Healthy Environment Goal

Promote a healthy city through environmental sustainability and resiliency


A healthy environment is critical to a healthy city. Natural systems clean the city’s water and air, preserve important ecological functions, manage stormwater, and help mitigate the impacts of climate change. These benefits are seen in the quality of life of Kansas Citians, general public health, and in the local economy, with advantages such as lower healthcare costs and higher property values.

Kansas City faces several challenges to addressing its environmental issues. At a national and regional level, the city is responsible for doing its part to combat climate change. A more local issue is maintaining and improving air and water quality. Preventing the continued loss of crucial native habitats to urban expansion and the degradation of water systems in the region is an issue particularly tied to the city's built environment. Kansas City has undertaken sustainability initiatives such as the Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan and programs to promote sustainable development to address these challenges.

The Healthy Environment Goal aims to use environmental planning to shape land use decisions, green infrastructure development, sustainable transportation planning, waste management policies, and climate mitigation actions in a way that allows Kansas Citians to participate in the development of a more sustainable city.


RELATIONSHIP TO VISION STATEMENTS

The Playbook has fifteen Vision statements for Kansas City. The Playbook’s Vision describes what we want to be and outlines how we want our city to develop in the future, in line with community values and priorities. Those that are closely related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Affordable Community: We will create and nurture an affordable community and strive for abundant opportunity and employment at a livable wage for our residents.
Making homes more energy-efficient can result in cost savings to families and significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Cultural Amenities: Our diverse cultural amenities, parks, and open spaces will provide a rich variety of experiences and vibrant environments.
Restoring and preserving natural systems and growing the city sustainably can preserve historic and cultural resources located within or adjacent to natural areas.
Desirable Place: Our community will attract people and employers through being a desirable place to earn, learn, live, and thrive.
A connected system of open spaces and preserved natural areas will improve the livability and desirability of all neighborhoods. Sustainable development practices will reduce impacts of climate change and protect neighborhoods from potential hazards.
Equitable and Fiscally Sustainable: Our capital investments and growth will be equitable while maintaining the fiscal sustainability of the city.
Reinvestment in previously developed areas can offer opportunities to incorporate green building standards, better stormwater management, improve energy efficiency, increase clean energy production, and restore or enhance degraded natural areas.
Healthy Environmental Systems: We will promote and value the health of our environmental and natural systems and protect them from degradation.
The built environment significantly impacts the many interconnected systems that determine the health of the natural environment. These systems must be protected and expanded to ensure Kansas City’s long-term success and the personal well-being of all Kansas Citians.
History and Heritage: We will preserve places that celebrate all facets of Kansas City’s history and cultural heritage.
Many of the city's historic and cultural resources are located within or adjacent to natural open spaces, rivers and streams, and sensitive environmental areas. As the city preserves and restores natural areas, it should be careful to also preserve and enhance historic and cultural sites.
Innovation and Creativity: We will cultivate innovation and creativity in our governance, business, and educational practices related to smart city technology and physical development.
New technologies can help mitigate the effects of climate change, clean air and water, monitor environmental conditions, and restore natural areas.
KC Uniqueness: We will preserve and enhance those things that make Kansas City unique – the small town feel with big city amenities and the wide range of diverse environments and neighborhoods.
A clean and healthy environment, protected from hazards related to climate change, will be essential to preserve Kansas City’s city amenities, natural resources (e.g., rivers, streams, natural open spaces, habitats), and neighborhoods (e.g., urban, suburban, rural).
Livable Neighborhoods and Diverse Housing: Our neighborhoods will be strong, livable, and authentic while ensuring diverse housing opportunities.
Livable neighborhoods depend on a clean and healthy environment and protection from natural hazards and the effects of climate change.
Mobility Options: Our well-connected and accessible neighborhoods and districts will be walkable and served by reliable, safe, and convenient mobility options.
Well-connected, efficient, and sustainable mobility options reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They reduce the need for a vehicle and reduce vehicle miles traveled due to inefficient urban sprawl.
Physical Beauty: Our city will be renowned for the physical beauty of its streets, buildings, public spaces, and infrastructure.
A system of healthy and clean streams, open spaces, green infrastructure, street trees, and native landscaping in public spaces will help beautify the city.
Regional Collaboration: Our city will continue to be the heart of the region. We will remain collaborative with our regional partners with a renewed focus on building partnerships to achieve the aspirations of this plan.
Regional solutions will be needed to mitigate the impacts of climate change and create healthy environmental systems that are not confined by municipal boundaries or state lines.
Sustainable Growth and Resilient City: Our community will grow in a sustainable manner and be resilient and adaptable to future changes.
Sustainable growth balances human, societal, and economic needs with environmental needs in an effort to create thriving, resilient communities over time.
Thriving Economy: Our economy will be resilient, inclusive, diverse, and thriving and will position our city competitively against our national peers.
Degraded environments, pollution, contamination, severe weather, natural hazards and climate change all can negatively impact the city’s economy. Resiliency is good for a thriving economy.
Walkable, Clean, and Safe: Our community will promote the health of our residents and visitors through being walkable, clean, and safe.
Walkable communities promote compact development, which reduces the impact of the city’s growth on natural habitats and systems. These communities more frequently use transportation that involves walking or biking and less frequently use vehicles, resulting in less traffic congestion and carbon emissions and improved air quality.


RELATIONSHIP TO EQUITY STATEMENTS

The Playbook also has a series of statements focused on equity. Those that are directly related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Addressing Disinvestment: Direct investment to communities that have been abandoned or have experienced long-term disinvestment.
Citywide Accessibility: Ensure services, utilities, and transportation options are provided to everyone.
Community Collaboration: Empower people from different parts of the KC community in working together to solve problems.
Community Engagement: Empower people to shape their communities and recognize that communities value things differently.
Complete Communities: Ensure that people can meet their needs in their own neighborhood without having to travel long distances.
Housing Affordability: Ensure everyone has access to safe and affordable housing.
Inclusive Design: Ensure that development incorporates design features that consider people of all abilities.
Providing Services: Commit to taking care of the built environment and providing the same quality of maintenance and services citywide.
Welcoming Spaces: Ensure that public spaces and amenities are designed to support diverse, culturally authentic, and family-friendly activities, no matter how much money a person is able to spend.


RELATIONSHIP TO BIG IDEAS

The Playbook identifies five Big Ideas for Kansas City. The Big Ideas are the essential themes of the plan. They underpin all that the plan aims to do. Those directly related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Fostering neighborhoods that accommodate all ages, lifestyles, and incomes by diversifying and densifying housing choices and creating complete communities that facilitate a high quality-of-life
To create neighborhoods that accommodate a diverse range of lifestyles and incomes, the city must ensure all areas have a clean environment and protection from potential contamination or natural hazards.
Creating a physically beautiful city by promoting high quality design in public spaces, parks, private development, and capital improvements
Natural open spaces, native landscaping, trees, and green infrastructure can clean air and water and mitigate urban heat-island effects. They also improve the appearance of the city.
Respecting land as a limited resource by balancing outward growth with infill development, preserving natural resources, and developing in an equitable and sustainable manner
Sustainable growth helps ensure the city develops in harmony with natural systems, without damaging sensitive environmental areas.
Maximizing connections and mobility options by bridging or eliminating barriers and creating new physical connections and a robust multimodal transportation system
Natural open spaces can facilitate increased connections throughout the city with trails. Landscaped streets are more walkable and interesting.
Creating a future-proofed city by better anticipating and reacting to new technologies and evolving conditions
Future proofing the city means ensuring the city is prepared for the impacts of climate change and employs new technologies to monitor and predict environmental conditions and to clean and restore sensitive environmental areas and habitats.


RELATIONSHIP TO TOPICS

The Playbook is also structured around five Topics that organize the plan’s recommendations around specific subjects. Those topics directly related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:







RELATIONSHIP TO OBJECTIVES

The Playbook identifies twenty-one Objectives for Kansas City. The Objectives are the nuts and bolts of the Playbook. Each one contains detailed recommendations, strategies, and initiatives for a specific topic, framed by the overall direction the plan sets for that topic. The Objectives also set priorities and metrics for their implementation and provide supporting context, including relevant data and public input. A single Objective often supports multiple Goals and Topics.

Objectives primarily related to the Healthy Environment Goal:

Objectives secondarily related to the Healthy Environment Goal:




Promote a healthy city through environmental sustainability and resiliency


A healthy environment is critical to a healthy city. Natural systems clean the city’s water and air, preserve important ecological functions, manage stormwater, and help mitigate the impacts of climate change. These benefits are seen in the quality of life of Kansas Citians, general public health, and in the local economy, with advantages such as lower healthcare costs and higher property values.

Kansas City faces several challenges to addressing its environmental issues. At a national and regional level, the city is responsible for doing its part to combat climate change. A more local issue is maintaining and improving air and water quality. Preventing the continued loss of crucial native habitats to urban expansion and the degradation of water systems in the region is an issue particularly tied to the city's built environment. Kansas City has undertaken sustainability initiatives such as the Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan and programs to promote sustainable development to address these challenges.

The Healthy Environment Goal aims to use environmental planning to shape land use decisions, green infrastructure development, sustainable transportation planning, waste management policies, and climate mitigation actions in a way that allows Kansas Citians to participate in the development of a more sustainable city.


RELATIONSHIP TO VISION STATEMENTS

The Playbook has fifteen Vision statements for Kansas City. The Playbook’s Vision describes what we want to be and outlines how we want our city to develop in the future, in line with community values and priorities. Those that are closely related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Affordable Community: We will create and nurture an affordable community and strive for abundant opportunity and employment at a livable wage for our residents.
Making homes more energy-efficient can result in cost savings to families and significantly reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Cultural Amenities: Our diverse cultural amenities, parks, and open spaces will provide a rich variety of experiences and vibrant environments.
Restoring and preserving natural systems and growing the city sustainably can preserve historic and cultural resources located within or adjacent to natural areas.
Desirable Place: Our community will attract people and employers through being a desirable place to earn, learn, live, and thrive.
A connected system of open spaces and preserved natural areas will improve the livability and desirability of all neighborhoods. Sustainable development practices will reduce impacts of climate change and protect neighborhoods from potential hazards.
Equitable and Fiscally Sustainable: Our capital investments and growth will be equitable while maintaining the fiscal sustainability of the city.
Reinvestment in previously developed areas can offer opportunities to incorporate green building standards, better stormwater management, improve energy efficiency, increase clean energy production, and restore or enhance degraded natural areas.
Healthy Environmental Systems: We will promote and value the health of our environmental and natural systems and protect them from degradation.
The built environment significantly impacts the many interconnected systems that determine the health of the natural environment. These systems must be protected and expanded to ensure Kansas City’s long-term success and the personal well-being of all Kansas Citians.
History and Heritage: We will preserve places that celebrate all facets of Kansas City’s history and cultural heritage.
Many of the city's historic and cultural resources are located within or adjacent to natural open spaces, rivers and streams, and sensitive environmental areas. As the city preserves and restores natural areas, it should be careful to also preserve and enhance historic and cultural sites.
Innovation and Creativity: We will cultivate innovation and creativity in our governance, business, and educational practices related to smart city technology and physical development.
New technologies can help mitigate the effects of climate change, clean air and water, monitor environmental conditions, and restore natural areas.
KC Uniqueness: We will preserve and enhance those things that make Kansas City unique – the small town feel with big city amenities and the wide range of diverse environments and neighborhoods.
A clean and healthy environment, protected from hazards related to climate change, will be essential to preserve Kansas City’s city amenities, natural resources (e.g., rivers, streams, natural open spaces, habitats), and neighborhoods (e.g., urban, suburban, rural).
Livable Neighborhoods and Diverse Housing: Our neighborhoods will be strong, livable, and authentic while ensuring diverse housing opportunities.
Livable neighborhoods depend on a clean and healthy environment and protection from natural hazards and the effects of climate change.
Mobility Options: Our well-connected and accessible neighborhoods and districts will be walkable and served by reliable, safe, and convenient mobility options.
Well-connected, efficient, and sustainable mobility options reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They reduce the need for a vehicle and reduce vehicle miles traveled due to inefficient urban sprawl.
Physical Beauty: Our city will be renowned for the physical beauty of its streets, buildings, public spaces, and infrastructure.
A system of healthy and clean streams, open spaces, green infrastructure, street trees, and native landscaping in public spaces will help beautify the city.
Regional Collaboration: Our city will continue to be the heart of the region. We will remain collaborative with our regional partners with a renewed focus on building partnerships to achieve the aspirations of this plan.
Regional solutions will be needed to mitigate the impacts of climate change and create healthy environmental systems that are not confined by municipal boundaries or state lines.
Sustainable Growth and Resilient City: Our community will grow in a sustainable manner and be resilient and adaptable to future changes.
Sustainable growth balances human, societal, and economic needs with environmental needs in an effort to create thriving, resilient communities over time.
Thriving Economy: Our economy will be resilient, inclusive, diverse, and thriving and will position our city competitively against our national peers.
Degraded environments, pollution, contamination, severe weather, natural hazards and climate change all can negatively impact the city’s economy. Resiliency is good for a thriving economy.
Walkable, Clean, and Safe: Our community will promote the health of our residents and visitors through being walkable, clean, and safe.
Walkable communities promote compact development, which reduces the impact of the city’s growth on natural habitats and systems. These communities more frequently use transportation that involves walking or biking and less frequently use vehicles, resulting in less traffic congestion and carbon emissions and improved air quality.


RELATIONSHIP TO EQUITY STATEMENTS

The Playbook also has a series of statements focused on equity. Those that are directly related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Addressing Disinvestment: Direct investment to communities that have been abandoned or have experienced long-term disinvestment.
Citywide Accessibility: Ensure services, utilities, and transportation options are provided to everyone.
Community Collaboration: Empower people from different parts of the KC community in working together to solve problems.
Community Engagement: Empower people to shape their communities and recognize that communities value things differently.
Complete Communities: Ensure that people can meet their needs in their own neighborhood without having to travel long distances.
Housing Affordability: Ensure everyone has access to safe and affordable housing.
Inclusive Design: Ensure that development incorporates design features that consider people of all abilities.
Providing Services: Commit to taking care of the built environment and providing the same quality of maintenance and services citywide.
Welcoming Spaces: Ensure that public spaces and amenities are designed to support diverse, culturally authentic, and family-friendly activities, no matter how much money a person is able to spend.


RELATIONSHIP TO BIG IDEAS

The Playbook identifies five Big Ideas for Kansas City. The Big Ideas are the essential themes of the plan. They underpin all that the plan aims to do. Those directly related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Fostering neighborhoods that accommodate all ages, lifestyles, and incomes by diversifying and densifying housing choices and creating complete communities that facilitate a high quality-of-life
To create neighborhoods that accommodate a diverse range of lifestyles and incomes, the city must ensure all areas have a clean environment and protection from potential contamination or natural hazards.
Creating a physically beautiful city by promoting high quality design in public spaces, parks, private development, and capital improvements
Natural open spaces, native landscaping, trees, and green infrastructure can clean air and water and mitigate urban heat-island effects. They also improve the appearance of the city.
Respecting land as a limited resource by balancing outward growth with infill development, preserving natural resources, and developing in an equitable and sustainable manner
Sustainable growth helps ensure the city develops in harmony with natural systems, without damaging sensitive environmental areas.
Maximizing connections and mobility options by bridging or eliminating barriers and creating new physical connections and a robust multimodal transportation system
Natural open spaces can facilitate increased connections throughout the city with trails. Landscaped streets are more walkable and interesting.
Creating a future-proofed city by better anticipating and reacting to new technologies and evolving conditions
Future proofing the city means ensuring the city is prepared for the impacts of climate change and employs new technologies to monitor and predict environmental conditions and to clean and restore sensitive environmental areas and habitats.


RELATIONSHIP TO TOPICS

The Playbook is also structured around five Topics that organize the plan’s recommendations around specific subjects. Those topics directly related to the Healthy Environment Goal are highlighted in grey below:







RELATIONSHIP TO OBJECTIVES

The Playbook identifies twenty-one Objectives for Kansas City. The Objectives are the nuts and bolts of the Playbook. Each one contains detailed recommendations, strategies, and initiatives for a specific topic, framed by the overall direction the plan sets for that topic. The Objectives also set priorities and metrics for their implementation and provide supporting context, including relevant data and public input. A single Objective often supports multiple Goals and Topics.

Objectives primarily related to the Healthy Environment Goal:

Objectives secondarily related to the Healthy Environment Goal:




Page last updated: 14 Apr 2023, 08:37 AM