The Kansas City metropolitan area is considered to be the “Heart of America”, the city of fountains, bar-b-que, and boulevards! With a population of over two million people, this “Paris of the Plains” crosses the state line, extending nearly 8,000 square miles in Kansas and Missouri.

Who are the people of Kansas City, you ask? Using the new “Make A Map” tool, in just a few seconds we can discover valuable demographic data – even compare to other metropolitan areas. The data layers include: population density, population change, median household income, median home value, unemployment rate (July 2009), and median age. Beyond exploring data, this tool will also allow you to share the map you create – embedding the link in your webpage or email!

Using the “Make a Map” tool, last weekend local Girl Scouts (ages 10-17) created their own demographic maps of Kansas City to better understand their own community. The girls used maps they created to investigate the truth in their assumptions about where wealth and population growth existed most prominently in the city. The “ah-ha”s and “oh”s clearly signaled that this approach to meaning-making is valuable to a wide range of learners. The girls also created short demographic profiles of their city (based on criteria the group decided was important) and then applied this same set of criteria to other US cities, just to compare and contrast Kansas City. Some easy-to-explore questions with “Make A Map”, include:

* Where is wealth concentrated?
* What are parts of the city have grown or even declined in population?
* How does the population’s age vary across the city?
* How does population density vary geographically?
* How does one or more of these data layers correlate across geography? For example, does “median household income” appear to correlate with “median home value”?

“Make-A-Map” at the Mapping for Everyone website.

-Tom Baker, ESRI Education Manager