Cars whiz by, the Meyer circle fountain flows with water and many STA students drive down Ward Parkway in the morning. With little amounts of crime, well-lived-in houses, and only the occasional speeder, this street may seem to be the perfect route to school.
The Meyer Circle fountain, the grand center of Ward Parkway, is celebrating its 100th year in Kansas City. Even though the fountain is currently dry due to maintenance, to many Kansas Citians, Meyer Circle is their hub of transportation and an iconic sight in Kansas City.
The Paseo, Ward Parkway’s parallel sister street directly east, shares similarity to Ward Parkway in its roots (they are both products of the City Beautiful movement of the late 19 and early 20th centuries), but today the two throughfares present very different socioeconomic realities, including traffic density, road conditions, housing prices and crime rates.
According to DataKC, an analysis-based website created by city hall, of the 34,000 potholes reported in Kansas City from 2022 to 2025, 464 of them were on Paseo, while only 24 were on Ward Parkway; however, in a 2024 traffic volume study conducted by the Missouri Department of Transportation, it was found that, on an average day, approximately 10,000-19,000 people drive on Ward Parkway, while around 2,500-5,000 people drive on Paseo.
In terms of housing, the median price of real estate on Ward Parkway is $433K, while houses on the Paseo have an average value of about $250K.
Comparing the amount of “dangerous buildings,” which are structures that may need to be demolished and could harm the public, Ward Parkway’s district, 64113, had only three of these buildings, compared to 17 dangerous structures of Paseo’s district, 64132.
Mimi Harman, a religion teacher at STA, sees these differences in her daily life.
“Originally, [the separation of the city] was Troost, but now many of the neighborhoods have been gentrified and Paseo seems to be the line of differentiation,” Harman said. “I live just east of Troost, but the amount of resources west of Paseo, like grocery stores and education, are just not as good as the Ward Parkway [area].”
These many forms of data may lead citizens to ask: What happened?
Dating all the way back to the 1890s, Paseo Boulevard was the vision of German Architect George Kessler. Named after another iconic street in Mexico called the Paseo De La Reforma, it was intended to cut across the city and provide scenic green space in an urban environment.
Melissa Patterson Hazley, a council women for the 3rd district of Kansas City, which contains most of Paseo, acknowledges the beautiful beginnings of Paseo.
“Both areas were designed with the same idea,” Patterson Hazley said. “We have these beautiful boulevards and beautiful parkways, and Paseo is actually older then Ward Parkway.”
Ward Parkway, which was part of the same movement to bring beautiful green space to cities, was dreamed up by J.C Nichols, the controversial developer of Kansas City’s Country Club district.
Nichols became a controversial figure because he played a big role in redlining, a dark part of the city’s development history. Across America, redlining, which is the systemic denial of housing opportunities to certain minorities, has been major problem throughout America.
When The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) were created during the Great Depression to make home-ownership easier, it integrated many racist policies. The organizations were denying minority groups-̶ most commonly African Americans-̶ of housing opportunities and loans. The HOLC also drew color-coded maps, marking a neighborhood “desirable” or “hazardous,” hence the term redlining.
While much of that discrimination was happening on a national level, Kansas City was having its own experience with redlining. Nichols used official documents and high home prices to bar Black Americans from his developments.
On the HOLC map, neighborhoods east of Troost were mostly red areas, while west neighborhoods were mostly green. This affected eastern residents’ credit and property value, making it harder to move. With less money invested in these neighborhoods, public safety, education and overall health declined.
“Since our taxes are based on property value, the property that’s east of the Paseo has less value,” Harman said. “So, the schools are getting less [money].”
Appraisals from 1939 described areas like 18th and Vine District to be “ragged in every aspect,” while Mission Hills was seen as “the gold coast of Kansas City.”
When US-71, a highway running across Kansas City from north to south, was built in the 1960s and 70s, it tore many black communities apart and displaced people from their homes. Paseo is only a few blocks west of US-71, and goes through those divided neighborhoods.
Because government departments and city developers institutionalized this wealth gap in Kansas City for almost 100 years, improvements in maintenance and aesthetic were generally neglected or unaffordable.
“Paseo did not have an affluent population that continued to nurture it, take care of it or improve it,” Patterson Hazley said. “And so, you see a little less investment by the parks department in the Paseo compared to Ward Parkway.”
For example, the neighborhood around Ward Parkway developed a community improvement group, which is system to keep up with the historic street’s wear and tear.
“A lot of people didn’t know that there is a Community Improvement District that overlays a lot of Ward Parkway. ” Patterson Hazley said. “They are capturing 1% of the sales taxes of the businesses in that area, and then reinvesting that back into the fountains, into the medians, into sidewalks and other things to keep the area up, and that is something that the Paseo doesn’t have. Paseo doesn’t have a Community Improvement District, and it really probably doesn’t have enough commercial businesses to generate the revenue.”
Today, redlining still affects our community. Eastern parts of Kansas City, like the Paseo, are still predominately black, and western areas, like Ward Parkway, are predominately white. Certain systems still trap poverty to the east side.
“We’re still very segregated, and a lot of the practices of redlining are actually still happening, like property appraisals,” Patterson Hazley said. “There are very strict terms about how to appraise property. And so when you appraise a property, [for a hypothetical Paseo house] an appraiser comes over and evaluates the property, which perpetuates the depressed values even in 2025.”
To combat the persisting effects of redlining, Harman encourages students to live without fear.
“We should not be afraid of people of all colors, not to be afraid to live east of the Paseo,” Harman said. “We also need taxes and laws that help those communities and schools more. And so, when families move east and really live amongst diversity, both economically and racial, it breaks down boundaries and improves everybody’s lives.”
Patterson Hazley agrees that breaking down these barriers and encouraging diversity is essential to eradicate redlining’s separation.
“The best thing you can do is diversify your own personal community, so that you’re not reading about people and things in a book, but you’re actually interacting with people that have a different lived experience from you,” Patterson Hazley said.
