The Rhetoric of Urban Renewal: Redevelopment in Kansas City's Crossroads Arts District

Abstract

Cities throughout the United States have attempted to rehabilitate their neglected urban neighborhoods. These efforts have been the result of rhetorical struggles that involve the stakeholders of the neighborhoods - residents, governments and businesses. In this dissertation, I argue that the rhetoric surrounding contemporary urban renewal efforts has been constrained by the neoliberal occupational psychosis. I specifically examine how the discourses of these stakeholders have shaped the identity, infrastructure, and resources of the Crossroads Arts District, an urban neighborhood in Kansas City. This neighborhood was founded by artists who were seeking affordable spaces for living and working. However, this identity changed when developers began building upscale condominiums and apartments within the neighborhood. This change can be attributed to what Maurice Charland (1987) calls constitutive rhetoric. As the neighborhood was populated, its infrastructure also evolved. In doing so, the city strived to establish what Michel de Certeau (1984) refers to as a place. Not only did the city shape the neighborhood's infrastructure, but it also provided tax incentives for developers. To receive these incentives developers relied on what Aune (2001) calls "the rhetoric of economic correctness."