City Ecologies

Great cities tend to have great civic spaces. Such civic spaces imbue their surroundings with promise. The critical relationship between civic space and urban context is the foundational issue of the City Ecologies studio. This document presents the work of the City Ecologies studio, the first phase of a yearlong research and design study investigating a comprehensive vision for green space in downtown Kansas City. The study was initiated by the Downtown Council of Kansas City (DTC) and coordinated by the Kansas City Design Center. City Ecologies studio was an eight-week summer course taught by Assistant Professors Blake Belanger, Dr. Jason Brody, and Howard Hahn at Kansas State University. The thirty landscape architecture students participating in the studio were comprised of non-baccalaureate master’s degree students entering their fourth year and post-baccalaureate master’s degree students entering their second year of study.