Implementation

Successful implementation of this plan will require close coordination between the city, other government and quasi government agencies, community organizations, businesses, neighborhoods, and individuals. A successful implementation program will require ongoing feedback and engagement with these entities to maintain support and awareness of plan initiatives. It is imperative that community and city leaders see this plan’s recommendations as the result of a collaborative effort and are willing to take a proactive role in ensuring the best possible future for Kansas City. Likewise, each city department must take ownership of its appropriate sections and communicate those responsibilities effectively to the public.

This chapter outlines the overall framework to guide plan implementation, including priorities and resources necessary to fully realize the Playbook's goals. The Implementation Dashboard shows the timeframes, relevant metrics, and responsible parties for each of the Playbook’s recommendations, the Community Supported Actions (CSAs).

PLAN OWNERSHIP AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

This plan is written specifically with implementation and accountability in mind, including:

Recommendations derived from extensive public input and community support (see the Public Engagement and Process Summary for more information)
Emphasis on concise, understandable language
Practical recommendations with enough detail to aid decision making and implementation
Trackable metrics for every objective
Filterable and sortable tags that help everyone quickly find the most relevant plan recommendations to them

The Playbook’s focus on organization, readability, and feasibility makes the plan accessible to everyone in the community and ultimately results in greater understanding, leadership, and real-world impacts.

Every successful community plan hinges on meaningful engagement and transparency with those that it impacts. Therefore, the Playbook implementation program should maintain a productive connection to the people of Kansas City and keep community informed. Accurate and up-to-date information about implementation progress and initiatives should be published regularly. A well-informed community is also more likely to stay interested, involved, and diligent when it comes to ensuring accountability for each of the Playbook’s sections.

Coordination with city departments and with other governmental agencies is necessary for implementation of a plan with such a wide scope. The plan’s recommendations and responsibilities span nearly all city departments, as well as other local agencies including KCATA, Housing Authority, EDC, MODOT, MARC, and county and state governments. This coordination must begin as early as possible and continue through the duration of the plan’s lifecycle.

The vision of the plan is kept by everyone who contributed to the work, but they will need the support of City departments to coordinate efforts in order to be effective. It is critical that new City initiated projects from every department happen in conjunction with the plan. Continued dialogue and coordination between city departments is vital to ensure that service and project delivery are in line with the goals and priorities of the plan.

In this section there are new tools to be applied to the development review process citywide. The list of Goal Supporting Criteria is a reference tool to be used to evaluate projects, development applications, ordinances and other proposals for their agreement with the comprehensive plan. It is also intended to be a tool used by the development community when putting together development applications. The Global Design Guidelines are an evaluation tool that aims to ensure that quality development is happening in all communities in Kansas City. More specific design guidance for specific community contexts and predominant development forms can be found in the Development Form and Context Guidelines.

SOLIDIFY PLAYBOOK'S ROLE IN CITY ORDINANCES, POLICIES, AND PLANS

The Playbook is intended to be a guide for decision-making at all levels of governance. The Playbook's goals and recommendations should be integrated into city codes and ordinances, policy documents, budgets, city initiatives, and capital improvement planning processes to help ensure consistent implementation of plan goals (see Goal Supporting Criteria).

Likewise, the Playbook should be reviewed for its agreement with all current city plans and guide the creation of all future plans and updates. The Global Design Guidelines and Development Form and Context Guidelines should be consulted as capital improvements are being planned and designed and as development plans are being evaluated to ensure agreement with the community's goals.

GOAL SUPPORTING CRITERIA

The Goal Supporting Criteria are a set of statements that provide a practical framework for evaluating future projects and decisions in Kansas City. These criteria should be used to help determine whether a proposed project, initiative, development, or policy is generally consistent with the comprehensive plan or not. Each criteria relates to one of the ten citywide goals of the Playbook. Analyzing a project through the lens of these criteria will provide a picture of how well a project does or does not advance the goals of this plan. Below each criteria are a few examples of ways to further each goal.

All proposed projects/improvements/developments in Kansas City should:

Attract and retain new residents while ensuring current residents can age-in-place

Providing diverse housing options that cater to people of all ages and incomes
Providing affordable housing units that allow current residents to remain in their homes
Supplying adequate modes of transportation to allow access to daily needs such as jobs, groceries, and other community centers
Support brownfields and other environmental justice or public health initiatives that ensure no one is displaced due to unsafe living or environmental conditions.

Contribute to the city’s environmental sustainability and resiliency

Improving water quality and manage stormwater through “green” approaches
Preserving and enhance sensitive natural areas and habitats
Using permeable surfaces, rain gardens, bioswales, and other green infrastructure techniques
Incorporating energy saving techniques, clean energy sources, and sustainable building design, methods and materials

Enhance or create new mobility options and foster a more connected city

Promoting pedestrian scale blocks and streetscapes
Creating “complete streets” and adhering to Transit Oriented Development policies
Removing or mitigating physical and social barriers in communities

Incorporate new technology and innovation to further the city’s smart city goals

Increasing access to broadband internet
Utilizing real-time or geographic information to improve user experiences and city service delivery
Complying with the Digital Equity Strategic Plan, the Digital KC Now initiative, or other similar plans

Increase equity by embracing diversity and creating economic opportunity

Providing a diverse array of affordable housing near job centers
Incorporating multiple modes of access, such as bike parking and safe pedestrian connections
Increasing access to worker supporting amenities near job centers, such as childcare, groceries, pharmacies, etc.

Increase housing choice and improve access to affordable housing for all Kansas City residents

Providing a wide array of housing types, especially “missing middle” styles
Utilizing accessory dwelling units as an attainable housing option
Providing greater housing density in areas served by transit and connected to job centers

Lead to equitable and sustainable growth or revitalization

Contributing to development patterns that are fiscally sustainable
Prioritizing infill or contiguous development that utilizes existing infrastructure and services over “leapfrog” developments
Focusing capital improvements and incentives toward areas in need of revitalization
Aid in remediating health hazards that disproportionately affect lower income residents, such as lead, radon, and mold exposure

Preserve and celebrate community character, history, art, and culture

Creating or preserving public art
Preserving and enhancing historic buildings or landmarks
Complementing and building upon existing character and culture of the area

Promote high-quality design

Complying with the Global Development Guidelines
Complying with Development Context and Form Guidelines
Using high quality, attractive, and durable construction materials

Protect or expand the system of parks, boulevards, and open spaces

Incorporating or creating new parks and open space
Creating sufficient connections to surrounding parks, trails, and open spaces
Creating usable public spaces like streetscapes, plazas and courtyards and repurposed street right of way

GLOBAL DESIGN GUIDELINES

The Global Design Guidelines relate to physical characteristics that are desirable everywhere, regardless of the community context and should be used during the review of development proposals. These guidelines should be consulted during the design phase of any public or private projects in order to ensure consistency with the comprehensive plan. They should also be paired with the Development Form and Context Guidelines, which provide more specific criteria based on the specific context of each project.

To ensure that a project is providing quality development to the city, the project should be analyzed to determine if it:

Avoids creating or perpetuating barriers, including barriers to connectivity/access and social/economic barriers Is supported by infrastructure designed to be useful for 100 years or more Creates new neighborhoods and districts with distinct and identifiable character Effectively uses infill sites or existing infrastructures contiguous to existing development Embraces and integrates with the surrounding areas and should not be inwardly focused Fits within or adds value to the character of the surrounding area Improves access to daily needs, particularly in equity priority areas, and help to create a “complete community” Improves opportunities for affordable housing, particularly near transit and employment centers Makes walking, biking, transit riding, and scooter riding safe, convenient, and inviting and accommodates safe and convenient access for all modes of travel Preserves or creates open space, respects existing topography, and minimizes the impact of development on the natural environment Preserves, refurbishes, and reuses historic buildings and landmarks on the site Provides a desirable mix of uses or increases housing diversity Provides features expressly intended to enhance safety and inclusiveness for persons of all ages and abilities Provides streets that form a continuous network with frequent connections Provides well-designed and activated public spaces

DEVELOPMENT FORM AND CONTEXT GUIDELINES

Development Form and Context Guidelines describe how the built environment should look, feel, and function (independent of the type of land use) in a particular area. These guidelines should be applied in both a reactive way (used to evaluate individual development proposals) and in a proactive way (to incorporate relevant components into the city’s development code and apply new zoning tools). The city’s most-recently updated area plans have Development Form Maps and Guidelines. Those Development Form Guidelines are incorporated into the Playbook and will now be applied citywide. Click here to go to the Development Form and Context Guidelines Development Form Guidelines provide design guidance that is specific to the form (corridor, node, district, neighborhood, downtown) that a project site is located in. Development form generally describes the typical physical character of an area. These guidelines are intended to help ensure that new development is compatible with the existing and desired form of an area. Development Form Guidelines contain specific guidelines across several categories that are related to development. These development form categories include: architectural character, site arrangement, transitions and screening, public and semi-public spaces, access and circulation, and sustainability. In the Quality Development Objective, CSA QD-2 recommends that the Development Form Guidelines be revised to include Context Guidelines as well that take into consideration the typical land uses and the overall character of an area. Contexts seen in Kansas City include a diverse range from rural to suburban to urban. Development Form and Context Guidelines should be used in conjunction with the Global Design Guidelines (see CSA QD-1 for more) to ensure that quality development is happening citywide, but that the development is still sensitive to the existing form and context of an area. City staff and development applicants should use these tools to guide decision making for any development project or capital improvement. For example, any property that requires a rezoning, a special use permit, receives tax incentives, or requires a development plan should be subject to these guidelines.

IMPLEMENTATION DASHBOARD

The Implementation Dashboard shows the estimated timelines, responsible parties, and cost categories for each Community Supported Action (CSA) in the Playbook, as well as linking CSAs to their relevant measures of success. The dashboard is a tool to track responsibilities and improve transparency as the Playbook’s recommendations become realized. Use the Dashboard to filter CSAs and measures of success by Big 5 Idea, Topic, Goal, and Objective.
Click here to go to the Implementation Dashboard

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

The Playbook’s measures of success are a collection of quantifiable metrics that give insight into the progress being made towards each goal or recommendation. These measures are intended to provide supporting data over the lifetime of the plan and must be regularly tracked and updated to stay current. Some metrics will be updated more often than others due to the specific time requirements of each. Each measure will be paired with a responsible party, whether that be the City of Kansas City or another agency already tracking a specific metric, as well as paired to its most relevant Objective and CSA. Some measures may be tagged to multiple objectives.
Measures of Success:	Intended Direction:
1% for art locations	Increase
Annual visitors to Kansas City	Increase
At-risk affordable housing units	Decrease
Average site EUI buildings (new vs. renovated; use category)	Decrease
Broadband access	Increase
Displacement risk ratio	Decrease
Evictions	Decrease
Greenfield development residential density	Increase
Greenhouse gas emissions	Decrease
Historic register listing (or eligible) resource demolition	Decrease
Hotel tax revenue	Increase
Infrastructure lifecycle costs (infill vs. greenfield areas)	Decrease
Jobs accessible by 30-minute transit trip	Increase
Jobs in traded sectors	Increase
Land use entropy index (mixed use development)	Increase
Life expectancy	Increase
Low-income cost-burdened renter households	Decrease
Miles of new sidewalks	Increase
Miles of protected bicycle facilities	Increase
Miles of reduced speed limit	Increase
Miles of repaired sidewalks	Increase
Miles of roadway capital projects on high injury network completed	Increase
New housing permits (infill vs. greenfield areas)	Increase
New income-restricted affordable housing units	Increase
Number of bedrooms per unit entropy score	Increase
Number of systemic improvements completed	Increase
Pedestrian crossing distance between major barriers	Decrease
People killed or seriously inured in traffic crashes on city streets	Decrease
Permit construction value (infill vs. greenfield areas)	Increase
Population with access to a park	Increase
Population with access to a trail	Increase
Public garage, lot, curb subsidies (by area type, i.e., in TOD areas)	Decrease
Public transit access (half-mile radius by level of service)	Increase
Ratio of transit commutes to drive-alone commute times	Decrease
Residential building size entropy score	Increase
Share of population in complete community areas (minority population, low-income population)	Increase
Small, minority, and women-owned businesses	Increase
Surface parking lot area (by area type, i.e., in TOD areas)	Decrease
Total vehicle miles traveled	Decrease
Transit funding per capita	Increase
Transit ridership (unlinked passenger trips)	Increase
Truck travel time reliability	Increase
Urban tree canopy coverage	Increase
Vacant lots (continually distressed vs. elsewhere)	Decrease
Value of freight throughput	Increase
Vehicle-light households	Increase

Limitations of data

While this data will form the quantitative portion of the Playbook, it is important to remember that this is a people and community focused plan. Therefore metrics, while helpful for tracking physical changes, are unable to tell the full story of an objective and should always be considered in context and alongside other qualitative measures. It is also important to maintain open and constant communication with all communities so that lived experiences can be accounted for and data can be interpreted through a data equity lens. Some limitations to consider when it comes to quantitative measures are:
Highlighting differences between communities, but not explaining why those differences exist. Showing correlations between variables or outcomes, but not proving causational relationships. Helping to compare communities, but not accounting for individual or lived experiences. Defining intentions but not explaining the historical, cultural, or political contexts that lead to outcomes.