Zack Quaintance

There’s no exact metric for gauging if Kansas City (MO) is the smartest city on our continent at present, but it’s doubtful that many other US cities would want to call CIO Bob Bennett out on the legitimacy of his claim. Kansas City’s smart city infrastructure is strong — strong and advancing rapidly. Now, as it continues to move forward, city officials have added a new data visualization map aimed at keeping track of digital inclusion efforts as well, so that all populations within the city will benefit from the technological growth of its infrastructure. This new map contains information about Internet speeds provided by AT&T, Google and Time Warner (now also known as Spectrum), with speeds pegged by a Federal Communications Commission support, and it cross references that info with US Census data about poverty levels, creating what is quite likely the first map in the country to do so. In addition, the locations of Kansas City’s popular smart street cars are also available there in real time.