Mayor Sly James named one of Newsweek’s Five Most Innovative Mayors in the U.S.
Google Fiber isn’t just speeding up the Internet; it’s also raising the national profile of Kansas City Mayor Sly James. Newsweek released its list of the five most innovative mayors in the United States, and James is right alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg (New York City), Mayor Mitch Landrieu (New Orleans), Mayor Rahm Emanuel (Chicago) and Mayor Mick Cornett (Oklahoma City). James is recognized for building an “entrepreneurial infrastructure,” and as Newsweek writes:
Mayor Sly James’s vision of building “Silicon Prairie” took a quantum leap forward when he successfully lobbied Google to partner with Kansas City in an exclusive test of its ultrahigh-speed fiber network, giving residents access to Internet service 100 times faster than average broadband speeds across the country. As a result, new businesses and entrepreneurs are already starting to come to this Midwestern tech mecca.
Whether technology, as Newsweek later asserts, is directly responsible for a “resurgence in the downtown population” is a debate for another post, but a Kansas City mayor making national headlines for the work he’s doing in his office is a nice change of pace.
