Planning for our community is like planning for your household - you have an idea of what you would like to achieve in the future and you layout the pieces that will help you get there. For a community, the pieces include public policy that is adopted by your elected officials and sets the goals; strategies for attracting the resources, funding, and partners to help us achieve these goals; and an empowered community that believes in these goals and is contributing in their own way to making this vision a reality.
A comprehensive plan establishes a shared vision for our community that helps guide future infrastructure, development, and key investments that shape our neighborhoods and quality of life for the next 25 years or so.
Watch this Brief Video
The last time our community adopted a master plan was in 2008 and we can all agree the world has changed a lot in that time. PlanKCK is a comprehensive plan that will incorporate the recently adopted goDotte mobility strategy and incorporate the economic development strategic plan, housing strategy, and citywide historic preservation plan which are already underway. Other topics to be considered for this plan include, but are not limited to: food systems, environmental justice, arts and culture, open space preservation and land use, parks and recreation, and regional identity.
Housing Strategy
Led by FUSE Executive Fellow DeWayne Bright, Sr., the Housing Strategy will provide recommendations on addressing the housing crisis in KCK. An Innovation Lab was hosted on June 22nd by FUSE and the Medici Group to look at strategic planning solutions for our unhoused community members.
PlanKCK applies four distinct lenses to the topics covered in the comprehensive plan: (1) equity; (2) health; (3) access; and (4) sustainability. As a majority-minority community with historic disinvestment, every decision made must consider potential impacts to our community, whether that decision is on housing, transportation, or where we source our energy.
Neighborhood roundtable | April 29, 2023
On Saturday, April 29, 2023 at the Eisenhower Community Center, we hosted our first Neighborhood Roundtable. Neighborhood leaders and community members participated in a discussion surrounding how to support and create resilient neighborhoods. Groundwork Neighborhood Revitalization Group's Green Team presented on their current green infrastructure project along Jersey Creek, representing a current community project that will improve resiliency to flooding and stormwater inundation.
Pizza + Planning: Engaging our Neighbors | May 2023
Neighborhood organizations, neighborhood leaders, UG staff and the public join the UG Planning + Urban Design department for five Pizza + Planning meetings throughout the month of May 2023. These group conversations covered the process of the comprehensive plan, how to improve community engagement strategies that reach ALL community members, and beta-tested engagement activities for the May Vision Summit. Feedback from these meetings inform a summer of outreach surrounding PlanKCK.
To see what events, community groups, and strategies were recommended during Pizza + Planning, check out our Summer of Outreach tab.
Vision Summit | May 16, 2023
On May 16, the Unified Government hosted a Vision Summit with neighborhood leaders and community stakeholders to discuss the economic development component of the comprehensive plan. Hosted by our economic development consultants, FutureIQ, this conversation focused on the type of economic development the community would like to see in KCK. The Vision Summit report is available here(PDF, 5MB)
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The full presentation from the Vision Summit is available here(PDF, 11MB). Learn more about the Economic Development Strategy on the FutureIQ Project site.
Kansas City Design Center (KCDC) KCK Riverfront Project
Kansas City Design Center (KCDC), a service-learning design center, operates a design program for students in architecture and planning programs. For the second year in a row, a group of students participating in the KCDC program worked on a project in KCK that evaluated how to reconnect the Strawberry Hill riverfront community with the Kansas River and our KCMO neighbors in West Bottoms. Read their full report(PDF, 13MB).
(PDF, 177KB)This outreach summary(PDF, 170KB)
provides valuable insight and feedback gathered from outreach events, reflecting on the significant comments and visions shared by community members.
Do you have an important topic in mind for the Citywide Comprehensive Plan? Or would you like to host a community engagement session on one of these topics? Email Long Range Planner Alyssa Marcy at amarcy@wycokck.org with comments or questions.