Outstanding Student Project
Visions for The Westside
University of Missouri - Kansas City, Hispanic Economic Development Corporation
Many inner-city neighborhoods, and particularly minority neighborhoods, have historically been affected by urban renewal, freeway construction projects, and disinvestment, which have created challenges that persist today. In addition, many of those centrally located neighborhoods are seeing effects of gentrification as they become desired by contemporary downtown planning revitalization efforts and real estate pressures.
As a demographic group, Latinxs face specific challenges that also demand planning interventions. The students in the studio wrestled with all these issues. Students synthesized the challenges and selected a few to focus on more deeply. They then searched for precedents of planning interventions that were successful elsewhere, distilled from those precedents lessons to be used in this project, tested multiple ideas for intervention and synergic interactions, and settled on the ones that made more sense.
The students learned scenario planning techniques, and developed 3 different scenarios, defined as follows:
- Status quo: scenario within current constraints, i.e., within the confines of current regulations and political mindsets and traditions.
- Reform: scenario gently pushing for reform in regulations, traditions, and/or typologies.
- Revolution: scenario radically pushing to transform the status quo: What would your proposal be ideally like if you could freely suggest the regulations, design, and/or other conditions that would best achieve sustainability and equity
