Kansas City

While Washington bickers over partisan issues, mayors in the rest of the country are showing strong leadership and innovation. Newsweek has compiled a list of the top cities pushing education reform, public safety, quality of life, and job creation.

January 1, 2013 - The Daily Beast

Funding for a $100 million two-mile downtown streetcar system has been approved by voters in Kansas City, according to results announced this week.

December 15, 2012 - Kansas City Star

Joining a host of other Midwestern cities establishing land banks to help corral, clear, and repurpose their vacant properties, Kansas City will begin transferring 3,500 vacant properties it recently acquired into a city-owned land bank.

October 29, 2012 - The Architect's Newspaper

Chuck Marohn opines on the oddly empty, and unnecessarily wide, streets of Kansas City, Missouri. With no traffic to speak of, Marohn argues that by building roads simply to move cars quickly, "We're fighting a beast that does not exist."

September 14, 2012 - Strong Towns

The competition to determine which communities in Kansas City will qualify to receive Google Fiber, the nation's fastest internet service, has stoked fears of increasing the city's historic patterns of segregation, reports John Eligon.

September 11, 2012 - The New York Times

From Atlanta to Kansas City to Los Angeles, cities across the country are welcoming a return of streetcars to their downtowns in the hopes of boosting economic growth and improving circulation. Some see the cars as just the latest urban planning fad.

August 15, 2012 - The Wall Street Journal

Of a whopping 555 eligible voters, 318 voted this week to approve a special taxing district to help pay for a downtown Kansas City streetcar, reports David Twiddy.

August 4, 2012 - Kansas City Business Journal

Calling it the "next phase of the Internet", Google announced the details of the roll out of its ultrahigh-speed Internet network this week, which will offer speeds 100 times faster than typical broadband connections to residents of Kansas City.

July 27, 2012 - The New York Times

Following up on his insightful essay on the politics of architectural reputation seen through the career of Louis Curtiss, Keith Eggener examines the architect's innovations with glass curtain walls.

May 19, 2012 - Places

Eliot Brown explores how lower than expected tax revenues from the Power & Light District redevelopment project are forcing Kansas City to cut core services.

April 25, 2012 - The Wall Street Journal

On the sixty-year anniversary of the genesis of the country's first enclosed mall, Mark Hinshaw looks at America's foolish detour into shopping malls.

April 19, 2012 - Crosscut

Sharon Gochenour explores the ways in which the evolution of graphic communications – from building signage to official logos – represent various aspects of Kansas City's identity.

March 18, 2012 - This Big City

Samuel Arbesman pens a fascinating piece in The Atlantic Cities analyzing our subjective concepts of scale and context in relation to our ideas about the importance and size of cities.

March 10, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

In Kansas City, the historic home of jazz and Prohibition-era excess struggles with a redevelopment effort that attempts to build on that era's history while leaving behind some of its essential characteristics, writes Brandon R. Reynolds.

February 22, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

In a fascinating essay in the journal Places, Keith Eggener examines the politics of architectural reputation through the lens of architect Louis Curtiss's life and career.

February 12, 2012 - Places

I'm writing from the audience of a presentation this morning in the Hotel Phillips in Kansas City. The presentation will cover the initial observations and recommendations of a national team of experts who've been invited here by Mayor Sly James and his team of Daniel Rose Fellows. The Kansas City Daniel Rose Fellows:

January 13, 2012 - Jess Zimbabwe

Public Architecture, a San Francisco-based organization, and Habitat for Humanity have tapped a Kansas City Architecture firm to pilot green design concepts for the new houses. This project is just one of five nationwide.

November 25, 2011 - The Kansas City Star

Lured by state and potentially city incentives, one high-tech headquarters is ditching its current suburban location for a spot in downtown Kansas City. Is a resurgence afoot? Kevin Collison reports.

November 17, 2011 - The Kansas City Star

With little taxpayer investment, a dynamic Moshe Safdie-designed Center for the Performing Arts has arisen in Kansas City. Hampton Stevens says that the companies are betting on the power of the arts to attract investment and attention.

November 1, 2011 - The Atlantic Cities

Google announced that it had chosen Kansas City, Kansas as the launching site for an experimental fiber-optic network with speeds of up to 1 Gb per second.

March 30, 2011 - TechCrunch