Published April 21, 2026 at 4:00 PM CDT

A major extension of Kansas City’s streetcar system. New bike lanes and road diets. Infrastructure improvements in Westport.

Midtown Kansas City is beginning a period of transformation, says Small Developers of KC founder Abby Newsham.

“It really feels like we're beginning to make a more deliberate choice that Midtown is not just a place that you drive to or you drive through, but it's a full community,” said Newsham.

These development and infrastructure projects are an important start, according to Midtown KC Now executive director Kevin Klinkenberg. But in order to realize its potential, Klinkenberg says the area’s population needs to grow.

In the 1950s, 73,000 people lived in Midtown, Klinkenberg says. Today, that number is closer to 28,000.

“We made a lot of conscious decisions, starting in the 1920s, to take all of our major streets and widen them out so that people could drive really fast from downtown to areas south of Brush Creek,” Klinkenberg said. “And that had a consequence of making Midtown less livable, less desirable, because it would become sort of a speedway. So a lot of this effort really is trying to recover from those wounds.”

Newsham and Klinkenberg will both speak at “Midtown Unfiltered,” a part of KC Design Week Wednesday, April 22 at 5:30 p.m. at KCAI’s Epperson Auditorium. 

• Abby Newsham, founder, Small Developers of KC and host, Unconventional Urbanism podcast
• Kevin Klinkenberg, executive director, Midtown KC Now and host, The Messy City podcast