ideas, ramblings, and coverage of kc urban development

On February 4th, the Urban Neighborhood Initiative (UNI) (part of the KC Chamber of Commerce’s Big 5 Ideas For Kansas City) released a video about it’s progress in their first target area: the Troost Corridor. Take a gander at the video below. I’m curious to hear what you think. After watching the presentation, I found myself feeling a bit let down at the “progress” being reported. What

  This is the first installment in a series on transportation by Eric Bunch. Eric is the Director of Education for BikeWalkKC and Director of Operations for Kansas City B-Cycle.   There’s an old children’s song about a woman who, inexplicably and against her own self interest, swallows a fly. The lyrics of the song presume that she will inevitably die from this. The old woman too senses impending doom and p

Jim and I like to think we’re idealists.  We love cities, and we love Kansas City, and we think this great city could be much greater if only … “If only” is where we get in trouble sometimes, for two reasons. REASON 1: our frequent undecided voter moments. By “undecided voter moments” we mean moments in which we, with great confidence and ignorance, propose unoriginal solutions to the world’s problems. Here we

I’ve often said that adventuring down the Troost Corridor (particularly the northern part) reminds me of some kind of post-apocalyptic movie scene. This has largely been the case because of a non-existent population, and windowless industrial buildings set far away from the street, surrounded by barbed wire fences. More recently we saw another section of Troost that isn’t plagued by far-flung buildings (t