News

As Kansas City prepares for a special election on a proposed downtown streetcar line, KCPT and the Mid-America Regional Council‘s Imagine KC series examines the impact of transit-oriented development on Kansas City’s metro. KCPT’s Randy Mason and LOCUS President Chris Leinberger toured some of Kansas City’s streetscape along the proposed line, and discussed the commerce and development streetcar proponents predict will follow:

“This plan that Kansas City has in place for Phase 1 is absolutely ideal. You’ve built in the business for this street car. But that brings up a really important point: you don’t build rail transit to move people. That’s not the goal. That may be counterintuitive, but it’s not the goal. The goal is economic development. The means is by moving people. As you add more activity it just gets better. More is better. More people on the street, more options as far as restaurants and grocery stores. It starts this upward spiral. And in fact when it really starts rolling, basically, walkable urban places become the most expensive place to live in the region on a price-per-square-foot basis. That’s happened throughout the country over the last ten years.”

Learn more: Episode 10: Transit Oriented Development, from Imagine KC.