The Kansas City Metropolitan Area is a fifteen-county metropolitan area, anchored by Kansas City, Missouri, that spans the border between the U.S. states of Missouri and Kansas. As of the 2010 Census, the metropolitan area has a population of 2,035,334. It is the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri after Greater St. Louis and is the largest with territory in Kansas, ahead of Wichita. The area includes a number of suburbs including the following which have a population exceeding 100,000: Independence, Missouri; Kansas City, Kansas; Olathe, Kansas; and Overland Park, Kansas. The following suburbs have a population exceeding 50,000: Blue Springs, Missouri; Lees Summit, Missouri; and Shawnee, Kansas. The Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) serves as the Council of Governments and the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the area.
In 2007, Worldwide ERC and Primary Relocation recognized Kansas City third overall as one of the "Best Cities for Relocating Families" in the United States. Also in 2010, Money Magazine rated Overland Park, Kansas, the 7th best city to live in the United States. Neighboring city Olathe, Kansas, was rated 11th, Lee's Summit, Missouri 27th best, and Shawnee, Kansas, 39th best, Blue Springs, Missouri was rated 49th best. Kansas City is one of two metro areas to have two cities in the top fifteen.
The two halves of the city are referred to by locals as KCK and KCMO.
Read more about Kansas City Metropolitan Area: Geographic Overview, Transportation, Libraries, Business Interests, Local Organizations
Famous quotes containing the words kansas city, kansas, city, metropolitan and/or area:
“Kansas City is lost; I am here!”
—A. Edward Sullivan. Professor Quail (W.C. Fields)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The city sleeps and the country sleeps,
The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,
The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife;
And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,
And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,
And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of patronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)