Experiencing a City: Public Works and Public History: Kansas City, Missouri and beyond

Abstract

IN A VARIETY OF WAYS the operations of a municipal public works agency affect the life of each citizen of that community. If a city's streets are in disrepair, its refuse collection ineffective and infrequent, its public structures and facilities deteriorating, and its environmental health and building standards outdated land ignored, the quality of life that each citizen enjoys declines and the threat to the physical well-being of the public increases. In most American cities the responsibility for the maintenance of quality city services, and for the effective supervision of municipal housekeeping and improvement projects, is often that of the public works director or the city engineer. In Kansas City, Missouri, the Public Works Department employs over nine hundred persons and serves a city of approximately one-half million. Kansas City's Public Works professionals supervise a wide variety of projects and tasks. Included iamong them are: refuse collection, ice and snow removal, street, sidewalk, bridge, and sewer design, construction, and maintenance;