Metropolitan Kansas City: Creating Sustainable Places

This is one of a series of case studies on work by local partners in the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) to support federal place-based initiatives. It describes how the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC—Kansas City’s metropolitan planning organization) used a grant from HUD’s Sustainable Communities initiative to improve the effectiveness of its region’s development process. The case shows how MARC’s region-wide neighborhood-level data system and new decision-support tools, were used to show local stakeholders how higher density development in key suburban corridors could be feasible in today’s market, thereby stimulating fresh thinking about more equitable development patterns.