Madnessmatrix | Eric Bowers Photography

Multiple RAWs // HDR // Shutter: varied // Aperture: f/16 // Focal Length: 17 mm // ISO 400

*Note* Sometime in the coming days or weeks (not totally sure on the time frame), we will be moving to a new, overhauled website with a different web domain name. MadnessMatrix will be set to redirect to the new one, so don’t fret.

The old Empire Theatre of downtown Kansas City, restored and nearing its grand opening as the AMC Mainstreet Theatre. As I’ve made mention of elsewhere, we’re lucky to still have this old thing around and brought back to her former glory. Many historic buildings that weren’t in as bad of shape as this have been demolished, but we got by here. Otherwise it would have wound up being another hideous surface parking lot in true Kansas City fashion, I’m sure.

And that reminds me of the classic quote uttered by Lewis Mumford - legendary pioneer in urban planning.

“Forget the damned motorcar and build the cities for lovers and friends.”

And I have been thinking this morning about this, even more so than normal. My regular visitors to this site may have noticed I kind of either consciously or accidentally set out to portray Kansas City Missouri as a pristine urban oasis of the central plains. In fact it may be to an extent, depending on your perspective and what parts of the city we’re talking about (though, name a city that this couldn’t be said about).

What unnerves me, and a few other like-minded people I’m acquainted with, is how this city along with so many other examples of urban America, set about to retrofit themselves from “urban” to “suburban” by adopting automobile-centered zoning laws which serve better those wearing cars than those getting around by foot. The leaders then tried to retrofit urban America into a modernist automobile utopia, which has failed miserably judging by the before-and-after photos taken in locations of Kansas City Missouri’s urban core.

I can take you *almost* anywhere down the Main Street spine from Downtown to the Plaza, a four mile distance, and we’ll seldom see anything but the revolting accessories of our self-imposed automobile dependency - those being the car washes, the drive thru fast food shacks, strip mall gulags with pay day loans and check cashing outlet “businesses” occupying them. In hindsight’s view, what we’ve done to our own human settlement pattern was so reckless that it’s disgraceful and shameful.

Also, I’m a car guy. I like cars a lot, prefer to drive a manual transmission, and prefer a stiff suspension and at least a moderately responsive engine. It’s fun, it’s enjoyable. A well-engineered automobile is something I appreciate. But the point of “the motorcar” to begin with was to gain mobility and be “freed,” so to speak. But how free are we now that our entire American landscape mandates car ownership and usage just to conduct normal daily life?

What was intended to be our servant ended up as our master, and in the reckless glee to accomplish this, we literally destroyed so much of our would-be historic urban areas that now we are left with a largely trashed urban landscape throughout America, and a whole populace that does not understand the arguments in favor of population density, arguments in favor of walkable neighborhoods, and let’s be honest, arguments in favor of a more difficult time getting around by automobile. It seems to me like most Americans view “a real city” as some place you go for vacation, but never to live, because of course, “Where would we park?”

Retrofitting traditional pre-war urban density with moronic, land-use-segregating zoning laws was one of the dumbest things undertaken in America in the Twentieth Century, I would argue (although perhaps not the absolute most egregious).

My point? We trashed and destroyed so much of Kansas City, that now my generation of people are somewhat irritated by being bequeathed a city so hacked to shreds by the reckless endangerment of those before us. And why do you think I’m constantly posting photos of Kansas City that make it look like such a pleasant, beautiful city? Because I feel the need to, and it occured to me recently that I didn’t even realize why I felt the need to do this, but now I do.

Maybe I’ll start posting pictures of our wonderful “car-warshes” and drive-thru fry pits so as to lend some visual illustration to this rant.

Anyway, sorry - rant over. Glad the theater was saved and coming back for good.