Recent research examining post-Second World War urban renewal and redevelopment programs acknowledges the pervasive in uence of progrowth coalitions and the ideology of "growth" in local politics and decision-making. Yet few researchers have examined the role of state structures, political interests of urban planners and city oYcials, and the feedback eVects of past growth initiatives and con icts in shaping subsequent growth strategies and the composition of growth coalitions. I draw upon archival data and newspaper articles, real estate industry documents, and planning reports to examine the key actors, important decisions, and political struggles surrounding urban planning and redevelopment eVorts in Kansas City, Missouri from 1940 through the 1960s. I use the narrative concepts of path dependency and policy feedback to illustrate how past events and actions, important decisions, and political con icts can delimit future growth strategies and policy options, altering alliances between progrowth coalitions and local redevelopment agencies, and transforming the programmatic orientation of growth policy. Probing for the feedback eVects of past redevelopment con icts and institutional arrangements on subsequent growth strategies is useful for two reasons: First, it reveals how changing growth agendas and growth coalitions emerge not only in response to new socioeconomic conditions but also on the basis of previous growth policies. Second, it highlights an important "up-link" dimension (Molotch 1999) in the growth machine heuristic that connects local processes with the macrostructures of the state and the economy.