The performing arts neighborhood of Kansas City.

For generations, South Vine was one of the culturally richest neighborhoods in America — the ground that produced Kansas City jazz, with the density to carry it: at its postwar peak, roughly 41,000 residents and more than 15,000 homes within walking distance of 18th & Vine. The culture was never separate from the economy. The residents were the audience, the workforce, the market, and the inheritance.

Then the line was drawn. The 1930s federal maps graded these blocks “D — Hazardous,” and every instrument that followed — disinvestment, urban renewal, the interstate driven through the Black business district — followed the line. Thirty-eight thousand residents displaced. Thirteen thousand homes demolished.

Redlining didn't destroy housing. It destroyed an economy — the businesses, the venues, the payrolls, the audiences, the equity that would have passed to children. The houses were just where the collapse showed. That is why rebuilding housing alone has never worked here, and it is what we are actually rebuilding in South Vine: the economy — production, capital, demand, ownership — organized around the identity that never left.

This page is how we got to this place. The place itself is the point.