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Kansas City

Kansas City is a city covering parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties in Missouri, USA. Although it is the largest city in Jackson County, the suburb of Independence is the county seat. Situated at the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, it lies along the boundary between Missouri and Kansas, and is directly opposite of Kansas City, Kansas.

Often abbreviated as "KC" (to refer to the entire metropolitan area), or "KCMO" (to refer to only Kansas City, Missouri), Kansas City, Missouri is the center of the 26th largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States. In the Midwest, Kansas City is the 7th largest city (between Cleveland, Ohio and Omaha, Nebraska). As of the 2000 census, the city has a population of 441,545. Combined with Kansas City, Kansas, the population is 588,411, but the entire metropolitan area (in both Missouri and Kansas) is approximately 1,836,038 (estimated 1,947,694 in 2005). Although Kansas City has the highest population of any city in Missouri, St. Louis has a larger surrounding metropolitan area, with approximately half a million people more than Kansas City's metropolitan area.

The Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network, a project of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, recently designated Kansas City as having potential of attaining world city status. The city's tap water was recently rated the cleanest among the 50 largest cities in the United States, containing no detectable impurities*.

The current mayor of Kansas City, Missouri is Kay Barnes, the city's first female mayor. Elected in March 1999 and again in March 2003, her second of two terms will expire in April 2007.