Since the City Beautiful Movement of the late 1800s, Kansas City has been keenly interested in beautifying the city through green spaces, fountains, and wide boulevards. In this continuation of the Making a Great City series, award-winning planner and designer Charles Flink discusses why that work is increasingly critical to a city’s vitality.

Flink says cities urgently need this type of transformative development. Through stories behind several multi-use natural corridors, he explains how greenways conserve irreplaceable real estate for the environment, serve as essential green infrastructure, shape the way people travel within their communities, reduce impact from flooding and other natural disasters, and boost the economies of cities and towns.

Over his 35-year career, Flink has completed comprehensive greenway, trail, and open space plans for more than 250 communities in 36 states and has provided international consulting. He’s the owner and president of the North Carolina-based Greenways Incorporated and the author of The Greenway Imperative: Connecting Communities and Landscapes for a Sustainable Future.