Educational Edition (Order
#N31)
Interactive educational DVD includes:
Entire documentary as shown on PBS
Half-hour classroom version
Additional interviews
BONUS CD-ROM with documents, photographs, and more...
Order online at www.uli.org/bookstore
or call 800-321-5011.
Watch the J.C. Nichols Trailer
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Community Builder:
The Life & Legacy of J.C. Nichols
The extraordinary life and career of legendary Kansas City developer
and ULI founding member Jesse Clyde Nichols has been profiled in an
hour-long documentary, “Community Builder: The Life & Legacy
of J.C. Nichols.”
The film chronicles explores Nichols’ legacy of building for
permanence and instilling a sense of community through high-quality,
well-connected design—an approach now being revived by a new
generation of land use professionals.
The development of one of Nichols’ greatest achievements,
Kansas City’s Country Club District, is chronicled in the film.
The crown jewel of the district is the Country Club Plaza, the
Mediterranean-style “village” built in 1922 that combined
apartment buildings with a central area for shops. That area, with its
multiple parking lots, was the first modern shopping center in America.
Now more than 100 years old, it has resisted encroachment by strip malls
and fast food chains, and lived up to its founder’s motto: "land
development is a responsibility, not a right."
The film also examines Nichols involvement in land use beyond Kansas
City, offering insights into his work on the National Parks and Planning
Commission in Washington, DC, and in the planning of other communities,
including Beverly Hills and Cleveland’s Shaker Heights.
Interviews include Nichols family members, most notably
Nichols’ 90-year-old son, Clyde, and four Nichols grandchildren.
Also contributing to the program are Kansas City historians William
Worley and David Boutros, 2003 Nichols Prize laureate and Yale
University art historian Vincent Scully, New Urbanist planners Andres
Duany and Peter Calthorpe, architecture critic Paul Goldberger and Urban
Land Institute President Richard M. Rosan.
In addition to his development achievements, the film highlights
Nichols’ dedication to sharing knowledge about community building
with his peers, thus establishing ULI’s long-time tradition of
sharing lessons learned and serving as an information exchange.
Nichols and his peers would “throw their plans out on the table
and help each other design communities,” says grandson Wayne
Nichols, who is interviewed for the documentary. “Their goal was
to create long-term, integrated planned communities. They saw themselves
as building human environments.”
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