More than 20 million motorists a year travel Bruce R. Watkins Drive, the 10.2 mile stretch of U.S. Highway 71 connecting downtown Kansas City to the southeastern suburbs. But this vital north-south traffic corridor, completed in 2001, came at a high cost to East Side residents who endured a half-century of planning, neighborhood demolition, and freeway construction.

Tulane University professor and Kansas City native Kevin Fox Gotham discusses the major conflicts and struggles among neighborhood residents, city leaders, and highway officials over the planning and development of Bruce R. Watkins Drive, originally conceived as the South Midtown Freeway in 1951. He further details the changes in the population and demographics of the neighborhoods contiguous to the drive since its completion.

The title of Gotham’s talk echoes a February 20, 1979, Kansas City Times editorial lamenting the dream of a much-desired traffic artery that became a nightmare of “tornadic ruin from the shadow of City Hall to the suburbs, literally dividing a community, eroding a tax base, and breeding urban rot.” The “troubled freeway” was a major topic of debate in the 1979 mayoral contest between Richard Berkley and Bruce R. Watkins, a critic of the roadway.

Gotham is a professor of sociology at Tulane University. His research interests include forensic sociology, crime and prevention, and real estate and housing policy. His 2002 book Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, which was updated in 2014, examined how the real estate industry and federal housing policy propagated Kansas City’s racial divide.

This presentation coincides with the opening of a new panel exhibition at the Central Library titled Detoured: The Making of Bruce R. Watkins Drive.