Business enterprises and employers include Cerner Corporation (the largest, with almost 10,000 local employees and about 20,000 global employees), AT&T, BNSF Railway, GEICO, Asurion, T-Mobile (formerly Sprint), Black & Veatch, AMC Theatres, Citigroup, Garmin, Hallmark Cards, Waddell & Reed, H&R Block, General Motors, Honeywell, the Ford Kansas City Assembly Plant, The Kansas City Star, Bayer, Children's Mercy Hospital, Truman Medical Center-Hospital Hill, and Andrews McMeel Universal (representing Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Doonesbury).

Historic cultural origins include KC styles of jazz, vaudeville theater, barbecue, and steak.

The river bend's sharpest part forms a peninsula containing the Kansas City Downtown Airport.

Downtown is bounded by the Missouri River on the north, the Missouri-Kansas state line on the west, 31st Street on the south and Woodland Avenue on the east.

The downtown area includes the Central Business District and its buildings, which form the city's skyline.

The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is perched upon a high point immediately south of the downtown loop.

South of the loop is the Crossroads District, Union Station, Crown Center, the National World War I Museum, Liberty Memorial, Penn Valley Park, University Health Truman Medical Center, Children's Mercy Hospital, and the 18th & Vine District.

Midtown is home to Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City and Research Medical Center.

East Side of the Metro is primarily eastern Jackson County which is an area of the Kansas City Metro that contains the far-eastern urban side of Kansas City, Missouri and the following large suburbs of Blue Springs, Independence, and Lee's Summit.

The East Side of Metro includes the Missouri suburbs of Independence,Grandview,Blue Springs, Raytown, Lees Summit, Grain Valley, Oak Grove, Sugar Creek, River Bend, Lake Lotawana, Lone Jack, Greenwood, Unity Village, Buckner, Pleasant Hill, Bates City, Odessa, and Lake Tapawingo.

Many local area attractions and shopping districts are in Johnson County, such as Oak Park Mall, Town Center Plaza, and Prairie Fire.

The Northland is the area north of the Missouri River, bordered by the Kansas state line on the west.

This area consists of the most southern part of Kansas City, Missouri, and the suburbs of Harrisonville, Belton, Loch Lloyd, Peculiar, and Raymore.

Professional and business employment growth was due entirely to a gain of 5,200 jobs in the Kansas portion of the metro area.

Kansas City is a freight hub served by the BNSF, CPKC, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific.

Kansas City Terminal Railway and Kaw River Railroad provide local interchange and switching service.

The MAX links River Market, Downtown, Union Station, Crown Center, and Country Club Plaza.

[34] The system runs between River Market and Union Station, mostly along Main Street, with extensions north and south under consideration.

The architecture of Kansas City, Missouri, and the metropolitan area includes major works by many of the world's most distinguished architects and firms, including McKim, Mead and White; Jarvis Hunt; Wight and Wight; Graham, Anderson, Probst and White; Hoit, Price & Barnes; Frank Lloyd Wright; the Office of Mies van der Rohe; Barry Byrne; Edward Larrabee Barnes; Harry Weese; and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

The Kansas City Kansan serves Wyandotte County, having moved from print to an online format in 2009.

According to Arbitron, about 1.5 million people over the age of 12 live within the Kansas City DMA, making it the 30th largest market for radio and 31st for television according to Nielsen.

Other major employers and business enterprises are AT&T, BNSF Railway, GEICO, Asurion, T-Mobile, Citigroup, EMBARQ, Farmers Insurance Group, Garmin, Hallmark Cards, Husqvarna, H&R Block, General Motors, Honeywell, Ford Motor Company, MillerCoors, State Street Corporation, The Kansas City Star, and Waddell & Reed, some of which are headquartered in the metropolitan area.

These are among the largest companies and organizations, excluding educational institutions, that are headquartered in or have since relocated from the metropolitan area.

The USDA provides estimates of the number of trees by county in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

[41] The five most common species in the region's urban and rural forest were American elm (28.9%), northern hackberry (14.0%), Osage-orange (7.2%), honeylocust (6.7%), and eastern redcedar (5.0%).

The list from Kansas City, Missouri includes these: cartoonists Walt Disney, Friz Freleng, and Ub Iwerks; musicians Count Basie, Melissa Etheridge, Tech N9ne, and Eminem; Representative Emanuel Cleaver and historical city boss Tom Pendergast; actors Ellie Kemper, Don Cheadle, and Jason Sudeikis; reporter Walter Cronkite; pilot Amelia Earhart; and writer Ernest Hemingway.

The list from Kansas City, Kansas includes actors Eric Stonestreet, Scott Foley, and Tuc Watkins; Kermit the Frog puppeteer Matt Vogel; West Side Story cinematographer Daniel L. Fapp; Marvel Comics writer Jason Aaron; sculptor and pioneering black pilot Ed Dwight Jr.; Negro leagues player Ed Dwight Sr.; and mass murderer Richard Hickock.

The list from Independence, Missouri includes President Harry S. Truman, Guns N' Roses keyboardist Chris Pitman, actor Arliss Howard, Devo co-founder Bob Lewis, self-freed slave and Oregon Trail pioneer Hiram Young, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, actor Ginger Rogers, fantasy novelist Margaret Weis, television series creator Paul Henning, and black female Civil War soldier Cathay Williams.

From Overland Park, Kansas, this includes film directors Michael Almereyda (Hamlet) and Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw), actors Rob Riggle and Tom Kane, economist and writer Michael R. Strain, and eSports player Johnathan Wendel.

From Lenexa, Kansas, this includes actors Paul Rudd and Jason Wiles, gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok, and autism researcher William Shaw.