Journal of Planning History 2003 Wagner 331 55

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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
The Politics of Urban Design:

The Center City
Urban Renewal Project
in Kansas City, Kansas
Jacob A. Wagner
University of New Orleans
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
331
332
JOURNAL OF PLANNING HISTORY / November 2003
tory of postWorld War II urban redevelopment. This call for a bottom-up

analysis of urban renewal arises from the fact that while federal policy provided the framework and funding, there was considerable discretion
granted to local authorities.1
Given the reality of local control, were there cases in which urban
renewal programs were used to empower the residents of urban neighborhoods rather than to simply remove them? This study presents one such
case in which Elpidio Rocha, an environmental planner-designer, created
public spaces with the goal of empowering the ethnic and working-class residents of the city.2 In contrast to other urban renewal projects that often
erased the presence of minority and working-class citizens, the design of
the Center City Plaza in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, was an attempt to
provide a democratic space for a diverse citizenry. As such, the Center City
Urban Renewal Project in Kansas City provides an example of the use of
urban design as a form of advocacy planning. 3
The record of urban renewal in Kansas City, Kansas (1955-76), offers
both continuities and discontinuities with the existing literature. Generally, the evidence supports findings from other cities that urban renewal
was biased against African American, ethnic, and working-class neighborhoods that disproportionately bore the burden of redevelopment and displacement.4 Furthermore, in Kansas City, as in other cities, a growth coalition of public officials, property owners, and financial institutions initiated
redevelopment to revive private investment in the downtown.
Other scholars have found that the urban renewal era brought greater
attention to urban design as a function of city planning.5 The history of
urban renewal in Kansas City, Kansas, confirms this finding while directing
our attention to the political and cultural dimensions of urban design. Using
the opportunity provided by the Center City Urban Renewal Project,
Elpidio Rocha and an interdisciplinary design team created a pedestrian
mall with abstract designs inspired by the cultural landscapes of Kansas,
including ethnic and working-class environments. 6
As conceptualized by Elpidio Rocha, the Center City Plaza was an
unusual instance of design-based advocacy planning, which emphasizes
the values, class biases, and cultural ideologies inherent in the production
of urban space. Rochas design of the Center City Plaza provided public
spaces that reflected local cultures while implicitly challenging the narrow
agenda of the growth coalition in the redevelopment of downtown space.
Using the media of urban design and public art, Rocha sought to empower
the social groups of the city by producing public spaces that were inclusive,
rather than exclusive and elite.7 Thus, in terms of the design concept and
the public spaces that were created, this case exhibits significant differences from the existing literature on urban renewal.
In a poignant essay on metropolitan Kansas City, historian Daniel Serda
has reflected on the fault lines of class, race, and ethnicity that obscure a
more complete urban history. The standard account is focused on Kansas
Wagner / THE POLITICS OF URBAN DESIGN
333
City, Missouri, and influenced by a spirit of urban boosterism that saturates

the literature. As a result of this narrow focus, the bulk of the regions population goes unnoticed. This failure to recognize people outside of elite
positions of power and wealth has left significant gaps in our understanding
of the citys history.8 Yet there is more to these omissions than a benign failure to include the majority of city residents: which stories planning historians select as worthy of retelling is a deeply political process interwoven
with social relations of power.9
The systematic lack of attention to the social diversity of the metropolitan area, especially the Mexican American or Chicano presence, has
obscured the significance of the Center City Urban Renewal Project in Kansas City, Kansas.10 Conceptualized by the environmental planner Elpidio
Rocha between 1969 and 1972, this project has relevance for planning history because Rocha conceived of the work as a critical intervention into the
citys symbolic and cultural landscapes using the Chicano culture as a
model.11
Toward a Public History of Planning

This research builds on recent efforts to develop a critical history of planning practice informed by ethnic studies, public history, and critical social
theory.12 A public history approach to the analysis of urban renewal recognizes that planned interventions in urban space, and the production of historical knowledge about these processes, are not value-neutral undertakings. Furthermore, this analysis of the politics of urban design is guided by a
normative orientation toward social justice that is attentive to the racial
implications of planning and public policy. Such an approach is consistent
with the emerging field of planning history as it has been expanded beyond
a narrow orientation toward the planning profession and informed by urban
history and planning theory.13
It is no mistake that the metaphors used to describe public history
include spatial imagery. As historian Max Page has suggested, the task of
public history is to provide spaces for forgotten stories to be told. Social
theorist bell hooks has reflected on the transformative possibilities of a critical historiography that makes the relationships between architecture, as a
mode of cultural production, and power relations explicit. Central to this
endeavor is the recovery of the ways that people marginalized by the mainstream society have responded to a lack of resources with creativity in the
shaping of their everyday environments. The purpose of this approach to
planning history is to connect oppositional practices from the past with
forms of resistance in the present, thus creating spaces of possibility where
the future can be imagined differently.14
Extending these insights to planning history, it is imperative that we
include the histories of forgotten public spaces to enhance our understand-
334
ing of the experiences of ethnic and working-class communities during the

urban renewal era. As Lewis Mumford wrote, cities are the product of a
dynamic historical process, and the passage of time is visible in the space of
the city.15 This idea provides a starting point for the analysis of planning
practice as part of the historical production of urban space. However, what
remains evident in urban space is only a partial record of past processes and
events that have shaped the contemporary landscape. Because the urban
form conceals as well as reveals, planning historians must read between
the lines of the urban text.16
The forms and spaces produced during urban renewal in Kansas City,
Kansas, do not speak for themselves. The purpose of this work, then, is to
recover the history of the Center City Urban Renewal Project with attention
to the politics of urban design. Through this process, strategic omissions of
Kansas Citys planning history are addressed, especially the agency of
minorities and working classes in the production of the built environment.
This public history of the Center City Urban Renewal Project is reconstructed from archival sources, interviews, and the physical remnants of
the projects designs.17
Kansas City, Kansas, is a working-class city with an ethnically diverse
population concentrated around the industries and railroad yards along the
Kaw River. Labor historian Leon Fink has shown that the city was one of the
more socially heterogeneous places in the late nineteenth century, set
apart from the Anglo-Saxon, rural population of the state. Census data from
1890 to 1920 indicate that the city had a significant foreign-born population. The Works Progress Administrations 1939 guide for the state of Kansas identified the industrial base of the city in its facilities for grain storage,
meat processing and packing, steel mills, oil refineries, railroad shops, and
stockyards.18
The cultural diversity of city residents dates back to the settlement of the
area in the 1840s by Native American groups displaced from eastern states,
including members of the Wyandot and Delaware Nations. Migration of
African American exodusters from the lower Mississippi valley occurred
around 1879, accompanied by the arrival of European immigrants. After
the turn of the century, immigrants from Mexico made their way to the city
and worked in the railroad yards and industrial establishments along the
Kaw River.19
According to one historian, Mexican immigration to Kansas City after
1900 represented the first sizeable urban settlement of Mexicans outside
the borderlands. For Mexican workers, the city provided economic opportunity in a strategic location near seasonal agricultural work, such that several barrios developed around the railroad yards and industries on both
sides of the state line. In Wyandotte County, Kansas, the communities of
Argentine, Rosedale, and Armourdale contained a significant concentration of Mexican American residents.20 Rochas experiences growing up in
335
the westside barrio of Kansas City, Missouri, provided an inspiration for his
design for a new public center.
Downtown Redevelopment in Kansas City, Kansas

Beginning with the Gateway Urban Renewal Project in 1958, downtown
Kansas City was transformed by a series of planned interventions. Alteration of the central business district represented the local growth coalitions response to forces undermining the vitality of the historic commercial and civic core of the city. These factors included the weak competitive
position of the downtown, deindustrialization and structural shifts in the
economy, and the massive suburbanization of the metropolitan area.
Demographic data for the postWorld War II period confirm that the city
and Wyandotte County failed to keep up with the pace of growth in outlying
suburban counties. Between 1940 and 1980, population growth in the three
suburban counties of metropolitan Kansas City (Johnson, Kansas; Clay and
Platte, Missouri) far outpaced growth in the two inner-city counties
(Wyandotte, Kansas, and Jackson, Missouri). While the population of
Wyandotte County increased between 1940 and 1960, between 1960 and
1980 it declined by 7 percent.21
A city plan prepared by Harland Bartholomews firm in the early 1940s
identified some of the problems facing Kansas City. The bulk of the report
focused on transportation issues, including those affecting the downtown.
Reflecting on the situation of the downtown, the report found that there was
considerable commercial activity outside of downtown. While this situation
most likely resulted from the consolidation and annexation of five towns to
form modern Kansas City, it suggests that by the early 1940s, more than a
decade before urban renewal began, there was notable competition for
business within Wyandotte County. The plan called for strengthening the
civic function of the downtown given the concentration of public facilities
in the area.22
In an effort to remedy the lagging economy of the city, local political leaders, led by Mayor Joseph H. McDowell, turned to a variety of options, including annexation and redevelopment. Between 1950 and 1960, the total land
area of Kansas City increased by 117 percent due to annexations of outlying
areas within Wyandotte County.23 In many of the older neighborhoods of
the city, however, urban renewal was the primary strategy employed. The
Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas, established in 1955, provided the institutional structure for securing federal funds and implementing renewal. Overall, seven urban renewal projects were completed in the
city (see Figure 1).
Two urban renewal projects were initiated and completed in the downtown: Gateway (1958-73) and Center City (1969-76). Demolition of buildings for the Gateway project included several turn-of-the-century struc-
336
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.
337
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.
Planning the Center City Urban Renewal Project

In December 1964, shortly after being appointed mayor, Joseph H.
McDowell gathered a group of local architects to develop plans for downtown redevelopment. Completed in May 1965, their proposal included
plans for a new city hall, new entrances to the Huron Cemetery, and other
improvements. The goal of the proposed designs was to provide adequate
parking for customers by strengthening the connection between the commercial corridor of Minnesota Avenue and the new parking lots adjacent to
the avenue. Minnesota Avenue would remain open to automobiles, although
traffic would be slowed to make the area more pedestrian friendly.26
Mayor McDowell was a catalyst for downtown redevelopment during his
tenure from 1964 to 1971. His vision for the downtown was well received by
the local press and generally in tune with the interests of local business
leaders. He summarized this vision:
The goal is to make our Center City so attractive that people for miles around will
come to look and shop, and merchants will be attracted to bid for space in the project.
It will create a new image for the city along with the new skyline appearing in the
Gateway renewal project adjacent on the east where the new Holiday Inn and new
office building have been constructed.27
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-
338
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
339
What exactly this radical alteration of the downtowns image would

involve was never explicitly defined. Instead, the design consultants relied
on a formulaic approach that was the assumed path to improvement in the
1960s: urban renewal composed of the removal of blighted commercial
structures replaced with modernist, high-rise structures decorated with
abstract public art. Like other cities in the United States, the goal of redevelopment in Kansas City was to build a civic center that would attract the
capital of investors and the attention of white, middle-class consumers.34
However, with the hiring of Elpidio Rocha for design and implementation,
the Urban Renewal Agency initiated a process in which the notion of a radical alteration of the downtown took on a whole new meaning.
Building the Center City Plaza:

In Search of an Indigenous Architecture
In January 1969, the Urban Renewal Agency of Kansas City, Kansas,
hired Elpidio Rocha to design and implement the plan for Center City.35 The
total project area included seventeen city blocks, while the Center City
Plaza was composed of a two-block corridor on Minnesota Avenue between
Sixth and Eighth Streets. Within this area were the main branch of the public library, several banks, the new offices of the Board of Public Utilities, and
various commercial establishments.36
Trained in architecture and engineering at Kansas State University,
Rocha had worked for the Department of Public Works and the Park and
Recreation Department of Kansas City, Missouri, in the 1950s. In the parks
department, he worked with Assistant Director Holland Wheeler, who
became his mentor. Wheeler later introduced Rocha to Edward Buehler
Delk, a British architect who was hired by developer J. C. Nichols to design
the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri. Rochas project experience included the Starlight Theater (1953) and the Volker Fountain (1957)
on the lawn of the Nelson Art Gallery. Wheeler also invited Rocha on a trip
to Mexico, where the young professional was influenced by pre-Colombian
architecture.37
These experiences provided Rocha with the professional expertise and
political savvy necessary to implement the Center City project. However, it
was the design of a neighborhood park for a predominantly Mexican American neighborhood that gave him the opportunity to bring his values and cultural heritage into the design process.38 The Inter City Barrio Park was built
in 1962 on the site of a former public school in Kansas City, Missouri. Rocha
worked in collaboration with neighborhood residents to develop a design
concept for the park. The design vocabulary included natural materials,
such as sand and water, large blocks of stone, and logs embedded in walls. A
small hill in the park evoked the symbolism of Mexican architecture. Over-
340
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-
341
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:
342
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.
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
The two experiences of alienation expressed by Pazone of being torn

from the center of creation, and the other of building the world in ones own
image and yet no longer recognizing oneself in that imageare metaphors
343
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
344
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.
Huron Cemetery is one way to emphasize the connection between the

human rights of indigenous people and the preservation of historic public
spaces that provide a sense of place and serve as sites of resistance to cultural genocide.58
Urban Design as Advocacy Planning

Redevelopment projects in the urban renewal era were both efforts to
revive failing central business districts and strategies for controlling social
and spatial change. The modernist goal of rationalizing inner cities is evident not only in the discourse of urban decline but also in the use of abstract
public art. Art historian Erika Doss found that American intellectuals preferences for abstract design in the cold war era reflected fears of the use of
art as a vehicle for mass politics. Abstract arts self-referential character
provided an art form that was assumed to be devoid of political ideology.
Preferring abstract forms that they believed would foster consensus in the
public sphere, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Urban Renewal
Administration influenced what type of public art was funded nationally.59
This preference for abstract public art, however, did not guarantee the
production of apolitical public spaces. The choice of abstract art itself was
political, not simply an aesthetic style. Rochas approach to the Center City
Plaza, environmental design with dispersed, abstract sculptural forms, was
345
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
346
In the summer of 1972, editor Francisco H. Ruiz published a double issue

of the periodical Entrelneas on the work of Elpidio Rocha. This publication, like other Mexican American periodicals in the metropolitan area,
provided a critical outlet for the Chicano movement in Kansas City during
the 1960s and 1970s. This issue of Entrelneas offered a public statement of
the intentions of the designer, as well as an explanation of the design process and concept implemented in the Center City project. 62
Rochas design concept was based on a desire to strengthen the connection between the practice of urban design and the realization of a more
democratic society.63 Using the cultural landscapes of Kansas as the inspiration for the designs, the Center City Plaza was conceptualized as a grand
stage in which the citys social groups could re-create themselves and have
their lives dignified through symbolic forms in public space.
The United States of America does not have a democratic architecture, an architecture that expresses a people, their place, and time. What follows then is the question
Are a few imposing their so-called cultivated tastes on the masses, and are these few
more European than American in outlook? Perhaps therein lies the problem.64
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
Rochas design concept paralleled the growing political consciousness of

Mexican Americans in Kansas City and nationwide in the 1960s. As an
advocate for Chicanos and other marginalized groups, he addressed the
absence of cultural democracy evident in urban space:
America will never have an architecture of its own, a humanized architecture, nor a
true democracy until the few with cultivated tastes are willing to reflect and recognize
the ethnic cultures of all the people in the democratic process. No product, whether it
be a city, a building or a pencil sharpener is better than the process which produced
it.67
347
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
348
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
Dismantling the Center City Plaza

Even before it was completed, the Center City Plaza was embroiled in a
political conflict that soured the public reception of the new public space. A
faction within the citys business community, led by the Board of Public
Utilities, fought for the removal of the plazas largest sculpture, the so-called
pylons. Overtime, their disdain for one design element became a more
general negative opinion toward the Center City Plaza as a whole.
349
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
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
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.
352
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
353
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-
354
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.
355
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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The Politics of Urban Design:

JOURNAL OF PLANNING HISTORY / November 2003

tory of postWorld War II urban redevelopment. This call for a bottom-up

Wagner / THE POLITICS OF URBAN DESIGN

City, Missouri, and influenced by a spirit of urban boosterism that saturates

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ing of the experiences of ethnic and working-class communities during the

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The two experiences of alienation expressed by Pazone of being torn

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Huron Cemetery is one way to emphasize the connection between the

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JOURNAL OF PLANNING HISTORY / November 2003

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Dismantling the Center City Plaza

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JOURNAL OF PLANNING HISTORY / November 2003

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