Country Club Plaza: Kansas City
The first automobile-oriented shopping center is generally agreed to be Country Club Plaza, just outside Kansas City, Missouri. Jesse C. Nichols, a real estate developer, was developing much of the area southwest of Kansas City for upper income housing, but recognized in the 1920s the increasing importance of the automobile to the new suburban lifestyle. Country Club Plaza was begun in 1922 specifically as an area for shopping by car. It was deliberately not located near a trolley line, and had 46 percent of its space taken up with streets and parking, including one of the first parking garages built anywhere. The Plaza was located at a nexus of roads which Nichols had built over the years for his housing developments. Nichols believed,
"Wide streets, squares, and plazas are needed in these days of parking....Main traffic ways should have great width, but byways should be side enough only to give capacity to go from one traffic way to another....The shops are built around a square of plaza ...and the main streets in commercial areas are 100 to 200 feet in width."1
It is clear that Nichols integrated the automobile into the design of this shopping plaza, and began an inevitable trend that has impacted cities all over the world ever since. By including 250 shops, some branches of downtown stores, he also established the suburban shopping center as a direct competitor to the traditional downtown as the center of retail.
1 James E. Vance, Jr. 1990. The Continuing City. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 491, from a speech given by J.C. Nichols to his company associates in 1934.
