Mark Wiebe

Businesses along Central Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas, are taking a hit as customers stay home and cut back on spending. "I don’t know what will happen,” one business owner said. "It's scary."

The Kansas City region contributes to Kansas and Missouri economies in big ways, despite interstate competition that has fueled massive government giveaways and tempts the Chiefs and Royals to jump the border. Will a fragile truce hold as the weight of the World Cup bears down?

A patchwork of counties and cities huddled around the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers makes it harder to develop affordable, efficient public transit in the Kansas City region. Transit funding decisions get handled within each jurisdiction, with little or no coordination between them, and the KCATA has no power to levy taxes.

The Kansas-Missouri border splits Kansas City, and divides the metro region more evenly, and sometimes problematically, than any American metro region cut in two by a state line.