space for a diverse citizenry. Initiated
by local officials, the project was intended to alter the image of the downtown. Environmental planner Elpidio Rocha was hired to design a pedestrian mall that included
abstract sculptural forms. In the context of deindustrialization and suburbanization,
however, urban renewal did not halt downtown decline and local political interests
dismantled the pedestrian mall, setting the stage for a new round of redevelopment.
urban renewal; Kansas City, Kansas; advocacy planning; urban design
n 1969, the Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, initiated the
second of two urban renewal projects in the downtown. Like other cities
engaged in redevelopment, public officials in Kansas City responded to
a declining economy by harnessing federal funds to finance clearance, public development, and private sector reinvestment. Economic and design
consultants informed public officials that the historic function of the central business district was changing and that the image of the downtown
needed radical alteration.
Yet the response of public officials in Kansas City, Kansas, was not simply
a repetition of some putative national model. City leaders considered the
advice of consultants and models from other cities while seeking their own
vision of what a new civic center might be. As historian Arnold Hirsch has
suggested, the analysis of urban renewal must include local variations in
the implementation of this federal program to produce a more subtle hisAUTHORS NOTE: I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Doug Blandy, Matt Garcia,
David Gladstone, Larry Hancks, Arnold R. Hirsch, Mickey Lauria, Tad Mutersbaugh, Elizabeth McAuliffe,
Robert K. Whelan, and three anonymous reviewers. Elpidio Rocha merits extra thanks for sharing his
work with me. Any omissions or mistakes are nobodys fault but mine. Please direct correspondence to
Jacob A. Wagner, College of Urban and Public Affairs, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
70148; e-mail: jawagner@uno.edu.
JOURNAL OF PLANNING HISTORY, Vol. 2 No. 4, November 2003 331-355
DOI: 10.1177/1538513203259225
2003 Sage Publications
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the westside barrio of Kansas City, Missouri, provided an inspiration for his
design for a new public center.
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Figure 1:
Urban renewal projects in Kansas City, Kansas. The Center City Urban Renewal Project is
in the middle of the map immediately adjacent to the citys first urban renewal effort, the
Gateway project.
Source: The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, Annual Report, 1972.
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tures in one of the citys oldest neighborhoods. While the renewal area as a
whole was planned for multistory commercial structures and office buildings, most of the demolitions were part of a parking lot expansion program.
The end result was a major transformation of the downtowns urban morphology and a precipitous decline in the number of residents living in the
area.24
Downtown redevelopment did not proceed without conflict. In June
1961, former residents of the area cleared for the Gateway project called for
the resignation of local urban renewal officials on grounds that the acquisition of properties for demolition was biased. Other problems with this project included a slow turnover of cleared lots and a weak market for the office
and commercial uses planned for the area.25 Nonetheless, these obstacles
and delays did not stop the downtown renewal program, and in 1965, the
city announced plans for a second project.
In 1966, two analyses were initiated in preparation for the Center City
project. The purpose of these studies was to support an application for federal funding and to justify government intervention in the downtown built
environment. These reports echoed the concerns over urban decline that
were so prevalent everywhere in the 1960s. Like many cities engaged in
urban renewal, both the problem and the solution for urban blight in Kansas
City were part of a broader national discourse. This narrative not only
shaped how policy makers and planners perceived the problems of the cit-
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ies they worked in but also influenced what types of policy options were
posed as solutions.28 Furthermore, these reports defined a group of insiders
and outsiders through an exclusive definition of the goals of downtown
redevelopment.
The first report was an economic analysis of the downtown commercial
district within the metropolitan context. The consultants, Hammer,
Greene and Siler (HGS) of Washington, D.C., identified downtown Kansas
City, Missouri, as the primary commercial core of the metropolitan region
and downtown Kansas City, Kansas, as the secondary commercial center.29
Their study found that downtown Kansas City, Kansas, had become competitively unattractive and in a general state of economic decline. The
consultants cited the automobile as the dominant factor in the changing
role of the downtown and that automobile-induced suburban sprawl had
contributed to the decline.30
The HGS report also reflects the racialized discourse of urban decline.
On the issue of crime, the consultants indicated that white middle-class
suburbanites had attitudinal reactions to the predominantly low-income
Negro neighborhoods proximate to downtown. This situation, the consultants explained, posed the challenge of psychologically convincing the
white residents of the suburbs that the downtown was safe and that inhabitants and customers from that neighborhood are not going to ruin the
Downtown shopping and business activities for residents of the suburbs.31
As these statements demonstrate, the professional approach to rationalizing inner-city areas through urban renewal defined the social groups
involved in terms of race and class while assuming that the interests of
these groups could be reorganized spatially through government action.
Local political actors and their consultants invoked the public interest in
their construction of the problem of decline and its remedy while the
implicit beneficiaries of the project were the downtown businesses and
property owners. In response to the identified and perceived conditions of
decline, the consultants analysis presented urban renewal and the Model
Cities program as the sources of improvement for downtown Kansas City.
Conveniently, federal programs could address each problem and improve
the image of the Downtown.32
Barton-Aschman Associates of Chicago completed the second study in
preparation for urban renewal in September 1968. Defined as a visual
restatement of the downtown, this report also focused on the image problems of the citys business district. Although the consultants claimed to be
concerned with more than appearance, their conclusions were primarily
aesthetic:
[This report] is acutely sensitive to the image of Center City. By this we mean the
mental picture formed in a persons mind when he [sic] considers the Center City
Area and what it means to him. For reasons explained in this report, it is necessary to
radically alter the commonly held image of Downtown Kansas City, Kansas.33
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all, this park provides an early example of the design process that Rocha
refined for the Center City project.39
To implement the design for a new civic center in Kansas City, Kansas,
Rocha assembled an interdisciplinary design collaborative. His primary
collaborator was Richard Reynolds, a geographer who conducted extensive
field research across the state of Kansas in preparation for the design
work.40 Rocha also involved Kansas City Arts Institute (KCAI) faculty member and sculptor Dale Eldred.41 Other members of the design collaborative
included stage lighting designer Patric Hickey and students from KCAI. 42
The centerpiece of the downtown redevelopment project was a mall. The
design elements produced for the mall were the result of a collaborative process. Rochas role was that of a bricoleur: he recycled the art objects produced by the members of the design team and generated new forms in tune
with the design concept.43 The collaborative began with the broadest pallet
available: the cultural landscapes of the state of Kansas, including imagery
from urban and rural environments, and from the working-class districts
and ethnic neighborhoods of Kansas City. As Rocha explained, One of the
reasons for taking our energies from the landscape, the cityscape, and the
people and translating them into manmade [sic] forms is to dignify them
through art in an urban environment.44 This strategy was both pragmatic
and indicative of Rochas design philosophy, which he described as the
creation of a humanized architecture and the development of a process
through a struggle for identity.45
In the fall of 1969, the work of the design collaborative was displayed at
the main branch of the public library on Minnesota Avenue. Tents were set
up to temporarily house a sixty-five-foot clay model of the proposed design.
In general, the project was well received by the public. Members of a citizen
advisory commission gave their support for the malls design. Editorials and
reviews in the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Kansan looked favorably on the work. An editorial in the Kansas City Star described the design
proposal as bold and a monumental piece of landscape sculpture. Don
Hoffmann, the art editor for the Star, offered a laudatory appraisal of the
design, suggesting that it was the most imaginative exercise of civic
design in Kansas City since the park completed by Rocha and Dale Eldred
seven years earlier.46
In January 1970, construction continued in the Gateway Urban Renewal
area, which was nearing completion. Work on the Center City project,
expected to begin in the summer of 1970, was delayed by a labor strike. The
concerns of Minnesota Avenue merchants that construction would hamper
holiday shopping in the fall further delayed construction. Finally, on February 22, 1971, a groundbreaking ceremony was held and construction of the
Center City mall began.47
By November, construction was almost finished, and on November 26,
1971, the semimall was officially dedicated the Center City Plaza.48 When
it was completed, the Center City Plaza contained a series of abstract sculp-
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Figure 2:
Fountains on the Center City Plaza near the corner of Minnesota Avenue and Eighth
Street evoked the imagery of plowed fields indicative of the agricultural heritage of the
state.
Source: The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas.
tures dispersed throughout a two-block area. Automobile traffic on Minnesota Avenue was reduced to a narrow, winding road, and on-street parking
was eliminated. Within this new space, there were seating areas, ornamental brick paving, lighting, and fountains (see Figure 2). Landscape plans
included plants and trees native to the state of Kansas. The Urban Renewal
Agency hailed the project as a new setting for downtown redevelopment.49
At the center of the new semimall was the intersection of Seventh Street
and Minnesota Avenue. To the east in the 600 block of Minnesota Avenue
was the Huron Cemetery, a historic burial site that predated the founding of
the city. Immediately west of the Seventh Street intersection stood the Wilderness of Mirrors, the projects most controversial and monumental
sculpture. The Wilderness of Mirrors consisted of thirty stainless-steel
towers or silos, each twenty-feet tall and divided into two groups that
straddled Minnesota Avenue. Two rows of six towers were directly in front
of a building that the Board of Public Utilities planned to renovate on the
north side of the avenue. Three rows, also of six towers each, were located
on the south side of the avenue. Together, the ensemble was an impressive
sight when first installed (see Figure 3).50
For this design, Rocha drew on a passage from Mexican poet Octavio
Pazs book The Labyrinth of Solitude:
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Figure 3:
Installation of the Wilderness of Mirrors, 1971. Workers install the Wilderness of Mirrors architectural element on the south side of Minnesota Avenue at Seventh Avenue.
Source: The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas.
In the United States man does not feel that he has been torn from the center of creation and suspended between hostile forces. He has built his own world and it is built
in his image: it is his mirror. But now he cannot recognize himself in his inhuman
objects, nor in his fellows. His creations, like those of an inept sorcerer, no longer obey
him. He is alone among his works, lost . . . in a wilderness of mirrors. (emphasis
added)51
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for the cultures of Mexico and the United States, respectively. In the two
forms juxtaposed at the center of Rochas design concept, there is a symbolic expression of these worldviews and their divergent views of the past.
The Wilderness of Mirrors is evocative of the instrumental rationality of
modernity in which the past is viewed as an obstacle to be overcome by
progress. It is a landscape of forgetting, a symbol that embodies the modernist ideology of removing the past and starting with a clean slate (see Figure 4).52
It would be an oversimplification, however, to suggest that the Wilderness of Mirrors sculpture was only a translation of Pazs critique into built
form. The meaning of this design element was intentionally ambiguous; like
the rest of the projects abstract forms, the polished steel towers, or
pylons as they were called, could be read from multiple perspectives.
The second major form on the new Center City Plaza was the restored
Huron Cemetery.53 This historic burial site of the Wyandot people narrowly
survived numerous threats to its location in the middle of the citys business
district. Throughout the twentieth century, real estate speculators played
on a division within the Wyandot people in an effort to acquire the two-acre
property for development. Prior to urban renewal, local descendants of the
Wyandot families buried in the cemetery, such as the Conley sisters, and
city officials fought to preserve this burial site against desecration.54
Located next to the public library in the middle of the Center City Plaza,
the Huron Cemetery is a spatial expression of the presence of indigenous
peoples in Kansas. Through the redesign of the cemetery, Rocha sought to
reclaim the historical space of the burial ground.55 More than any other
form on the Center City Plaza, the redesign of the cemetery represented the
essence of what Rocha meant by the term indigenous architecture: a public architecture that acknowledges and incorporates cultural diversity
rather than erasing or denying its presence in public space.
For the redesign of Minnesota Avenue, Rocha removed a retaining wall
on the north side of the cemetery and let the earthen form spill into the
street. The result was a curved road that follows the moundlike edge of the
cemetery, which more accurately reflected the original bounds of the site.56
The process of removing the retaining wall and restoring the cemeterys
slope was a subtle change that captured the underlying intentions of
Rochas design philosophy. Through the efforts of the design collaborative
and city officials, the Huron Cemetery was added to the national historic
register in September 1971. It is one of the few elements of the Center City
Plaza that is still visible on Minnesota Avenue.
Today, the Huron Cemetery serves as a place of memory in which the
present generations can be connected to those of the past through a placebased collective memory (see Figure 5). The fact that the bones of Native
American people remain in the ground where they were originally buried,
and have not been removed to a museum, is significant.57 For planning historians, restoring the historical narratives of intact burial sites such as the
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Figure 4:
Wilderness of Mirrors. After installation, this sculptural element became a magnet for
controversy. It was removed from the Center City Plaza in June 1977.
Source: The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas.
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Figure 5:
The Huron Cemetery, 2003. Prior to the Center City project, a retaining wall cut this side
of the cemetery and altered its original bounds. Rochas design removed the wall, so that
the cemetery would spill into the street. This site was placed on the national register of
historic sites in September 1971.
Source: Photo by the author.
congruent with the vision of public art prevalent in federal programs. However, the Center City project is a compelling case precisely because it does
not fit the expectations for abstract art in this era, nor did it conform to the
underlying goals of social control and containment inherent in a consensual view of public arts role in urban space.60
To the contrary, the abstract designs developed for the project were politicized by Rochas values as an advocate for poor and minority communities,
a stance informed by his Chicano identity, among other influences. Drawing from the historical experiences of working-class and ethnic residents of
the region, Rocha symbolically rendered the imagery of the very communities that were displaced by urban renewal. As geographer Henri Lefebvre
has suggested, abstract art can provide a refuge for groups whose political
agency is otherwise restricted:
The dominant form of space, that of the centers of wealth and power, endeavors to
mould the spaces it dominates (i.e., peripheral spaces), and it seeks, often by violent
means, to reduce the obstacles and resistance it encounters there. Differences, for
their part, are forced into the symbolic forms of an art that is itself abstract.61
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Instead of imitating the classical architecture of the City Beautiful movement or the monumental sculptures associated with modernist architecture, Rocha believed that the everyday environments of Kansas could provide the symbolism for a new civic center. Opposed to the idea of building
public spaces solely to attract the white middle-class, Rocha advocated a
design that would represent all of the people of Kansas: Public spaces
financed by tax monies are the logical place for a peoples architecture
symbolism as architecturean architecture that represents all the people
in those spaces.65 A sense of pride in the working-class and ethnic neighborhoods of Kansas City informed his design. Speaking about the stigma
attached to working-class neighborhoods, Rocha argued that the materials
scorned by some could provide inspiration for a new public architecture:
Later when I went to high school I found I was supposed to be ashamed of my environment. There were the railroad tracks, the light towers, train sheds, bridges, packinghouses, freight yards and other things associated with an industrial area. These things
are the symbols of the blue-collar worker and to them has been attached the stigma
that somehow manual labor is dishonorable.66
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In an effort to dignify the citys ethnic groups and working classes, Rocha
attempted to create a centerpiece that would serve as a democratized public space. As a result, the design concept that he implemented was divergent
from the image proposed by the design consultants in their plans for Center
City.
In December 1971, less than a week after the new plaza was officially
opened, the Wilderness of Mirrors sculpture was already a source of public
controversy. Joe F. Jenkins, president of the Board of Public Utilities,
threatened to stop the renovation of the boards new building at Seventh
Street and Minnesota Avenue if the pylons were not removed. Jenkins
justified his call for the sculptures removal with a claim that it obstructed
the publics view of the buildings display windows. According to the local
press, Jenkins said the pylons would hinder displaying appliances; the
board must encourage sale of more electrical appliances to sell more
power.68
Don Hoffmann, art editor for the Kansas City Star, fired off a public
response to Jenkins and the Board of Public Utilities. Jenkinss campaign to
remove the stainless-steel pillars was, in Hoffmanns opinion, dismally
misconceived. Rather than hurting the building, the sculpture actually
improved it by providing an unmistakable landmark and covering up an
otherwise dull faade. Hoffmann further criticized Jenkinss failure to speak
up during the design review process when the model and plans were widely
available to the public. Finally, Hoffmann argued that the design concept
was finalized and that no one has any moral right to lobby for the emasculation or destruction of any of the essential elements of the concept. 69
Apparently, Jenkins was not the only person who wanted to remove the
pylons. Minutes from the regular meetings of the Board of Public Utilities
in November and December 1971 suggest that there was a general consensus among the members that the sculpture detracted from the new building.
Mayor Richard F. Walsh, elected in April 1971, also claimed in a letter to a
citizen that he felt that the pylons were ugly and out of place. Furthermore, he stated that he was strongly against the pylons from their first
inception and even campaigned against them in the last election. Walsh,
however, suggested that there was no turning back until the mall was completed and all of the citys federal urban renewal projects were closed. To do
otherwise might jeopardize several million dollars in federal funding. 70
In the annual report for 1971, the Urban Renewal Agency responded to
the criticism by suggesting that controversy is better than indifference.
The tone of the report, while recognizing the emerging conflict, remained
optimistic. In spring 1972, Chris N. Vedros, executive director of the Urban
Renewal Agency, continued to defend the project against other criticisms.
The closing of two stores on the mall was a cause for concern among observers, but Vedros dismissed these as an inevitable part of the redevelopment
process. In May, the city prepared to celebrate a spring opening for the
mall.71
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The public reception of the Center City Plazas abstract forms by residents, politicians, and downtown business owners generated a variety of
contested meanings, and the reactions of these groups politicized the new
downtown space. Overall, public opinion covered the full spectrum, from
laudatory remarks and general curiosity to an outright rejection of the
abstract forms.72 One of the more common aspects of the public debate was
an effort to explain the various forms on the mall.
This search for meaning began with the dedication of the Center City
Plaza in November 1971. Two years later, the debate continued as the
Urban Renewal Agency issued a public explanation of the abstract designs,
although some of the explanations were oversimplified.73 Part of the confusion about what the forms meant arose from an intentional strategy
employed by Elpidio Rocha during the construction of the mall. His reluctance to provide definitive explanations for any of the forms is indicative of
a deliberate use of ambiguity. As the local press reported,
In illustrating the elements of the center city mall, Rocha emphasized that the symbolismdrawn from various kinds of rural and urban features of the state of Kansaswas
wholly flexible, admitting great freedom of interpretation. He urged citizens to accept
their own interpretations as being as valid as anyone elses.74
This effort to encourage the residents of the city to find their own meaning,
however, was a double-edged sword. For opponents of the mall, it provided
an opportunity for criticism, and in some cases, derogatory and racist
remarks about the designs.75
Not all of the responses to the project were negative. In the fall of 1971,
educator, social worker, and ally Priscilla Camp encouraged Rocha to submit a proposal to the Missouri state office of the National Endowment for the
Humanities. The proposal was based on the design work in Kansas City,
Kansas. Defining a process through which a democratic architecture would
be created, the proposal sought to create a multi-ethnic architectural
style and to change the training and attitudes of architects.76 Rochas
proposal received the grant in 1972, evidence that his design work was in
some ways better received outside of Kansas City, Kansas.77
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In April 1971, when incumbent mayor Joseph McDowell lost his bid for
reelection, there was evidence that the unfinished Center City project was
in trouble. The days of urban renewal were numbered. As Chris Vedros,
executive director of the Urban Renewal Agency, later remarked, Nixon is
dismantling the Great Society. Much of the conflict over the mall centered
on the Wilderness of Mirrors, and in the years following its installment, it
became a magnet for opposition. The high cost of removing the sculpture,
however, kept the pylons on the mall for several years. 78
In the spring of 1976, downtown decline was once again a topic of concern in the local press. Yet instead of being proposed as a solution, the
spaces produced through urban renewal were now seen as the problem to
be overcome on the path to revitalization. The abstract designs of the Center City Plaza provided the grounds for a new phase of redevelopment:
demolishing the previous solution to decline by removing the plaza and
returning parking spaces to Minnesota Avenue. The first casualty in this
process, the Wilderness of Mirrors sculpture, was removed in June 1977.79
While the pylons were the first to go, the rest of the Center City Plaza
was dismantled in April 1983. Local property owners opted to pay a special
tax for its removal.80 After almost two decades of urban renewal, the
abstract designs of the plaza became a scapegoat for all that was wrong in
downtown Kansas City. As the editor of a local paper remarked, The mall
drew the blame for a downtown decline that almost all downtowns experienced in that period.81
Neither the construction of the Center City Plaza in 1971 nor its destruction twelve years later brought about the result that downtown business
and property owners desired. In 2003, twenty years after the removal of the
mall was proposed to revive business, the area can still be described as a
ghost town. The abundance of space, evident in the for lease signs,
empty parking spaces, and vacant lots, suggests that the spatial transformation of the downtown failed to bring about a comparable economic
improvement.
The unsuccessful attempts to revive downtown Kansas City are indicative of the political economic contradictions inherent in the transformation
of the metropolitan area in the postWorld War II era. Massive investment
in the interstate highway system and other subsidies that encouraged the
use of automobiles also facilitated the decline of downtown businesses.
Suburban population growth boomed, especially in neighboring Johnson
County, Kansas, where community builders such as J. C. Nichols constructed a sprawling residential landscape for the white middle class.82
Downtown Kansas City failed to compete with suburban shopping centers,
and the Center City Plaza was no match for Nicholss prestigious Country
Club Plaza.
Within Kansas City, the deconcentration of population in downtown further undermined the goal of making the area a center of economic and cultural activity. The opening of the Indian Springs shopping mall west of
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350
downtown prior to the completion of the Center City Plaza also had negative consequences for Minnesota Avenue businesses. Without vigorous promotion of the new plaza, the area failed, and local merchants blamed the
abstract designs.
To look at the Center City Plaza only as a failed attempt to revive the
downtown, however, is to overlook the most important aspects of the project. Rochas design collaborative built a high-quality public space using the
cultural landscapes of Kansas as the inspiration. Rather than ignoring the
citys diverse neighborhoods, the design concept incorporated ethnic diversity and working-class history, seeking to provide common ground. Using
the Chicano culture as a model, Rocha conceived of the work as a critical
intervention into the citys symbolic and cultural landscapes. The design
concept improved the space of the Huron Cemetery so that it is protected
from future encroachment as a historic landmark.
The strength of the project was the design concept developed by Rocha,
and the fact that it was implemented is evidence of his considerable political skills. The weakness of the project was the context: an urban renewal
program that destabilized neighborhoods and exacerbated the loss of businesses and residents from the downtown. That local residents failed to
embrace the project speaks volumes about the ways that cultural hegemony functions and how power and wealth shape the production of urban
space.
On Minnesota Avenue in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, a growing Mexican presence is evident in the storefronts and signs that serve a Spanishspeaking population. A few remnants of the designs are the only reminder of
the Center City Plaza. In search of a democratic architecture in Kansas
City, one finds ruins . . . but these ruins have a valuable story to tell.
1. A. R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960, 2nd ed.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269.
2. E. Rocha, The Creation of a Humanized Architecture, Entrelneas (Spring-Summer 1972): 2-5.
This view was affirmed by Elizabeth McAuliffe Rocha in her development of an empowerment typology.
See E. M. Rocha, A Ladder of Empowerment, Journal of Planning Education and Research 17 (1997):
31-44.
3. See P. Davidoff, Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning, Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31 (1965): 331-38; B. Checkoway, Paul Davidoff and Advocacy Planning in Retrospect, Journal
of the American Planning Association 60 (1994): 139-61. See also Dolores Haydens suggestion that
advocacy planning incorporate greater attention to urban design in Who Plans the U.S.A.? Journal of
the American Planning Association 60 (1994): 160-61.
4. C. Millstein et al., Kansas City, Kansas Downtown Plan (City of Kansas City, Kansas, Certified
Local Government Program, 1993), 26-27. For other cities, see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; C. W.
Hartman, The Transformation of San Francisco (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984); T. J.
Sugrue, The Origins of Urban Decline: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); J. C. Teaford, Urban Renewal and Its Aftermath, Housing Policy Debate
11, no. 2 (2000): 443-65; R. B. Fairbanks, The Texas Exception: San Antonio and Urban Renewal, 19491965, Journal of Planning History 1 (2002): 181-96; K. F. Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven
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351
Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2000 (Albany: State University of New York Press,
2002).
5. J. M. Thomas, Seeking a Finer Detroit: The Design and Planning Agenda of the 1960s, in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, ed. M. C. Sies and C. Silver (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 385; J. Daly-Bednarek, The Changing Image of the City: Planning for Downtown
Omaha, 1945-1973 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 19.
6. Elpidio Rochas work is a significant and yet unacknowledged precedent for Dolores Haydens use
of ethnic history to inform landscape design. D. Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as
Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995). The construction of a pedestrian semimall is not
unique. What was a significant innovation is the use of public space design as a tool of advocacy planning
in the context of urban renewal. On the construction of pedestrian malls across the nation, see Ruth
Eckdish Knack, Pedestrian Malls: Twenty Years Later, Planning (December 1982): 15-20. Regarding
the suburbanization of downtown space through the construction of a pedestrian mall in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, see D. Schuyler, A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization, Lancaster, PA, 1940-1980 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 59-119.
7. In terms of the politics of public art, see the following: J. Baca, Whose Monument Where? Public
Art in a Many-Cultured Society, in Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, ed. S. Lacy (Seattle,
WA: Bay Press, 1995); J. . Costonis, Law and Aesthetics: A Critique and a Reformulation of the Dilemmas, Michigan Law Review 80 (1982): 255-461; R. Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); E. Doss, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural
Democracy in American Communities (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995);
M. Kwon, One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity, October 80 (1997): 85-110.
8. D. Serda, An Intentional Community: History and Local Identity, Midcontinent Perspectives
(Kansas City, MO: Midwest Research Institute, 1992), 12.
9. L. Sandercock, Introduction: Framing Insurgent Historiographies for Planning, in Making the
Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History, ed. L. Sandercock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 13.
10. The official designation of this federal project was Center City Urban Renewal Project, Project
No. Kansas R-28.
11. E. Rocha, Creation of a Humanized Architecture; P. Camp, Commentary, Entrelneas
(Spring-Summer 1972). Based on a reasonable search of the urban renewal literature, I found no other
case in which a redevelopment authority hired a Chicano designer to implement a design for a downtown pedestrian mall.
12. See L. Sandercock, ed., Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); C. Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation
Power in the Mississippi Delta (London: Verso, 1998). In terms of urban theory, see H. Lefebvre, The
Production of Space, trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991).
13. For a recent historiography of planning history, see the introduction to M. C. Sies and C. Silver,
ed., Planning the Twentieth-Century American City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1996). On racism and planning, see R. Mier, Some Observations of Race in Planning, Journal of the
American Planning Association 60 (Spring 1994): 235-40; T. Crdova, Refusing to Appropriate: The
Emerging Discourse on Planning and Race, Journal of the American Planning Association 60 (1994):
242-43.
14. M. Page, Radical Public History in the City, Radical History Review 79 (2001): 115. Although
the empirical basis of bell hookss work is the collective memory of rural and poor African Americans,
there are clear parallels with the barrio experiences of Chicanos in Kansas City. See b. hooks, House, 20
June 1994, Assemblage 24 (1994): 22-29, at 25.
15. L. Mumford, What Is a City? in The Lewis Mumford Reader, ed. D. L. Miller (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 105.
16. As geographer Henri Lefebvre suggested, a criticism of space is called for that can explain the
production of urban space as a process in which the content of space is obscured by the meaning, or lack
of meaning, attached to it. Or as Lefebvre put it, Spaces sometimes lie just as things lie, even though
they are not themselves things. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 92.
17. A single case study research design was employed following the methodology outlined by R. K.
Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1994). Sources include local
newspaper accounts; public documents; visual sources including maps, architectural renderings, and
photographs of the projects designs; minutes from public meetings; public correspondence; publications of the design collaborative; and secondary literature.
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18. L. Fink, Workingmens Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 115. The 1890 census showed a foreign-born population of 18.7 percent
of the citys total population. From 1900 to 1920, the total number of foreign-born persons living in the
city continued to increase, although this accounted for about 11 percent of the citys population. U.S.
Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1860-2000 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 2000);
Works Progress Administration, The WPA Guide to 1930s Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1984), 211.
19. On the exodusters, see M. D. Peoples, Kansas Fever in North Louisiana, Louisiana History 11
(1970): 121-35. Regarding the migration of Mexicans to Kansas and the development of the westside barrio, see R. Oppenheimer, Acculturation or Assimilation: Mexican Immigrants in Kansas, 1900 to World
War II, Western Historical Quarterly 16 (1985): 429-48; M. M. Smith, Mexicans in Kansas City: The
First Generation, 1900-1920, Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 2 (1989): 29-57.
20. M. M. Smith, The Mexican Revolution in Kansas City: Jack Danciger versus the Colonia Elite
Kansas History 14 (1991): 207-18. Regarding Mexican immigration to Kansas City and the Midwest, see
also M. M. Smith, The Mexican Immigrant Press beyond the Borderlands: The Case of El Cosmopolita,
1914-19, Great Plains Quarterly 10 (1990): 71-85; D. N. Valds, Barrios Norteos: St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).
21. In comparison, the population of neighboring Johnson County, Kansas, grew by 129 percent
between 1950 and 1960 and by 88 percent between 1960 and 1980. Inter-University Consortium for
Political and Social Research, Historical Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: U.S., 1790-1970
(Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research). For a detailed analysis of
the racial dimensions of the suburbanization of metropolitan Kansas City, see Gotham, Race, Real
Estate, and Uneven Development.
22. It should also be noted that there was significant competition for commercial business from
downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and J. C. Nicholss Country Club Plaza District in suburban Jackson
County, Missouri. Public buildings included city hall, post office, the main branch of the public library,
and related public offices. See Harland Bartholomew and Associates, The Comprehensive City Plan of
Kansas City, Kansas (St. Louis, MO: Harland Bartholomew and Associates, 1942).
23. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the
United States: 1790 to 1990 (Population Division Working Paper No. 27, June 1998).
24. C. Millstein et al., Kansas City, Kansas Downtown Plan.
25. Kansas City Star, April 24, 1961, p. 12; Kansas City Kansan, June 4, 1961.
26. Kansas City Kansan, May 7, 1965, p. 2A. An editorial from the Kansas City Kansan, March 28,
1965, suggested that cars be barred so pedestrians could shop at ease and in safety. Minnesota Avenue
remained open to traffic due to merchants fears that total closure would ruin business.
27. J. McDowell, Building a City: A Detailed History of Kansas City, Kansas (Kansas City: Kansas
City Kansan, n.d.), 62.
28. R. A. Beauregard, Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
1993).
29. Hammer, Greene, Siler Associates, Center City Urban Renewal Project Land Use and Marketability Study (Washington, DC, 1968). The consultants showed deference to the two historic downtown
cores in their ranking of metropolitan commercial districts. By the time that this study was conducted in
1965-66, the Country Club Plaza developed by J. C. Nichols in the 1920s was the most upscale commercial center in the metropolitan area. Furthermore, the economic center of commercial activity had
already shifted to the suburbs. For information on Nichols and his Country Club Plaza as a model of suburban development, see K. T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985): 177-78. For Nicholss influence on the racial geography of
the metro area, see Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, 40-47.
30. Hammer, Greene, Siler Associates, Center City Urban Renewal Project, 3. This finding echoed
H. Bartholomews 1942 plan, which emphasized the growing use of automobiles as the major factor in
the citys development.
31. Ibid., 18.
32. Ibid., 20.
33. Barton-Aschman Associates, Inc., A New Center City for Kansas City, Kansas (Chicago: BartonAschman Associates, 1968), 2.
34. Beauregard, Voices of Decline, 142. In Kansas City, Kansas, the Gateway project was the commercial redevelopment project while the Center City project was the attempt to create a new civic center
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anchored by the semimall on Minnesota Avenue. Regarding the role of abstract public art in postWorld
War II urban redevelopment, see Doss, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs, 44-49.
35. Rocha was hired after an interview with Chris N. Vedros, executive director of the Urban Renewal
Agency, and Mike Madrigal, assistant director. Rocha maintains that both were ethnic Americans:
Vedros was Greek and Madrigal was Mexican, and they assisted him in securing the Center City job.
Equally important, however, is the fact that both Vedros and Mayor McDowell were seeking to build a
project that represented Kansas City, Kansas, and Rochas design concept was in tune with these interests. See Kansas City Star, September 16, 1969; E. Rocha, interview by author, July 2003.
36. The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, Annual Report, 1969. At the beginning of the
project, public officials referred to the proposed semimall as the Minnesota Avenue Mall. However,
after construction began in 1971, the Urban Renewal Agency decided that this name was inappropriate
for a mall inspired by the state of Kansas, and they held a naming contest. Several contestants suggested
the new name, Center City Plaza, which bears a notable resemblance to Nicholss Country Club
Plaza. See Whats in a Name? Kansas City Kansan, August 4, 1971.
37. Elpidio Rocha, interview by author, February 8, 2002; D. L. Hoffmann, Unfinished Work in
Designing the Cultural Mall, Kansas City Star, October 23, 1966; E. Rocha, Personal Influences and
Observations, Entrelneas (Spring-Summer 1972): 6-16.
38. Rocha, Creation of a Humanized Architecture, 5.
39. Rocha, Personal Influences, 6-16.
40. E. Rocha, The Development of a Process through a Struggle for Identity, Entrelneas (SpringSummer 1972): 31-39; L. E. Brooks, The Process, Entrelneas (Spring-Summer 1972): 43-45.
41. Eldred and Rocha first worked together on the Inter City Barrio Park completed in 1962. On the
Center City project, Rocha played the primary role of conceptualizing the project as a whole, organizing
the design collaborative, and defending it against political attacks. See the following: D. Hoffmann, The
Inspiration of the Prairies, Kansas City Star, October 5, 1969; idem, Those Shiny Towers, Kansas
City Star, July 18, 1976. For a view that emphasizes Eldreds role, see R. T. Coe, Dale Eldred: Sculpture
into Environment, ed. J. L. Enyeart (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978).
42. The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, Annual Report, 1969; Brooks, The Process.
The student design assistants on the project including Larry Brooks, Richard Callan, David Samuelson,
Craig Coonrod, Steven Waters, Margo Grace, Jerome Ogborn, John Kelly, and Ron Dixon were important
contributors. See Rocha, Development of a Process.
43. Rocha, Development of a Process, 32-34. For a different view of the bricoleur in planning, see
J. Innes and D. Booher, Consensus Building as Role Playing and Bricolage: Toward a Theory of Collaborative Planning, Journal of the American Planning Association 65 (1999): 9-26.
44. Rocha, Creation of a Humanized Architecture, 5.
45. Ibid.
46. Hoffmann, Inspiration of the Prairies; A Mall That Can Be the Trademark of Kansas City, Kansas, Kansas City Star, September 16, 1969; Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, Center City
Mall Presentation, Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 1969; Design Aids UR Display, Kansas City Kansan, October 29,
1969, p. 1; UR Display Open Today, Kansas City Kansan, November 2, 1969, p. 3A.
47. New Shopping Center Starts Soon, Kansas City Kansan, January 25, 1970, p. 1A; Early Bidding Expected on Center City, Kansas City Kansan, June 8, 1970; A New Image for the City, Kansas
City Kansan, September 3, 1970; Minnesota Mall Pact Approved, Kansas City Kansan, January 21,
1971, p. 7A; B. Friskel, Agency OKs Avenue Designs, Kansas City Kansan, February 10, 1971, p. 1;
Paving Broken in Ceremony, Kansas City Kansan, February 22, 1971, p. 1.
48. B. Friskel, Designer Explains Plazas Many Features, Kansas City Kansan, November 28, 1971;
Center City Plaza Opened, Kansas City Star, November 26, 1971.
49. The Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, Annual Report, 1973; Urban Renewal Agency
of Kansas City, Kansas, Gateway Center City Mall Design Review, (unpublished document, n.d.).
50. The placement of the sculptural forms was complicated by the fact that the pedestrian mall was
bisected by Minnesota Avenue. The decision to keep a street running through the mall was made by
Urban Renewal officials prior to Rochas hiring. See L. E. Brooks, Landscaping, Entrelneas, SpringSummer (1972): 48.
51. O. Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude (New York: Grove, 1985), 20-21.
52. S. Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1990), 175-79.
53. The cemetery is known locally as the Huron Indian Cemetery. However, since Huron is a name
given by the French colonists to the Wyandot, I have chosen to use the name of self-identification pre-
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ferred by Wyandot in this article when I refer to the people. See J. English, n.d. Huron Indian Cemetery
Chronology, retrieved from http://www.sfo.com/~denglish/huroncemetery/cemetery.html.
54. On the Huron Cemetery, see M. Petterson, Huron Cemetery Preservation Struggle of over Half
Century, Kansas City Kansan, May 17, 1959; English, Huron Indian Cemetery Chronology.
55. B. Friskel, Architects Seeking Forms, Kansas City Kansan, January 22, 1971, p. 4B.
56. Ibid; Streets Use Indian Land, Kansas City Kansan, July 12, 1959.
57. On the idea that human rights extend beyond the grave and that bones should have legal standing
in court to be protected against desecration disguised as science, see G. Vizenor, Crossbloods: Bone
Courts, Bingo, and Other Reports (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 62-82.
58. For an indigenous perspective on American planning history, see T. Jojola, Indigenous Planning:
Clans, Intertribal Confederations, and the History of the All Indian Pueblo Council, in Making the
Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History, ed. L. Sandercock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998): 100-119.
59. On the National Endowment for the Arts role, see Doss, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs, 43-49. For
the promotion of abstract art by the Urban Renewal Administration of the Housing and Home Finance
Agency, see Urban Renewal Notes, May-June 1961, July-August 1962, and November-December 1965.
60. The use of abstract public art as a sort of ideological containment strategy on the home front, the
flip side of cold war foreign policy, has some interesting parallels with aspects of federal housing policy
that affirmed the spatial containment of African American communities and led to the creation of second ghettoes. See A. R. Hirsch, Containment on the Home Front: Race and Federal Housing Policy from
the New Deal to the Cold War, Journal of Urban History 26, no. 2 (2000): 158-89. For a more elaborate
discussion of abstract arts role in the public sphere in the postWorld War II era, see Doss, Spirit Poles
and Flying Pigs, 35-69. There are also relevant parallels here to recent debates in planning theory over
the appropriateness of consensus-based, communicative planning, especially where significant
epistemological differences exist.
61. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 49.
62. See Entrelneas, ed. F. H. Ruiz, 2 (Spring-Summer 1972). The fact that Ruiz dedicated two issues
to the Center City project is indicative of the Chicano communitys respect for Rochas work. Several
articles by Rocha and other members of the design collaborative formed the bulk of the issue. Two
reviews by people outside of the group, Don Hoffmann and Priscilla Camp, provided some critical mediation of the project for those unfamiliar with the work. Regarding other Chicano publications, see L. D.
Ortiz, La Voz de la Gente: Chicano Activist Publications, 1968-1989, Kansas History 22 (1999): 22944.
63. Regarding Rochas design philosophy in general and his opinions about design as a counterpoint
to the racism of American society, see Rocha, Creation of a Humanized Architecture; idem, The
Human-Altered Environment as Expression of Cultural Practice: The Urban Form as Symbol (1982);
Rocha, Los Angeles into the Future: Two Hills, One Vision, in Saber es Poder/Interventions, ed. R. M.
Carp (Santa Monica, CA: ADOBE LA, 1994).
64. Rocha, Creation of a Humanized Architecture, 3; B. Friskel, Architects Seeking Forms, Kansas City Kansan, January 22, 1971, p. 4B.
65. E. Rocha, quoted in the Kansas City Star, June 18, 1972.
66. B. Friskel, Architects Seeking Forms, 4B.
67. Rocha, Creation of a Humanized Architecture, 5; Friskel, Architects Seeking Forms, 4B.
68. Public Must Decide Pylon FateJenkins, Kansas City Kansan, December 2, 1971. The board
purchased an existing building on the corner of Seventh and Minnesota Avenue sometime after the former tenant, Montgomery Ward, relocated to the Indian Springs shopping center in 1967.
69. D. Hoffmann, Art in Mid-America, Kansas City Star, December 12, 1971.
70. Board of Public Utilities of the City of Kansas City, Kansas, minutes from regular session, November 24, 1971; Board of Public Utilities of the City of Kansas City, Kansas, minutes from regular session,
December 1, 1971; R. F. Walsh, mayor, letter to Eleanor Zeiger, December 14, 1971.
71. Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City Kansas, Annual Report (1971), 10; Mall Merchants Seen
Getting Set, Kansas City Kansan, March 2, 1972.
72. For a view of the debate, see the Kansas City Star, September 14, 1969, p. 3a; Kansas City Star,
September 16, 1969; Kansas City Kansan, September 21, 1969; Kansas City Kansan, September 3,
1970; Kansas City Kansan, January 22, 1971, p. 4b; Kansas Citian, April 1971, p. 12.
73. B. Friskel, Designer Explains Plazas Many Features, Kansas City Kansan, November 28, 1971;
UR Explains Mall Designs, Kansas City Kansan, December 12, 1973, p. 5b.
74. Kansas City Star, June 18, 1972.
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75. One racist comment repeated in the local press was the taco shell name given to one of the
designs. I. Lacher, Businesses Want Mall Bulldozed, Kansas City Times, March 6, 1982, p. B1.
76. E. Rocha and Barrio+Plus, Man and the American Dream (1776-1976) Expressed through a
Democratic Architecture, (unpublished proposal, 1971), 2.
77. In the summer of 1972, Rocha accepted a position as associate professor at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo. Today, he is a member of ADOBE LA, a group of Chicano artists and architects
based in Los Angeles.
78. Kansas City Kansan, January 28, 1973 (Vedros quote); T. G. Watts, Center City: A Limping Legacy, Kansas City Star West, April 15, 1976, p. 1N; R. W. Myers, Drive to Remove Center City Pylons
Revived, Kansas City Star, May 19, 1976; D. Hoffmann, Those Shiny Towers, Kansas City Star, July
18, 1976.
79. B. Friskel, Pylon Removal Starts, Kansas City Kansan, June 6, 1977; C. Bukaty, Removal
Mostly Favored, Kansas City Kansan, June 6, 1977; Theyre Gone, Kansas City Kansan, June 12,
1977, p. 4A; T. Johnson, K.C.K. Pylons and Politicians Never Got Along, Kansas City Star West, September 15, 1977, p. 1W.
80. Kansas City Kansan, April 20, 1983.
81. Kansas City Kansan, October 17, 1985. See also James Peters, Pulling up and Starting Over,
Planning, December (1982): 17.
82. See Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development.
Jacob A. Wagner is a Crescent City Doctoral Scholar in urban studies at the University of
New Orleans. His research interests include planning theory, community development,
and the politics of urban redevelopment.
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