Kansas City: Unheralded High-tech Success

3 October 2001 - 10:00am

Kansas City has been one of the most notable, if largely unheralded, high-tech success stories in the United States.

"Kansas City's dependence on telecommunications-and thus its current short-term problems-is a direct product of the city's past role as a rail center. (Many telecommunications arteries today are built upon railroad right-of-ways.) This infrastructure, in turn, spawned a sizable software industry, with per capita employment in this critical industry towering 79% above the national average. The concentration of telecom services here-ranking the region 13th nationally in the concentration of high-tech services and first in the Midwest, according to a 2000 Milken Institute study-has also helped Kansas City place tenth among the nation's most "wired" cities, the highest standing of any city in the Midwest."

Source: REIS, October 2, 2001
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New Suburbanism is not a new design paradigm that seeks to compete with or discredit principles of New Urbanism. Instead, our perspective represents a broad-based attempt to find the best, most practical ways to develop and redevelop suburban communities.