The largest city in Missouri and the sixth largest city in the Midwest, Kansas City, is known for its sports, music (especially jazz and blues), and Kansas City-style barbecues. The city is also often called the “City of Fountains” with over 200 beautiful water features throughout the city, which is more than any other city on earth other than Rome. KC's other nickname is "Paris Plains", because it also has more boulevards than any other city in the world, except Paris.
After years of neglect, downtown Kansas City has begun a massive renovation effort. Since 2000, the city has invested over $ 6 billion to develop the downtown area with new condominiums, apartments, offices, restaurants, indoor and outdoor malls and entertainment venues. In 2014, the Kansas City Regional Business Community convened to launch KC Rising, which is a long-term vision for the greater Kansas City area to accelerate the economic growth of the Kansas City area.
Today, the KC Rising mission is driven by progress toward three measurable outcomes:
- Trade: Sell more valuable products and services outside the KC area and increase our global competitiveness.
- Ideas: to drive innovation in existing offices and clusters in the KC area; Strengthen the ecosystem of entrepreneurship to create new companies and jobs.
- People: Develop, attract and retain the talent needed to increase the pace of innovation of the KC region and accelerate the growth of the region.