The Minneapolis Miracle (and a rebuttal)

[pdxtex]

^^^im not calling it squeaky clean, but its didn't have wholesale abandonement of its inner neighborhoods or the collapse of a dominant industry. its ability to remain economically diverse also makes it a midwest outlier. i guess the northside still has some problems but no place is perfect. chicago is a different ball of wax, americas tale of two cities. i still think the weather and location is what makes it affordable. clearly there is enough housing in MPLS to meet demand. the current housing supply in minneapolis according to their mls is 5 months! thats alot. portland by contrast is 2.7 months and people are lining up out the door with multiple offers on any house in the inner city. i wouldn't call portland any more progressive or interesting, but its currently 52 degrees. minneapolis is...........3!!!!

[ColDayMan]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

The lower "river city" midwest does not really feel like the eastern great lakes like Cleveland/Detroit.

Also, Kansas City has many square miles of less than sparkling neighborhoods, and so does Indianapolis. Both lost about the same % population of their pre-war core, i believe, as St. Louis.

There are four distinct midwests in my opinion, these are cities that share vernacular types, histories, and less tangible ambiance factors:

Eastern Great Lakes (Detroit/Cleve/Buff)
River City - St. Louis (has some great lakes type bones mixed in), Cincy, and Louisville and PGH are related
Western Great Lakes (MKE, CHI)
Prairie - KC, OMAHA, MPLS, INDY (minneapolis is sort of a bridge between Western Great Lakes and Prairie and St. Paul is somewhat River City)

Columbus is sort of a hybrid, I think, that I can't quite place. Sort of a bridge between Prairie and River City I guess.



you would absolutely come away with the same impression of any number of midwestern cities, then. kc is sort of a larger omaha, for instance.

Columbus is a former Appalachian city with an actual economy between the traditional Midwest (stereotypical corn, flat, middle-class) and Appalachia (hilly, beautiful, but poor). I don't see any "Prairie" in Columbus (by your definition), historically or architecturally aside from standard 30's to 50's housing which is everywhere east of Salt Lake City. More so Eastern Great Lakes (similar housing stock in older outer neighborhoods as Detroit and Cleveland i.e. wood-frame/larger apartment buildings; Clintonville neighborhood, for example) and River City (inner neighborhood housing stock like Cincinnati or St. Louis; brick rows, Italianate townhomes, brick this/brick that, etc) combined.

But back to Minneapolis...

[llamaorama]

Minneapolis and Minnesota in general is interesting because is a successful affordable middle American place that also has a progressive bent.

Dallas is corporate and flat and cheap too. Geographically, its a dried out, smushed MSP that got flipped over. But in Texas a lot of our elected decision makers are doodling on the kids menu. I don't think the state's business climate will suddenly turn into upstate New York if voters in a municipality vote to ban plastic bags. Don't on a flood of smart ideas around here.

[Chef]

The local government assistance program did help Minneapolis and St Paul maintain service levels in the '80s and '90s when white flight was in full swing, crime was spiking and their tax bases were eroding. It likely prevented them from falling as far as they would have otherwise. It is easy to forget now, but in the early to mid 90s Minneapolis was not headed in a good direction, crime was high and it seemed like things were spiraling out of control. The homicide rate wasn't far behind cities like Baltimore or New Orleans today. In many parts of the city people were dealing drugs on the street and you would hear gunshots on an almost daily basis. LGA was a useful source of revenue to help the city get through that era. Decreasing the gap in service levels between poor municipalities and richer ones probably helps stabilize communities while they are in crisis and gives them the opportunity to find their way back. That in turn probably benefits the broader society in the long run in terms of social cohesion and equalizing opportunity. Now most of the benefit of LGA goes to the blue collar suburbs rather than the central cities.

The other program that works towards the same end is open enrollment which allows any child in Minnesota to attend any public school that has room for them. This makes it less necessary for families to live in "the right district" for the sake of their children. In turn that opens up large swathes of the metro to being seen as acceptable places for middle class families to live (especially the central cities), which probably reduces price pressure on middle class and upper middle class suburban areas. I would imagine that if more states had open enrollment you would see a lot more middle class families living in cities.

[Chef]

Originally Posted by jpdivola

The Wash Post article doesn't provide any context about Minneapolis being a major settlement center for Somali refugees. Conceivably they make up a larger share of Minneapolis black population. It seems natural that recently arrived political refuges from poor war torn nations are not going to do very well on most socio-economic measures.

It would be interesting to see how native-born African American's compare to native-born whites in Minneapolis. No doubt there would be a gap, but I don't know that Minneapolis would be a particularly exception for the black/white gap.

Minneapolis has a fairly atypical black population, even aside from the 25%+ who are Somalis. Up until about 30 years ago it was tiny. Most have moved here from Chicago, Gary and other Midwestern cities and were generally the poorest of the poor in those places. Native born blacks in Minneapolis tend to have less education than nationwide averages. Middle class blacks don't move here and the city doesn't have the rooted, generational black middle class and establishment of other cities. The kids who grew up here, who's parents came from elsewhere in the Midwest, are just starting to come of age. How that generation does as adults will be the cities' real test.

As far as the racial attitudes of the white people it is fairly split. There are more overtly racist people here than I think a lot of people elsewhere in the country would expect. It is especially something you see amongst older baby boomers who live in the exurbs. The sort of people who love and vote for Michelle Bachmann. There are far fewer of those people in core cities and inner suburbs but they seem to be overrepresented among small and medium sized business owners and managers which probably explains some of the hiring disparities.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by creamcityleo79

Perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. But, the cities are QUITE different.

i'm not saying that the twin cities are identical to every other city in the midwest (that's nonsense), i'm merely arguing against the notion that the twin cities aren't midwestern because they didn't experience as much great migration black population influx as other big cities in the midwest.

the twin cities are midwestern. minnesota and the twins can try to carve out some new sub-regional identity as "the north" if they want to, but it will be a nearly impossible task to make a brand new 5th macro-level region of the country that's recognized by the nation at large. there are only 4 macro-level regions in our nation - northeast, south, midwest and west.

just because boston is the hub of "new england" doesn't mean it's not also northeastern.

just because houston is the capital of the "gulf coast" doesn't mean it's not also southern.

just because denver is the urban heart of "the rockies" doesn't mean it's not also western.

just because chicago is the largest "great lakes" city doesn't mean it's not also midwestern.

likewise, just because minneapolis is the alpha city of "the north" doesn't mean it's not also midwestern.

Originally Posted by austlar1

Anybody travelling to and from Seattle from the east in years past was likely to do so via MPS/StP. Beyond the three transcontinental railroads (Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and the Milwaukee Road) that ran between MPS/StP and Seattle

and anyone traveling from anywhere in the east to anywhere in the west in years past was likely to do so via chicago. however, that doesn't mean that chicago is not a midwestern city. and the great northern and milwaukee road railroads had their eastern terminus in chicago. that doesn't mean that chicago is a PNW-like city. railroads are linkages between cities, they don't magically transport a city from one geographical region to another one thousands of miles away. yes, there are historic, economic, and commercial ties between the twin cities and seattle, but that can be said about hundreds of city pairs in the nation connected by direct rail linkages. those ties don't make geographic regions irrelevant.

i've actually ridden amtrak's empire builder from chicago to seattle (with a stop in the twin cities). the trip between minneapolis and seattle lasts about 40 hours!. yes, it takes almost 2 entire days on a train rolling through some of the most uninhabited expanses of of open land and wilderness in the country to get from one to the other. these two cities are not in the same region.

Originally Posted by goat314

I also would not call Chicago an affordable city by any measure.

by any measure? that's not really true.

relative to the big urban coastal giants, chicago is absolutely more affordable than all of them, save for philadelphia, while still offering a level of big city urbanism not found elsewhere in the interior of the country on such a scale.

yes, chicago is more expensive than peoria or des moines or the vast majority of other places in the interior of the country, but among america's alpha level urban cities, chicago is still a relative baragin. and i would agree with others in the thread that the location and climate of the city (or at least the perceptions of them) factor into the equation of the city's relative affordability.

Originally Posted by goat314

As far as race relations, Chicago has some of the worst in the nation, specifically between blacks and whites.

reread pdxtex's post. though his post talking about minneapolis and chicago was a bit convoluted, it seems to me that when he was talking about cities avoiding racial strife relative to other places, he was specifically talking about minneapolis, not chicago.

no one with even an inkling of knowledge about american urban history would claim that chicago has avoided racial strife on a relative basis. chicago has had way more than its fair share of race riots, segregation, white flight, and other racial strife over the decades. no sane person would ever make any attempt to deny that.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

and anyone traveling from anywhere in the east to anywhere in the west in years past was likely to do so via chicago.

1842.

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com

[Surrealplaces]

I think I started this whole conversation off by not explaining things well....

I didn't mean to say that Minneapolis wasn't midwest, but was just giving a theory on the racial makeup that because it was on the edge of what many would call mid-west, it had more similarities in the look and feel and history to a western or north-western cities (Boise, Denver, Spokane, etc..). than the other traditional mid-west cities did. History being a part of it.

Of course I'm only looking at it as an outsider with less knowledge than other here, but it seems like a city that is kind of a mix of a western/north-western city and a Midwestern city.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i'm not saying that the twin cities are identical to every other city in the midwest (that's nonsense), i'm merely arguing against the notion that the twin cities aren't midwestern because they didn't experience as much great migration black population influx as other big cities in the midwest.

[jpdivola]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

Static comparisons are interesting, but I for one am more interested in how that Somali population does a generation or two down the road.

(In the Philadelphia region African immigrants are proving more successful at integrating into the economic mainstream than African-Americans. They're like the new Asians!)

Yeah, that would be interesting to see. I'm sure Somalis like every other immigrant group in us history will show strong upward mobility. Wasn't trying to imply that the Somali status was a permanent. I was pointing out that he didn't really provide any context in the article.

[BoiseAirport]

Originally Posted by Surrealplaces

I didn't mean to say that Minneapolis wasn't midwest, but was just giving a theory on the racial makeup that because it was on the edge of what many would call mid-west, it had more similarities in the look and feel and history to a western or north-western cities (Boise, Denver, Spokane, etc..). than the other traditional mid-west cities did. History being a part of it.

Initially I was inclined to disagree, but the more I thought about it, having traveled extensively through both the Pacific NW and the Midwest, I can see where you're coming from. The two areas do share a number of historical links that probably fostered these cultural similarities--at least to a degree that you don't see with other midwestern cities.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

The lower "river city" midwest does not really feel like the eastern great lakes like Cleveland/Detroit.

Also, Kansas City has many square miles of less than sparkling neighborhoods, and so does Indianapolis. Both lost about the same % population of their pre-war core, i believe, as St. Louis.

There are four distinct midwests in my opinion, these are cities that share vernacular types, histories, and less tangible ambiance factors:

Eastern Great Lakes (Detroit/Cleve/Buff)
River City - St. Louis (has some great lakes type bones mixed in), Cincy, and Louisville and PGH are related
Western Great Lakes (MKE, CHI)
Prairie - KC, OMAHA, MPLS, INDY (minneapolis is sort of a bridge between Western Great Lakes and Prairie and St. Paul is somewhat River City)

Columbus is sort of a hybrid, I think, that I can't quite place. Sort of a bridge between Prairie and River City I guess.

There's certainly a very different vernacular in Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, and St. Louis than there is in the Great Lakes cities. Part of that might be due to settlement patterns? The Ohio Valley cities all grew large when the Ohio River was the principal transportation artery west; by contrast, the Great Lakes and prairie cities all grew around the railroad.

(Incidentally, I don't know a lot about Louisville, but my impression is it's too new to be a river city in the same way St. Louis, Cincy, and Pittsburgh are.)

[fflint]

Minneapolis could have ended up in much worse shape than it has. The city started down the path so many current basket cases did--it bled population for several decades:

1950....521,718......6.0%
1960....482,872....−7.4%
1970....434,400....−10.0%
1980....370,951....−14.6%
1990....368,383....−0.7%
2000....382,618......3.9%

St. Paul wasn't as badly affected, with a shorter and shallower decline*:

1960....313,411......0.7%
1970....309,980....−1.1%
1980....270,230....−12.8%
1990....272,235......0.7%

Minneapolis' long, steep population decline occurred during decades when the population was much whiter than it is now (60.3% non-hispanic white as of 2010), so I don't think this city's story can be so casually racialized.

Neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis has yet climbed back to its respective mid-century population peak, but unlike so many other cities with that same population profile, the Twin Cities didn't fall apart or became a couple CBDs encircled by healthy satellite cities with little more than a ring of depopulated ghettoes in between. Clearly, there is something about Minneapolis that simultanously keeps its economy humming, its large middle-class strong, and its housing affordable.

*Saint Paul showed a 0.7% decline between 2000 and 2010.

[MNMike]

Just a small interjection...

Minneapolis isn't really a "prairie city". It is here because of the Mississippi river, and that is why the city was founded, developed and grew. In technical terms, Minneapolis lies right on the edge of the prairie and hardwood forest....praire doesn't start until west of here.

PS...populations in both Minneapolis and St. Paul are growing. We fared the 2010 census quite well with regard to the foreclosure crisis...which was the only reason neither city grew during that period. Vacant foreclosures in hard hit areas. Other parts of the city grew quickly, holding the population steady. Last year's census estimate puts Minneapolis over 400k (we all know those aren't always accurate) for the first time since the 70s. That is in line with the amount of new units built the past several years, and the huge decline in vacant properties. There has been quite a change in Minneapolis the past 10 years in terms of added density. Quite the boom going on, the city is in flux and things are changing quickly....it will be interesting to look at demographics after the next census.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by MNMike

Just a small interjection...

Minneapolis isn't really a "prairie city". It is here because of the Mississippi river, and that is why the city was founded, developed and grew. In technical terms, Minneapolis lies right on the edge of the prairie and hardwood forest....praire doesn't start until west of here.

I always thought that Minneapolis was in the river city group. I've never been there but would have never thought to group it in with the Pacific Northwest.

Took me a while to find it but I like to take a look at the graph showing the 20 largest American "metro" area population rank over time when the city similarity discussion comes up. Over time, Minneapolis's rank trajectory roughly mirrors that of other river cities like St Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh... All preceded by New Orleans.

http://www.peakbagger.com/pbgeog/histmetropop.aspx

[mhays]

Originally Posted by fflint

Minneapolis could have ended up in much worse shape than it has. The city started down the path so many current basket cases did--it bled population for several decades:

1950....521,718......6.0%
1960....482,872....−7.4%
1970....434,400....−10.0%
1980....370,951....−14.6%
1990....368,383....−0.7%
2000....382,618......3.9%

St. Paul wasn't as badly affected, with a shorter and shallower decline*:

1960....313,411......0.7%
1970....309,980....−1.1%
1980....270,230....−12.8%
1990....272,235......0.7%

Minneapolis' long, steep population decline occurred during decades when the population was much whiter than it is now (60.3% non-hispanic white as of 2010), so I don't think this city's story can be so casually racialized.

Neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis has yet climbed back to its respective mid-century population peak, but unlike so many other cities with that same population profile, the Twin Cities didn't fall apart or became a couple CBDs encircled by healthy satellite cities with little more than a ring of depopulated ghettoes in between. Clearly, there is something about Minneapolis that simultanously keeps its economy humming, its large middle-class strong, and its housing affordable.

*Saint Paul showed a 0.7% decline between 2000 and 2010.

This sounds like smaller household sizes mostly, not abandonment. Coupled with a limited amount of new construction.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by mhays

This sounds like smaller household sizes mostly, not abandonment. Coupled with a limited amount of new construction.

Agreed there wasn't wholesale abandonment in Minneapolis. I'm not sure about your explanation of the long population decline, however. A smaller drop in population might be due only to smaller household sizes, but a drop of 30% that first started in the 1950s?

[Shasta]

One thing that has really helped Minneapolis is The University of Minnesota. Having the largest, flagship, tier one research university located right in the heart of the City is a huge plus.

Imagine if Michigan was located right outside of downtown Detroit or Ohio State was in Cleveland along the lake rather than down in Columbus...

[mhays]

Originally Posted by fflint

Agreed there wasn't wholesale abandonment in Minneapolis. I'm not sure about your explanation of the long population decline, however. A smaller drop in population might be due only to smaller household sizes, but a drop of 30% that first started in the 1950s?

"Most" would require only more than half of that. But yes, household sizes dropped by numbers like that in some places. My guess is there was a small reduction in occupied households during that period.

[fflint]

Originally Posted by mhays

"Most" would require only more than half of that. But yes, household sizes dropped by numbers like that in some places. My guess is there was a small reduction in occupied households during that period.

I could be wrong, but I don't think household sizes dropped 7.4% in the 1950s.

I think it is fair to assume more people moved out of Mineapolis than moved in or were replaced via childbirth in the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s. I do believe the '90s drop was small enough to be entirely covered by decreasing houshold sizes, so we don't entirely disagree. But the highest birthrates in post-war America came in a decade when Minneapolis lost population.

I only posted the stats because some forumers appeared to believe Minneapolis had never shared in the post-war urban decline. It did, a 30% drop before growth began again. The city continues to grow, but is still significantly less populous than it was in 1950.

[MNMike]

Another reason, one of many, for the population decline at that time was the huge amount of land that was cleared for interstate freeways. That took a lot of housing!!!

Good news, as I was saying earlier....recently, the core cities have accounted for nearly 30% of metro population growth.

http://www.metrocouncil.org/News-Eve...ion-gains.aspx