Plaza Branch and Central Library will open late at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17 due to the Kansas City Marathon.
Making a Great City
A Signature Events Series Exploring (and Encouraging) Healthy Development in Kansas City
The Library’s popular Making a Great City speaking series, launched in January 2018, is designed to foster the healthy growth of Kansas City and examine the ways that development decisions can strengthen fiscal stability and reduce disparities in wealth across the community.
Programs in series have featured presentations by prominent urban planners and follow-up roundtable discussions among civic leaders. The focus shifted in March and April 2019 to Kansas City’s distinctive system of parks and boulevards, looking at its origins and the challenges of maintaining it.
More recently, former New York City planner M. Nolan Gray assessed the advantages of doing away with city zoning – the use of arbitrary lines that have come to dictate where Americans may live and work.
Participants also have included the mayors of Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas; the executive director of the Mid-America Regional Council; Doug McGowen, the forward-thinking chief operating officer of Memphis, Tennessee; and an array of urban planning specialists including New York urban revitalization strategist and entrepreneur Majora Carter and North Carolina-based Realtor and developer Tiffany Elder.
Esteemed urban planner Joe Minicozzi, also of North Carolina, spoke in 2018 and was subsequently commissioned to draft fiscal assessments of KCMO and KCK. He unveiled his analysis in another Making a Great City presentation that drew 303 people to the Library’s Plaza Branch in October 2019.
Nearly 3,800 people had attended a total of 16 Making a Great City events – in person or via livestream – through the end of 2023. Video and/or audio recordings of all programs are archived and accessible on the Library’s website and (in the case of video) its YouTube channel.
The series has been co-presented from the start by the Kansas City architecture and planning firm Multistudio. Also co-presenting one or more programs: the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, Greater Kansas City's LISC (Local Initiatives Support Corporation), Hall Family Foundation, Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors, Mid-America Regional Council, National Association of Realtors, Newmark Grubb Zimmer, Penn Valley Park Conservancy, Roanoke Park Conservancy, Urban Land Institute of Kansas City, Verimore Bank (formerly First Missouri Bank).
Here’s the full Making a Great City lineup:
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
6:30pm
In Person
Kansas City-based urban planner, designer, and architect Kevin Klinkenberg examines why and how cities being reinvented today, who the winners and losers have been, and how municipalities can make the most of this evolution – looking closely at Kansas City and other noncoastal metropolitan areas.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
6:30pm
In Person
Susan Rademacher, a leader in the nationwide parks conservancy movement for three decades, examines the challenge of keeping Kansas City’s signature system of parks and boulevards relevant and sustainable.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
6:30pm
In Person
Leon Younger, one of the nation’s most accomplished parks and recreation consultants, continues a three-part study of Kansas City’s distinctive system of parks and boulevards, which arose from a plan drawn up in 1893 by famed landscape architect George Kessler. Younger looks at how the system has evolved beyond Kessler...
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
6:30pm
In Person
Keith Culbertson, the chairman and CEO of Design Workshop and a George Kessler historian, launches a three-part study of Kansas City’s distinctive system of parks and boulevards with a look at the visionary, late-19th-century landscape architect who designed them.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
6:30pm
In Person
Nationally renowned urban thinker Chuck Marohn, who kicked off the Library’s Making a Great City series in January 2018, returns to assess the crucial takeaways from all three sessions, including the advisability of an incremental, neighborhoods-first approach to development in cities such as Kansas City.
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
6:30pm
In Person
Urban designer Jim Kumon looks at the resurgence of small-scale urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Denver, and Minneapolis, among other cities, and how it can be replicated in Kansas City and other municipalities in the Midwest.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
6:30pm
In Person
Urban planner Joe Minicozzi looks at the “math” of effective city building, i.e., the financial implications of land use decisions in municipalities like Kansas City. Needed: development patterns that create the most valuable and resilient revenue sources.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
6:30pm
In Person
Chuck Marohn, founder of the nonprofit Strong Towns, launches the Making a Great City series with a critical look at how we build our cities and towns – in Kansas City and elsewhere. Current land use and transportation patterns aren’t cost-effective, he says. Change is needed.