Brian Jackson’s project shown in Figure 1, examined the impact of developing a multi-modal transit station on Broadway across from Bartle Hall. Brian Jackson used the present I-35 right of way for the development of a light rail line that would connect Johnson County with Downtown Kansas City. The removal of the expressway allows for the development of a neighborhood just west of the Kauffman Performing Arts Center. A platform extends over the north side of I-670 allowing the construction of a convention hotel and a new luxury high rise apartment tower.

Brian Jackson’s winning design for the Broadway Corridor.

Chayton True’s design examined the intersection of Southwest Boulevard and West Pennway. Chayton True redesigned almost all of the circulation routes including I-35, Broadway, West Pennway and Pershing Road. His design creates a new node that opens up for redevelopment when I-35 is removed as shown in Figure 2.

Chayton True’s winning design for the Broadway Corridor

The JC Nichols Prize is given to the best student projects in the Junior level studio of the Urban Planning + Design program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The prize has been generously funded by gifts from the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation and from individual donors.

Photo by courtesy of Stephen Lachky

To graduate, each student enrolled in the Urban Planning and Design undergraduate program at UMKC must complete no fewer than 240 hours at an agency, corporation, institution or organization related to the planning field. This opens things up to a wide range of possibilities and even allows some room for creativity in interpreting just what professions relate to planning. After all, planning relates to and is inherent in a vast array of sectors, practices and disciplines. We work with other planners, of course, but also with developers, redevelopers, and other government agencies like housing authorities, administration, public works and parks & recreation. We work with preservationists, engineers, architects, landscape architects, church leaders, etc. It’s like ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. Take most any profession and I can tell you how its creation or facilitation in some way owes something to a planner.

With that in mind, don’t approach finding an internship with the mentality of ‘take what I can get.’ Instead, think about what interests you, what relationships you want to build, what you want to learn about that you aren’t getting or can’t get in school, and then find the right people to talk to. If you want to work in the private sector, you’re in a great place! Kansas City has a high concentration of private planning and design firms, many of which have national or even international connections. If you want to work in the public sector, Kansas City, MO, by population, is only a quarter of a vast metro area, consisting of 150 cities, 12 counties and 2 states. There’s no reason you can’t find what you want.

Still, it’s a competitive world with more demand for internships than supply. You may not get your dream internship and, likely as not, you won’t get paid! But not all compensation comes in the form of money. After a weeks-long search, I managed to get an interview with a smaller city with a small planning department which had no money to pay an intern. I was hired and immediately plunged into a strange world where people spoke in terms of ‘plats’, ‘lot splits’, ‘FLUs’, ‘SUPs’, ‘capital plans’, ‘TIFs’, etc. One of my first cases dealt with a homeowner who wanted to create a new residential lot that didn’t meet the depth requirements for the zoning district. I learned then what it was like to talk to someone who has hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and is pressuring you to come up with a creative solution. I learned what it was like to have strangers calling me, irate about increases in traffic and density in their neighborhood. In the end, we were able to interpret the zoning code so that he could create the lot without a variance, but it impressed upon me how complex it is to move a line on a piece of vellum! So I gained not only the technical skill, but a measure of professional empathy, as well.

After working my required hours as an intern, I was first hired part-time in the department, then eventually as a full-time planner after my graduation in 2011. I realize now how incredibly fortunate I was, even though the city I’m at wasn’t originally on my list. If you wind up in a less-than-ideal situation, thinking ‘I wouldn’t even work here if it weren’t for the 240 hour requirement’, know that your employer may be less than enthusiastic about you too! Keep a good attitude and look for ways to inform yourself, to add to your portfolio of skills and wisdom. I’ve found this accounts a good deal of what planning is: applying wisdom and intuition to the framework of laws and codes.

What I learned is that an internship is like testing an airplane after years of designing it on paper. Nobody expects the first flight to go perfectly, but if you don’t get it out of the hangar, how will you know whether or not it can fly? Embrace this opportunity, not just for the things you can learn about planning, but also for the things you can learn about yourself.

*David Jones is a Planner at the City of Liberty, MO.

Jase Wilson founded Neighbor.ly, the civic crowdfunding platform that lets people, companies and institutions invest in the places and civic projects they care about. A self-described “civic geek,” Jase’s interests lie at the intersection of cities and technology. Through Neighbor.ly, he lives out his passion for helping communities help themselves in an era of economic uncertainty. A relentless advocate for better quality of life through civic innovation, he is helping to pioneer the civic crowdfunding movement in the United States. He advocates for open data and civic tech through events such as CityCamp.

Jase holds a BA in Urban Planning & Design from UMKC and a Masters in City Planning from MIT. While an undergrad in 2004, he founded Luminopolis, a civic software firm with a special focus on web-based community engagement tools. While at MIT, he consulted a variety of cities around the world on technology innovation strategy, and authored a thesis on using the web for civic engagement. He is an aspiring civic philanthropist and civic VC.

We invite you to meet him on:
Thursday, March 21st
5pm  Presentation by Alumni Honoree
6pm-7:30pm  Reception

Katz Hall
Room 101
Corner of 50th & Rockhill Road

We hope to see you there!

Please RSVP here.

I interned for Olsson Associates (Olsson) in the summer of my junior year. Although Olsson is primarily a civil engineering firm, they had created a land planning internship for their Kansas City office. I first found out about this position through the American Public Works Association (APWA) student chapter at UMKC. When a principal from Olsson came to speak at UMKC, I took advantage of the opportunity to speak with him one-on-one. That initial face-to-face meeting likely helped in getting my resume short listed and in front of the recruiter, HR department and ultimately my boss.

During my time at Olsson I developed new skills, learned how to work in a fast pace environment, developed relationships with mentors and future professional colleagues, sought opportunities to network at social events, and gained college credits.

What I ultimately discovered in my internship with Olsson was that I was not interested in doing physical land planning but that I did enjoy private sector consulting work. This is an important point to note because internships provide an opportunity for students to test out a career. In my case it meant I would look for future opportunities as a consultant but would not be interested in doing physical land planning.

My internship at Olsson helped in tailoring my resume to what I wanted out of a career in planning, provided a good professional reference, and taught me more about the field of planning then a classroom ever could. Ultimately this work experience and the networking I would continue to do would lead to my first job which lasted five years, to my second job with a large firm, and now to my third job. The power of networking cannot be overstated. And I would never have had the confidence to network had I not had my internship.

*Vanessa Spartan, AICP, is a graduate of the Urban Planning and Design Program and currently a Project Planner at Wilson & Company, Inc.