Digital KC Connect

Sending this Throwback up to the skies to Victor Glover as he makes way to the moon and back! The First Black Astronaut - Dr. Guion Bluford with aSTEAM Village HNTB

Avant Garde 2018 · Oct 11 – 12, 2018 📸 Shared album · Tap to view!

📖 What does it really mean for a city to be “smart”?
In Smart as a City: The Politics of Test‑Bed Urbanism, Dr. Burcu Baykurt takes us inside Kansas City, Missouri, offering a deeply researched, ethnographic look at how “smart city” technologies are experienced, negotiated, and contested by residents, civic leaders, and local entrepreneurs—not just sold by tech companies.
Rather than celebrating tech for tech’s sake, Baykurt reframes smartness as a collective, messy, and political process, showing how experimental urban technologies often arrive unfinished, imperfect, and entangled with existing inequalities.
This is essential reading for:
🏙️ City leaders & planners
📡 Digital equity advocates
🎓 Students of urban studies, media, and technology
🤝 Anyone working at the intersection of community, infrastructure, and innovation
Smart cities aren’t just built—they’re lived in.

Urban Institute Broadband Data Walk at aSTEAM Village with Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City · Oct 27, 2022 – Apr 2, 2026 📸 Shared album · Tap to view!

🔁 | aSTEAM Village
One of our favorite Kansas City moments 💛
We had the honor of hosting 100 students from Missouri’s Bootheel right here in Kansas City, giving them a full‑spectrum experience of what STEM, culture, and community look like when they come together.
🎤 The students felt the positive hip‑hop energy of Just Wulf
🤖 Explored hands‑on robotics with Minnesota STEM partners
🧠 Connected with regional STEM practitioners and co‑founders of NSBE
⚾ And capped it all off with a Kansas City Royals game, catered by Brancato’s, showing true KC hospitality
This is what exposure looks like.
This is what opportunity feels like.
This is how futures get unlocked.
📸 Relive the memories here:
👉 https://photos.app.goo.gl/CRv31ejNvs4jZf99A

CommUNITY STEM Day Recap Photos and Videos · May 3 – 7, 2024 📸 Shared album · Tap to view!