Smart City Goal

Create a smart city through innovation and new technology


Smart city technology uses data-driven decision-making improve how a city functions. These technologies can be used to improve how the city provides services, designs transportation systems, protects environmental health, and much more.

By using data-driven technologies, Kansas City can become a ‘smart city’ by improving its service delivery and building infrastructure that helps the city function more efficiently and sustainably. This ‘smart’ (data-based) technology makes the most of partnerships between public and private entities, which can share data and capacity to find mutually beneficial outcomes.

Take transportation, for example. Smart technologies can use data about vehicle traffic, public transit, and bike and pedestrian traffic to improve traffic flow and safety and anticipate future needs. Data can be used to improve parking, too, or help the city adapt to emerging mobility trends such as the growth of app-based ridesharing. Mobility technologies such as autonomous vehicles may change how curb space is used and how vehicles are stored when they’re not in use.

For utility services, smart technology can improve consumption and safety in energy, water, and wastewater systems. By leveraging data, the city can foster greater efficiency in recycling, green waste practices, and waste management overall.

Smart technologies also can bolster citizen engagement, improve the city’s approach to equity and inclusion, and attract businesses and entrepreneurs in technology fields and other sectors of the economy.


RELATIONSHIP TO VISION STATEMENTS

The Playbook has fifteen Vision statements for Kansas City. The Playbook’s Vision describes what we want to be and outlines how we want our city to develop in the future, in line with community values and priorities. Those that are closely related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Affordable Community: We will create and nurture an affordable community and strive for abundant opportunity and employment at a livable wage for our residents.
New technologies can lower the cost of housing and transportation costs while increasing access to economic opportunities for residents.
Cultural Amenities: Our diverse cultural amenities, parks, and open spaces will provide a rich variety of experiences and vibrant environments.
Technology and innovation have the potential to enhance how the city’s cultural and public amenities are used, promoted, and accessed.
Desirable Place: Our community will attract people and employers through being a desirable place to earn, learn, live, and thrive.
Cities that use and participate in the development of innovative technologies attract companies that work in that arena, drawing employees and business to the city and driving economic growth.
Equitable and Fiscally Sustainable: Our capital investments and growth will be equitable while maintaining the fiscal sustainability of the city.
Smart technology can help the city to evaluate potential environmental and fiscal impacts of land use plans and development proposals. Smart technology also can be an equalizer; it can help uplift communities that have been historically disadvantaged.
Healthy Environmental Systems: We will promote and value the health of our environmental and natural systems and protect them from degradation.
Smart technology can gather data from complex, changing environmental systems. By using smart technology to track changes in these systems, the city can mitigate harms to the environment.
History and Heritage: We will preserve places that celebrate all facets of Kansas City’s history and cultural heritage.
Technology helps the city preserve and restore historic sites and buildings, interpret and educate the public about the past, and protect places for future generations.
Innovation and Creativity: We will cultivate innovation and creativity in our governance, business, and educational practices related to smart city technology and physical development.
Cultivating innovation in technology and transforming Kansas City into a smart city begins with a culture that supports it. This involves public and private collaboration, strategic planning, and investment at many levels.
KC Uniqueness: We will preserve and enhance those things that make Kansas City unique – the small town feel with big city amenities and the wide range of diverse environments and neighborhoods.
Smart technology can provide metrics to help the city evaluate the elements that contribute to its unique identity, like in the identification and tracking of historical assets.
Livable Neighborhoods and Diverse Housing: Our neighborhoods will be strong, livable, and authentic while ensuring diverse housing opportunities.
Smart technology can create more sustainable infrastructure in neighborhoods. It can also help to expand vital services to Kansas Citians and make these services more accessible to all residents.
Mobility Options: Our well-connected and accessible neighborhoods and districts will be walkable and served by reliable, safe, and convenient mobility options.
Smart technology can help create and maintain a well-connected city through real-time data collection, intelligent and responsive transportation systems, and integration of new modes of mobility into the urban fabric.
Physical Beauty: Our city will be renowned for the physical beauty of its streets, buildings, public spaces, and infrastructure.
Smart technologies can amplify the city’s physical beauty by enhancing lighting, green spaces, public art, environmental monitoring, and digital displays. By leveraging these technologies, Kansas City can create more engaging and attractive public spaces that inspire residents and visitors alike. The city also can use new technologies to visualize and evaluate design alternatives that enhance the quality and functionality of designs.
Regional Collaboration: Our city will continue to be the heart of the region. We will remain collaborative with our regional partners with a renewed focus on building partnerships to achieve the aspirations of this plan.
Innovative technology can help Kansas City remain collaborative with its regional partners through data sharing, joint initiatives, improved communication, and shared infrastructure. By leveraging innovative technologies, Kansas City can build stronger relationships with regional partners to create a more connected, prosperous region.
Sustainable Growth and Resilient City: Our community will grow in a sustainable manner and be resilient and adaptable to future changes.
Innovative technology helps communities grow sustainably and build resiliency to changes in the natural environment by monitoring environmental conditions, improving energy and water management, enabling effective community engagement, providing innovative transportation options, improving disaster response and recovery, and promoting sustainable building design.
Thriving Economy: Our economy will be resilient, inclusive, diverse, and thriving and will position our city competitively against our national peers.
The city can leverage technology to support new industries, increase economic productivity, encourage entrepreneurship, and improve access to training that propels economic growth and makes the city nationally competitive.
Walkable, Clean, and Safe: Our community will promote the health of our residents and visitors through being walkable, clean, and safe.
Technology use can make traffic management more efficient and improve air-quality monitoring, waste management, public safety, and access to healthy food, making communities more livable and healthier.


RELATIONSHIP TO EQUITY STATEMENTS

The Playbook also has a series of statements focused on equity. Those that are directly related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Addressing Disinvestment: Direct investment to communities that have been abandoned or have experienced long-term disinvestment.
Citywide Accessibility: Ensure services, utilities, and transportation options are provided to everyone.
Community Collaboration: Empower people from different parts of the KC community in working together to solve problems.
Community Engagement: Empower people to shape their communities and recognize that communities value things differently.
Complete Communities: Ensure that people can meet their needs in their own neighborhood without having to travel long distances.
Housing Affordability: Ensure everyone has access to safe and affordable housing.
Inclusive Design: Ensure that development incorporates design features that consider people of all abilities.
Providing Services: Commit to taking care of the built environment and providing the same quality of maintenance and services citywide.
Welcoming Spaces: Ensure that public spaces and amenities are designed to support diverse, culturally authentic, and family-friendly activities, no matter how much money a person is able to spend.


RELATIONSHIP TO BIG IDEAS

The Playbook identifies five Big Ideas for Kansas City. The Big Ideas are the essential themes of the plan. They underpin all that the plan aims to do. Those directly related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Fostering neighborhoods that accommodate all ages, lifestyles, and incomes by diversifying and densifying housing choices and creating complete communities that facilitate a high quality-of-life
New technology can improve access to economic opportunities, mobility options, and city services that make neighborhoods more livable.
Creating a physically beautiful city by promoting high quality design in public spaces, parks, private development, and capital improvements
Smart technology uses data-driven decision-making to promote high-quality design that is functional, visually appealing, and environmentally sustainable.
Respecting land as a limited resource by balancing outward growth with infill development, preserving natural resources, and developing in an equitable and sustainable manner
Innovative technologies help planners evaluate potential development scenarios to ensure outward growth is balanced with infill development. These technologies also can ensure natural resources are preserved as the city develops in an equitable, sustainable way.
Maximizing connections and mobility options by bridging or eliminating barriers and creating new physical connections and a robust multimodal transportation system
Smart technology in transportation can show the way to bridging physical barriers. For example, the city can use data-driven planning, emphasize transportation modes that incorporate walking or biking, and adopt innovations in transportation through public-private partnerships. These steps can help the city resolve past inequities caused by physical barriers that isolated specific neighborhoods from the rest of the city and from economic opportunities.
Creating a  future-proofed city by better anticipating and reacting to new technologies and evolving conditions
Technology can help Kansas City anticipate and react to new and evolving conditions. By leveraging tools like open-data platforms, adaptive infrastructure, smart city ecosystems, scenario planning, and future-oriented regulations, the city can prepare for the future and better respond to new challenges and opportunities as they arise.


RELATIONSHIP TO TOPICS

The Playbook is also structured around five Topics that organize the plan’s recommendations around specific subjects. Those topics directly related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:





RELATIONSHIP TO OBJECTIVES

The Playbook identifies twenty-one Objectives for Kansas City. The Objectives are the nuts and bolts of the Playbook. Each one contains detailed recommendations, strategies, and initiatives for a specific topic, framed by the overall direction the plan sets for that topic. The Objectives also set priorities and metrics for their implementation and provide supporting context, including relevant data and public input. A single Objective often supports multiple Goals and Topics.

Objectives primarily related to the Smart City Goal:

Objectives secondarily related to the Smart City Goal:



Create a smart city through innovation and new technology


Smart city technology uses data-driven decision-making improve how a city functions. These technologies can be used to improve how the city provides services, designs transportation systems, protects environmental health, and much more.

By using data-driven technologies, Kansas City can become a ‘smart city’ by improving its service delivery and building infrastructure that helps the city function more efficiently and sustainably. This ‘smart’ (data-based) technology makes the most of partnerships between public and private entities, which can share data and capacity to find mutually beneficial outcomes.

Take transportation, for example. Smart technologies can use data about vehicle traffic, public transit, and bike and pedestrian traffic to improve traffic flow and safety and anticipate future needs. Data can be used to improve parking, too, or help the city adapt to emerging mobility trends such as the growth of app-based ridesharing. Mobility technologies such as autonomous vehicles may change how curb space is used and how vehicles are stored when they’re not in use.

For utility services, smart technology can improve consumption and safety in energy, water, and wastewater systems. By leveraging data, the city can foster greater efficiency in recycling, green waste practices, and waste management overall.

Smart technologies also can bolster citizen engagement, improve the city’s approach to equity and inclusion, and attract businesses and entrepreneurs in technology fields and other sectors of the economy.


RELATIONSHIP TO VISION STATEMENTS

The Playbook has fifteen Vision statements for Kansas City. The Playbook’s Vision describes what we want to be and outlines how we want our city to develop in the future, in line with community values and priorities. Those that are closely related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Affordable Community: We will create and nurture an affordable community and strive for abundant opportunity and employment at a livable wage for our residents.
New technologies can lower the cost of housing and transportation costs while increasing access to economic opportunities for residents.
Cultural Amenities: Our diverse cultural amenities, parks, and open spaces will provide a rich variety of experiences and vibrant environments.
Technology and innovation have the potential to enhance how the city’s cultural and public amenities are used, promoted, and accessed.
Desirable Place: Our community will attract people and employers through being a desirable place to earn, learn, live, and thrive.
Cities that use and participate in the development of innovative technologies attract companies that work in that arena, drawing employees and business to the city and driving economic growth.
Equitable and Fiscally Sustainable: Our capital investments and growth will be equitable while maintaining the fiscal sustainability of the city.
Smart technology can help the city to evaluate potential environmental and fiscal impacts of land use plans and development proposals. Smart technology also can be an equalizer; it can help uplift communities that have been historically disadvantaged.
Healthy Environmental Systems: We will promote and value the health of our environmental and natural systems and protect them from degradation.
Smart technology can gather data from complex, changing environmental systems. By using smart technology to track changes in these systems, the city can mitigate harms to the environment.
History and Heritage: We will preserve places that celebrate all facets of Kansas City’s history and cultural heritage.
Technology helps the city preserve and restore historic sites and buildings, interpret and educate the public about the past, and protect places for future generations.
Innovation and Creativity: We will cultivate innovation and creativity in our governance, business, and educational practices related to smart city technology and physical development.
Cultivating innovation in technology and transforming Kansas City into a smart city begins with a culture that supports it. This involves public and private collaboration, strategic planning, and investment at many levels.
KC Uniqueness: We will preserve and enhance those things that make Kansas City unique – the small town feel with big city amenities and the wide range of diverse environments and neighborhoods.
Smart technology can provide metrics to help the city evaluate the elements that contribute to its unique identity, like in the identification and tracking of historical assets.
Livable Neighborhoods and Diverse Housing: Our neighborhoods will be strong, livable, and authentic while ensuring diverse housing opportunities.
Smart technology can create more sustainable infrastructure in neighborhoods. It can also help to expand vital services to Kansas Citians and make these services more accessible to all residents.
Mobility Options: Our well-connected and accessible neighborhoods and districts will be walkable and served by reliable, safe, and convenient mobility options.
Smart technology can help create and maintain a well-connected city through real-time data collection, intelligent and responsive transportation systems, and integration of new modes of mobility into the urban fabric.
Physical Beauty: Our city will be renowned for the physical beauty of its streets, buildings, public spaces, and infrastructure.
Smart technologies can amplify the city’s physical beauty by enhancing lighting, green spaces, public art, environmental monitoring, and digital displays. By leveraging these technologies, Kansas City can create more engaging and attractive public spaces that inspire residents and visitors alike. The city also can use new technologies to visualize and evaluate design alternatives that enhance the quality and functionality of designs.
Regional Collaboration: Our city will continue to be the heart of the region. We will remain collaborative with our regional partners with a renewed focus on building partnerships to achieve the aspirations of this plan.
Innovative technology can help Kansas City remain collaborative with its regional partners through data sharing, joint initiatives, improved communication, and shared infrastructure. By leveraging innovative technologies, Kansas City can build stronger relationships with regional partners to create a more connected, prosperous region.
Sustainable Growth and Resilient City: Our community will grow in a sustainable manner and be resilient and adaptable to future changes.
Innovative technology helps communities grow sustainably and build resiliency to changes in the natural environment by monitoring environmental conditions, improving energy and water management, enabling effective community engagement, providing innovative transportation options, improving disaster response and recovery, and promoting sustainable building design.
Thriving Economy: Our economy will be resilient, inclusive, diverse, and thriving and will position our city competitively against our national peers.
The city can leverage technology to support new industries, increase economic productivity, encourage entrepreneurship, and improve access to training that propels economic growth and makes the city nationally competitive.
Walkable, Clean, and Safe: Our community will promote the health of our residents and visitors through being walkable, clean, and safe.
Technology use can make traffic management more efficient and improve air-quality monitoring, waste management, public safety, and access to healthy food, making communities more livable and healthier.


RELATIONSHIP TO EQUITY STATEMENTS

The Playbook also has a series of statements focused on equity. Those that are directly related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Addressing Disinvestment: Direct investment to communities that have been abandoned or have experienced long-term disinvestment.
Citywide Accessibility: Ensure services, utilities, and transportation options are provided to everyone.
Community Collaboration: Empower people from different parts of the KC community in working together to solve problems.
Community Engagement: Empower people to shape their communities and recognize that communities value things differently.
Complete Communities: Ensure that people can meet their needs in their own neighborhood without having to travel long distances.
Housing Affordability: Ensure everyone has access to safe and affordable housing.
Inclusive Design: Ensure that development incorporates design features that consider people of all abilities.
Providing Services: Commit to taking care of the built environment and providing the same quality of maintenance and services citywide.
Welcoming Spaces: Ensure that public spaces and amenities are designed to support diverse, culturally authentic, and family-friendly activities, no matter how much money a person is able to spend.


RELATIONSHIP TO BIG IDEAS

The Playbook identifies five Big Ideas for Kansas City. The Big Ideas are the essential themes of the plan. They underpin all that the plan aims to do. Those directly related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:

Fostering neighborhoods that accommodate all ages, lifestyles, and incomes by diversifying and densifying housing choices and creating complete communities that facilitate a high quality-of-life
New technology can improve access to economic opportunities, mobility options, and city services that make neighborhoods more livable.
Creating a physically beautiful city by promoting high quality design in public spaces, parks, private development, and capital improvements
Smart technology uses data-driven decision-making to promote high-quality design that is functional, visually appealing, and environmentally sustainable.
Respecting land as a limited resource by balancing outward growth with infill development, preserving natural resources, and developing in an equitable and sustainable manner
Innovative technologies help planners evaluate potential development scenarios to ensure outward growth is balanced with infill development. These technologies also can ensure natural resources are preserved as the city develops in an equitable, sustainable way.
Maximizing connections and mobility options by bridging or eliminating barriers and creating new physical connections and a robust multimodal transportation system
Smart technology in transportation can show the way to bridging physical barriers. For example, the city can use data-driven planning, emphasize transportation modes that incorporate walking or biking, and adopt innovations in transportation through public-private partnerships. These steps can help the city resolve past inequities caused by physical barriers that isolated specific neighborhoods from the rest of the city and from economic opportunities.
Creating a  future-proofed city by better anticipating and reacting to new technologies and evolving conditions
Technology can help Kansas City anticipate and react to new and evolving conditions. By leveraging tools like open-data platforms, adaptive infrastructure, smart city ecosystems, scenario planning, and future-oriented regulations, the city can prepare for the future and better respond to new challenges and opportunities as they arise.


RELATIONSHIP TO TOPICS

The Playbook is also structured around five Topics that organize the plan’s recommendations around specific subjects. Those topics directly related to the Smart City Goal are highlighted in grey below:





RELATIONSHIP TO OBJECTIVES

The Playbook identifies twenty-one Objectives for Kansas City. The Objectives are the nuts and bolts of the Playbook. Each one contains detailed recommendations, strategies, and initiatives for a specific topic, framed by the overall direction the plan sets for that topic. The Objectives also set priorities and metrics for their implementation and provide supporting context, including relevant data and public input. A single Objective often supports multiple Goals and Topics.

Objectives primarily related to the Smart City Goal:

Objectives secondarily related to the Smart City Goal:



Page last updated: 14 Apr 2023, 07:23 AM