All posts by Kathryn Bergmann

Census Report: East 13th Street and Truman Road

Examining the census data for the area around of East 13th Street and Truman Road along Troost Avenue, I see consistent similarities and difference among the three different years being examined. Those similarities and differences are among race and migration and housing statistics.

As I have research this area before when looking at sanborn maps, I found that there was a shift in interest of building interstate highways from rural areas to urban areas in the 1970s (Missouri Department of Transportation, 2013).  I can clearly see that this is evident in my data. There is a clear decline in population from 1950 to 2010 in those first three tracts. For 1950, the total population for tract 16 was 6,549 (Social Explorer). In Tract 16 for 2000, the total population was 1,080 (Social Explorer). For 2010 in tract 154, the total population was 3,484 (Social Explorer).

As the population of black people still stays dominate throughout the three years being examined, when we get to the year 2000, the third major category is Hispanic/Latinx which was at a total in both tracts of 4.47% (Social Explorer). The number of Hispanic and Latinx people in both tracts in 2010 was 6.24% (Social Explorer). In the area that I have been analyzing there is a slow migration of Hispanics to the Independence Avenue area, extremely close to east 13th Street and Truman Road. From a Kansas City Public Radio article in 2014, “A surge of new immigrants from Central America and Mexico revitalizes Kansas City’s most established Hispanic communities. Armourdale is repopulated with new Latino immigrants. Many  immigrants resettle in corridors, such as Central and Minnesota Avenues in Kansas, and Independence Avenue in Missouri” (Rodriguez, 2014).

Missouri Department of Transportation. (2013). “Missouri’s Interstate System: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”. Retrieved from http://www.modot.org/interstate/ MissourisInterstateHistory.htm.

Social Explorer. (1950, 2000, 2010). Retrieved from https://www.socialexplorer.com/a9676d974c/explore

Rodriguez, Lisa. (2014).  “Timeline: Events That Shaped Kansas City’s Hispanic Communities In Missouri, Kansas”.  KCUR. Retrieved from http://kcur.org/post/timeline-events-shape d-kansas-citys-hispanic-commmunities-missouri-kansas#stream/0

 

East 13th Street and Truman Road

After the 1960s into the 1980s, Missouri shifted its interest from expanding highways in rural and primary areas to urban areas. To quote an article made by the Missouri Department of Transportation, “In addition, the construction of urban interstate highways frequently led to the destruction of vibrant, working-class neighborhoods in both St. Louis and Kansas City.  Interstate construction disproportionately affected poor, ethnic residents in urban areas.  Highway planners wanted to keep costs low, so they designed roads that went through depressed neighborhoods where property values were low and right of way could be acquired cheaply.” (Missouri Department of Transportation, 2006). Minority neighborhoods were deeply affected and citizens were furious. When looking at the assigned area of East 13th Street and Truman Road along Troost Avenue, there’s not a robust residential area. The building of I-70 in my assigned area, explained a lot as to what I saw when going to my assigned area around East 13th Street and Truman Road, the area near 70 highway; it was extremely underdeveloped. There were plots of land that were vacant with a few businesses not open to the general public like  All Services Home Healthcare and a General Parts store. Being downtown and near the Salvation Army and The City Union Mission, there were quite a few of homeless people. Little to no housing was in sight, The total population of the assigned area in the U.S. Census tract 154 of Jackson County was 5,847 out of a total population of 459,787 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).