Debating Kansas City Racism By Design

A worthwhile interview is mostly hidden by activist politics . . . Here's the premise that should NOT discourage local urban career development . . . Check-it: 

In Kansas City. Just six weeks before the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) conference, one of the city’s largest Black-owned grocery stores closed its doors, plunging thousands of Black residents into extreme food insecurity. On that exact same intersection at 31st & Prospect, the city had recently moved the bus stop, citing too many “problematic people” (which can also be interpreted as poor, unhoused and Black) congregating in the area. Rather than address the underlying conditions that had people gathering there in the first place (poverty, lack of access to community resources, unstable housing, addiction resources), the city turned to carceral strategies like building a $500 million jail, removing bus benches and moving the bus stop entirely.

Such strategies are textbook examples of “Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED).” 

As Bryan C. Lee Jr., NOMA President explained in our conversation, a 1993 evaluation of those original Westinghouse studies found they produced “inconsistent and temporary effects.” Decades of research since has been “inconclusive and much criticized,” with studies showing it’s “ineffective against violent crimes” and often just displaces problems rather than solving them. In Kansas City, that has absolutely been the case as many residents decry that the violence has not reduced at all, and instead only become more disparate up and down Prospect. 

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Abolitionist Architecture: How Black Designers Are Building a Liberatory Future - The Kansas City Defender