Minneapolis is a major city and the county seat of Hennepin County in Minnesota, United States. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins in timber and as the flour milling capital of the world. It occupies both banks of the Mississippi River and adjoins Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota.
Prior to European settlement, the site of Minneapolis was inhabited by Dakota people. The settlement was founded along Saint Anthony Falls by John Stevens and Franklin Steele on a section of land north of Fort Snelling. The settlement's following growth can be attributed to its proximity to the fort and the falls providing power for industrial activity. , the city has an estimated 425,336 inhabitants. It is the most populous city in the state and the 46th-most-populous city in the United States. Minneapolis, Saint Paul and the surrounding area are collectively known as the Twin Cities.
Minneapolis has one of the best public park systems in the US; many of these parks are connected by the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway. Biking and walking trails, some of which follow abandoned railroad lines, run through many parts of the city; such as the Mill District in the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District, around the banks of Lake of the Isles, Bde Maka Ska, and Lake Harriet, and by Minnehaha Falls. Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. Minneapolis is the birthplace of General Mills, Pillsbury Company, and the Target Corporation. The city's cultural offerings include the Guthrie Theater, the First Avenue nightclub, and four professional sports teams.
Most of the University of Minnesota's main campus, and several other post-secondary educational institutions are in Minneapolis. Part of the city is served by a light rail system. Minneapolis has two highly-rated hospitals.
Minneapolis has a mayor-council-government system. The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) has held a majority of council seats there for 50 years and Jacob Frey (DFL) has been mayor since 2018. In May 2020, Derek Chauvin, a White officer of the Minneapolis Police Department, murdered George Floyd, a Black man, and the resulting global protests put Minneapolis and racism at the center of national and international attention.
History
Dakota natives, city founded
Prior to European colonization, the Dakota Sioux were the sole occupants of the site of modern-day Minneapolis. In Dakota language, the city's name is Bdeóta Othúŋwe (Many Lakes City).
The French explored the region in 1680. Gradually, more European-American settlers arrived, competing with the Dakota for game and other natural resources. Following the Revolutionary War, the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave British-claimed territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States. In 1803, the U.S. acquired land to the west of the Mississippi from France in the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1819, US Army built Fort Snelling at the southern edge of present-day Minneapolis to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders, and to deter warring between the Dakota and Ojibwe in northern Minnesota. The fort attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the surrounding region. At the fort, agents of the St. Peters Indian Agency enforced the US policy of assimilating Native Americans into European-American society, encouraging them to give up subsistence hunting and to cultivate the land. Missionaries encouraged Native Americans to convert from their own religion to Christianity.
The U.S. government pressed the Dakota to sell their land, which they ceded in a series of treaties that were negotiated by corrupt officials. In the decades following the signings of these treaties, their terms were rarely honored. During the American Civil War, officials plundered annuities promised to Native Americans, leading to famine among the Dakota. In 1862, a faction of the Dakota who were facing starvation declared war and killed settlers. The Dakota were interned and exiled from Minnesota.
Outwitting Fort Snelling's commandant, Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of Saint Anthony Falls, and John H. Stevens built a home on the west bank. Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. In 1852, the city's first schoolmaster Charles Hoag proposed Minnehapolis, with a silent h, combining the Dakota word Mníȟaȟa (waterfall) and the Greek word for (city), which became Minneapolis (city of the falls). In 1856, the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867 and in 1872, it merged with the city of St. Anthony on the river's east bank.
Waterpower; lumber and flour milling
Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River, which was used as a source of energy. A lumber industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, and 17 sawmills operated from energy provided by the waterfall. By 1871, the river's west bank had 23 businesses, including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes and wood-planing. Due to the occupational hazards of milling, by the 1890s, six companies manufactured artificial limbs. Grain grown in the Great Plains was shipped by rail to the city's 34 flour mills. A 1989 Minnesota Archaeological Society analysis of the Minneapolis riverfront describes the use of water power in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen". Minneapolis led the world in flour milling for 50 years.
Cadwallader C. Washburn, a founder of modern milling and of what became General Mills, converted his business from gristmills to "gradual reduction" by steel-and-porcelain roller mills that were capable of quickly producing premium-quality, pure, white flour. William Dixon Gray developed some ideas and William de la Barre acquired others through industrial espionage in Hungary. Charles Alfred Pillsbury and the C.A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn employees and immediately began using the new methods. The hard, red, spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable ($0.50 profit per barrel in 1871 increased to $4.50 in 1874), and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized as the best in the world. Later consumers discovered value in the bran that " ... Minneapolis flour millers routinely dumped" into the Mississippi.
A single mill at Washburn-Crosby could make enough flour for 12 million loaves of bread each day and by 1900, 14 percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis. By 1895, through the efforts of silent partner William Hood Dunwoody, Washburn-Crosby exported four million barrels of flour a year to the United Kingdom. When exports reached their peak in 1900, about one third of all flour milled in Minneapolis was shipped overseas.
Social tensions
In 1886, when Martha Ripley founded Maternity Hospital for both married and unmarried mothers, Minneapolis made changes to rectify discrimination against unmarried women. Known initially as a kindly physician, mayor Doc Ames made his brother police chief, ran the city into corruption, and tried to leave town in 1902. Lincoln Steffens published Ames's story in "The Shame of Minneapolis" in 1903. The gangster Kid Cann engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s.
During the early 20th century, bigotry presented in several ways. In 1910, a Minneapolis developer wrote restrictive covenants based on race and ethnicity into his deeds. Other developers copied the practice prevented Asian and African Americans from owning or leasing certain properties. Though such language was prohibited by state law in 1953 and by the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, restrictive covenants against minorities remained in many Minneapolis deeds as recently as 2021, when the city gave residents a means to remove them. The Ku Klux Klan entered family life but was only effectively a force in the city from 1921 until 1923. After Minnesota passed a eugenics law in 1925, the proprietors of Eitel Hospital sterilized about 1,000 people at the city's Faribault State Hospital.
From 1918—the end of World War I—until 1950, antisemitism was commonplace in Minneapolis—Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the United States. A hate group called the Silver Legion of America held meetings in the city from 1936 to 1938. In 1948, Mount Sinai Hospital opened as the city's first hospital to employ members of minority races and religions.
During the financial downturn of the Great Depression, the violent Teamsters Strike of 1934 led to laws acknowledging workers' rights. Mayor Hubert Humphrey helped the city establish fair employment practices and by 1946, a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities was established. In the 1950s, less than two percent of the city's population was non-White. In 1966 and 1967, years of significant turmoil across the US, suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue. A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment; Charles Stenvig, a law-and-order candidate, became mayor. Minneapolis contended with White supremacy, participated in desegregation and engaged with the civil rights movement; in 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded in Minneapolis.
Between 1958 and 1963, as part of urban renewal in America, Minneapolis demolished roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the Gateway District and its significant architecture, such as the Metropolitan Building. Efforts to save the building failed but encouraged interest in historic preservation.
On May 25, 2020, a citizen recorded the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man who suffocated when Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for more than nine minutes. The incident sparked national unrest, riots and mass protests. Local protests and riots resulted in extraordinary levels of property damage in Minneapolis; the destruction including a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire. The Twin Cities experienced prolonged unrest over racial injustice from 2020 to 2022.
Geography
The history and economic growth of Minneapolis are linked to water, the city's defining physical characteristic. Long periods of glaciation and interglacial melt carved several riverbeds through what is now Minneapolis. During the last glacial period, around 10,000 years ago, ice buried in these ancient river channels melted, resulting in basins that filled with water to become the lakes of Minneapolis. Meltwater from Lake Agassiz fed the glacial River Warren, which created a large waterfall that eroded upriver past the confluence of the Mississippi River, where it left a drop in the Mississippi. This site is located in what is now downtown Saint Paul. The new waterfall, later called Saint Anthony Falls, in turn eroded up the Mississippi about to its present location, carving the Mississippi River gorge as it moved upstream. Minnehaha Falls also developed during this period via similar processes.
Minneapolis is sited above an artesian aquifer and on flat terrain. Minneapolis has a total area of , six percent of which is covered by water. Water supply is managed by four watershed districts that correspond with the Mississippi and the city's three creeks. The city has thirteen lakes, three large ponds, and five unnamed wetlands.
A 1959 report by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service listed Minneapolis's elevation above mean sea level as . The city's lowest elevation of above sea level is near the confluence of Minnehaha Creek with the Mississippi River. Sources disagree on the exact location and elevation of the city's highest point, which is cited as being between above sea level.
Neighborhoods
Minneapolis is divided into eleven communities, each containing several neighborhoods, of which there are 83. In some cases, two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization. Some areas are known by nicknames of business associations.
In 2018, Minneapolis City Council voted to approve the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a city-wide end to single-family zoning. Minneapolis was the first major city in the United States to make this change. At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes, however many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units. City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation. The Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the YIMBY agenda".
In the metropolitan area, 77% of White families own their homes, compared with 25% of Black families, the largest differential for any major American city. The 2019 Brookings Metro Monitor ranked Minneapolis-St. Paul 92nd out of 100 as the least racially inclusive metro area. Keith Mayes of the University of Minnesota said Black families were pushed north from south Minneapolis to the Powderhorn and Lyndale communities, and that pockets live in the King Field neighborhood. Racial covenants prevented Black people from buying land in residential neighborhoods. Simultaneous redlining occurred in surrounding neighborhoods, and the effects remain in education, employment, and entertainment.
Cityscape
Climate
Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa in the Köppen climate classification), that is typical of southern parts of the Upper Midwest, and is situated in USDA plant hardiness zone 4b; small enclaves of Minneapolis are classified as zone 5a. Minneapolis has cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers, as is typical in a continental climate. The difference between average temperatures in the coldest winter month and the warmest summer month is .
According to the NOAA, the annual average for sunshine duration is 58%. Minneapolis experiences a full range of precipitation and related weather events, including snow, sleet, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The highest recorded temperature is in July 1936 while the lowest is in January 1888. The snowiest winter on record was 1983–84, when of snow fell: the least-snowiest winter was 1890–91, when fell.
Demographics
Dakota tribes, mostly the Mdewakanton, permanently occupied the present-day site of Minneapolis near their sacred site, St. Anthony Falls. During the 1850s and 1860s, European and Euro-American settlers from New England, New York, Bohemia and Canada, and, during the mid-1860s, immigrants from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark moved to the Minneapolis area, as did migrant workers from Mexico and Latin America. Other migrants came from Germany, Poland, Italy, and Greece. Central European migrants settled in the Northeast neighborhood, which is still known for its Czech and Polish cultural heritage. Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, and Russia began arriving in the 1880s, and settled primarily on the north side before moving to western suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.
For a short period of the 1940s, Japanese and Japanese Americans resided in Minneapolis due to US-government relocations, as did Native Americans during the 1950s. In 2013, Asians were the state's fastest-growing population. Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Hmong, Lao, Cambodians and Vietnamese arrived in the 1970s and 1980s, and people from Tibet, Burma and Thailand came in the 1990s and 2000s. The population of people from India doubled by 2010. After the Rust Belt economy declined during the early 1980s, Minnesota's Black population, a large fraction of whom arrived from cities such as Chicago and Gary, Indiana, nearly tripled in less than twenty years. Black migrants were drawn to Minneapolis and the Greater Twin Cities by its abundance of jobs, good schools, and relatively safe neighborhoods. Beginning in the 1990s, a sizable Latin American population arrived, along with immigrants from the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia; however, immigration of 1,400 Somalis in 2016 slowed to 48 in 2018 under President Trump. As of 2019, more than 20,000 Somalis live in Minneapolis. In 2015, the Brookings Institution characterized Minneapolis as a re-emerging immigrant gateway where about 10 percent of residents were born outside the US. As of 2019, African Americans make up about one fifth of the city's population.
The population of Minneapolis grew until 1950, when the census peaked at 521,718—the only time it has exceeded a half million. The population then declined for decades; after World War II, people moved to the suburbs, and generally out of the Midwest.
In 2015, Gallup reported the Twin Cities had an estimated LGBT+ adult population of 3.6%, roughly the same as the national average, and had the 38th-highest number of LGBT+ residents of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US. Human Rights Campaign gave Minneapolis its highest-possible score in 2019.
A 2015 report found racial and ethnic minorities in the city were unequal in education, with 15 percent of Blacks and 13 percent of Hispanics holding bachelor's degrees compared with 42 percent of the White population. While the standard of living is rising with incomes among the highest in the Midwest, in 2015, the median household income among minorities was below that of Whites by over $17,000 and the poverty-rate gap between Blacks and Whites was the widest in the US. A 2020 study found little change in economic racial inequality, with Minnesota ranking above only the neighboring state Wisconsin, and equal to the states of Iowa, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
Racial conflicts
Minneapolis has a long history of structural racism and has some of the United States' largest racial disparities in housing, income, health care, and education.
Some historians have said at various times, some White Minneapolitans have used discrimination based on race against the city's non-White residents. As White settlers displaced the indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land. In 1910, when less than one percent of Minneapolis residents were non-White, the city was fairly well integrated but discrimination increased when flour milling moved east and the economy declined. Developers created racial covenants on real estate deeds that excluded people with Black and Asian backgrounds from fair housing, and accumulating equity and wealth. In the 1940s, redlining by the Federal Housing Administration placed racial restrictions on desirable properties bordering the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.
Commentators have written about historic racism and socioeconomic disparities in Minneapolis. Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explained that disparities today evolved from White people asserting control of the city's land. William D. Green of Augsburg University said in Minneapolis, people of different races live in parallel universes.
Religion
The indigenous Dakota people, the original inhabitants of the Minneapolis area, believed in the Great Spirit and were surprised not all European settlers were religious. More than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis; a majority of the city's population are Christian. Settlers who arrived from New England were for the most part Protestants, Quakers, and Universalists. The oldest continuously used church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, was built in 1856 by Universalists and soon afterward was acquired by a French Catholic congregation. The first Jewish congregation was formed in 1878 as Shaarai Tov, and built Temple Israel in 1928. St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral was founded in 1887; it opened a missionary school and created the first Russian Orthodox seminary in the US. Edwin Hawley Hewitt designed both St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral and Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, both of which are located south of downtown. The Basilica of Saint Mary, the first basilica in the US and co-cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was named by Pope Pius XI in 1926.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was headquartered in Minneapolis from the late 1940s until the early 2000s. Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye met while attending Pentecostal North Central University, and began a television ministry that by the 1980s reached 13.5 million households. As of 2012, Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in southwest Minneapolis was the nation's second-largest Lutheran congregation, with about 6,000 attendees. Christ Church Lutheran in the Longfellow neighborhood, which Eliel Saarinen designed with an education building by his son Eero Saarinen, is a National Historic Landmark.
During the 1950s, members of Nation of Islam created a temple in north Minneapolis, and the city's first mosque was built in 1967. In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first Shi'a Muslim family from Uganda in the Twin Cities. Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily Sunni Muslim. The city has about 20 Buddhist centers and meditation centers. The headquarters of Atheists For Human Rights is located in a geodesic dome in the Shingle Creek neighborhood. Minneapolis has a body of Ordo Templi Orientis.
Economy
As of 2020, the Minneapolis–St. Paul area is the second-largest economic center in the American Midwest behind Chicago. Early the city's history, millers were required to pay for wheat with cash during the growing season, and then to store the wheat until it was needed for flour. This required large amounts of capital, which stimulated the local banking industry and made Minneapolis a major financial center. In the early 21st century, the economy of Minneapolis is based on commerce, finance, rail-and-trucking services, health care, and industry. Smaller industries are publishing, milling, food processing, graphic arts, insurance, education, and high technology.
The Twin Cities metropolitan area has the seventh-highest concentration of major corporate headquarters in the US as of 2021, and in 2020, four Fortune 500 corporations were headquartered within the city limits of Minneapolis. American companies with US offices in Minneapolis include Accenture, Bellisio Foods , Canadian Pacific, Coloplast, RBC and Voya Financial. In its 2018 survey based on 2017's cost of living for expatriate executives, The Economist ranked Minneapolis the third-most-expensive city of those surveyed in North America and 26th in the world.
As of 2020, the Minneapolis metropolitan area contributes $273 billion or 74% to the gross state product of Minnesota. Measured by gross metropolitan product per resident (62,054), as of 2015, Minneapolis is the fifteenth richest city in the US. In 2011, the area's $199.6 billion gross metropolitan product and its per capita personal income ranked 13th in the US.
The Minneapolis Grain Exchange, which was founded in 1881, is located near the riverfront and is the only exchange for hard, red, spring wheat futures and options. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis serves Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota, and parts of Wisconsin and Michigan; it has the smallest population of the 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve System. Along with supporting consumers and the community, the bank executes monetary policy, regulates banks in its territory, and provides cash and oversees electronic deposits.
Culture
Visual arts
Walker Art Center, which is located at the summit of Lowry Hill near downtown, was called by Newsweek "possibly America's best contemporary-art museum". The center's size doubled in 2005 with an addition by Herzog & de Meuron, and expanded with a park that was designed by Michel Desvigne and is located across the street from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
Minneapolis Institute of Art, which is known as since its 100th anniversary and is located in south-central Minneapolis, was designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1915; is the largest art museum in the city and has 100,000 pieces in its permanent collection. New wings, which were designed by Kenzo Tange and Michael Graves, opened in 1974 and 2006, respectively; the new wings house contemporary and modern works, and provide additional gallery space.
Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Museum, which opened in 1993, for the University of Minnesota. A 2011 addition by Gehry doubled the size of the galleries. The Museum of Russian Art opened in a restored church in 2005, and hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events. Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists, a center at the Northrup-King Building, and recurring annual events.
Theater and performing arts
Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War. Early theaters included Pence Opera House, the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894. , Minneapolis has numerous theater companies.
Guthrie Theater, the area's largest theater company, occupies a three-stage complex that was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and overlooks the Mississippi River. The company was founded in 1963 by Sir Tyrone Guthrie as a prototype alternative to Broadway, and it produces a wide variety of shows throughout the year. Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum, State, and Pantages Theatres, vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue that are now used for concerts and plays. Another renovated theater, the Shubert, joined with the Hennepin Center for the Arts to become the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, which houses more than 12 performing arts groups.
Music
Minnesota Orchestra plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under music director Osmo Vänskä; The New Yorker critic Alex Ross said of one 2010 special performance at Carnegie Hall, "... the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world". The orchestra recorded Casa Guidi, winning a Grammy Award in 2004 for composer Dominick Argento.
According to DownBeat, Dakota Jazz Club has been one of the world's best jazz venues for 25 years.
Singer and multi-instrumentalist Prince was born in Minneapolis, and lived in the area most of his life. After Jimmy Jam and the 11-piece Mind & Matter broke through discrimination and racial barriers, Prince reached a global, multiracial audience with his combination of rock and funk. Prince, an authentic musical prodigy who was enriched by a music program at The Way Community Center, learned to operate a Polymoog synthesizer at Sound 80 for his first album that became an element of the Minneapolis sound. With fellow local musicians, many of whom recorded at Twin/Tone Records, Prince helped change First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry into prominent venues for artists and audiences.
Hüsker Dü and The Replacements were pivotal in the US alternative rock boom during the 1980s. Their respective frontmen Bob Mould and Paul Westerberg developed successful solo careers. MN Spoken Word Association and independent hip hop label Rhymesayers Entertainment have garnered attention for their rap, hip hop, and spoken word performances and recordings. Underground Minnesota hip hop acts such as Atmosphere and Manny Phesto prominently feature the city and Minnesota in their song lyrics. Minneapolis Electronic dance music artists include Woody McBride, Freddy Fresh, and DVS1.
Tom Waits released two songs about the city; "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" (Blue Valentine, 1978) and "9th & Hennepin" (Rain Dogs, 1985). Lucinda Williams recorded "Minneapolis" (World Without Tears, 2003). Minneapolis grunge band Babes in Toyland recorded Minneapolism (2001). In 2008, the century-old MacPhail Center for Music opened a new facility that was designed by James Dayton. Minneapolis's opera companies are Minnesota Opera, Mill City Summer Opera, the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, and Really Spicy Opera.
Historical museums
The Minnesota History Center manages sites statewide; those in Minneapolis are Mill City Museum, which celebrates the city's history of flour milling, and Minnehaha Depot, which was built in 1875. The American Swedish Institute occupies a former mansion on Park Avenue. The American Indian Cultural Corridor, about eight blocks on Franklin Avenue, houses All My Relatives Gallery. On Penn Avenue North is Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery which was founded in 2018. In a former mansion one block from Mia is Hennepin History Museum. On East Lake Street is the world's only Somali history museum, the tiny Somali Museum of Minnesota. The Bakken , which was formerly known as Museum of Electricity in Life, shifted focus in 2016 from electricity and magnetism to invention and innovation, and in 2020 opened a new entrance on Bde Maka Ska.
Charity
Philanthropy and charitable giving have been part of the Minneapolis community since the 1800s. , Alight helps 2.5 million refugees and displaced persons each year in developing countries in Africa and Asia. Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is one of the largest non-profit organizations in the state, and a provider of several social services. The Minneapolis Foundation invests and administers over 1,000 charitable funds. According to AmeriCorps, in 2017, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, with 46.3% of the population volunteering, had the highest proportion of volunteers among US cities.
Literary arts
The nonprofit literary presses Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, and Graywolf Press are based in Minneapolis. Also internationally known, University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and a widely used personality test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Open Book, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and The Loft Literary Center are also located in Minneapolis.
Cuisine
West Broadway Avenue was a cultural center during the early 20th century but by the 1950s, flight to the suburbs began and streetcar service ended citywide.
One of the largest urban food deserts in the US was , where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores. Wirth Co-op opened in 2017 but closed within a year. North Market opened in 2017. The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the local diet, competing against an influx of fast-food stores, and by 2017 it administered 10 gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.
As of 2019, Minneapolis-based chefs have won James Beard Foundation Awards; Ann Kim, chef at Young Joni, Pizza Lola, Hello Pizza, and Sooki & Mimi won in 2019. Founder of The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen Sean Sherman won James Beard prizes for best American book (2018) and the leadership award (2019). Steve Hoffman won the James Beard distinguished writing award for "What Is Northern Food?." Other Minneapolis winners were chef Gavin Kaysen (2008), who won again in 2018 at Spoon & Stable; Alexander Roberts at Restaurant Alma; and Isaac Becker at 112 Eatery. Also in venues that have since closed; Tim McKee won at La Belle Vie and Paul Berglund at Bachelor Farmer. Among her five wins and eleven nominations, writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl won the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award in 2020. Andrew Zimmern won in 2010, 2013 and 2017 for Outstanding Personality/Host on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern and for his television program On Location in 2012. In 2017, when 13 of the city's chefs and restaurants were nominated for James Beard awards, The Wall Street Journal named Minneapolis one of the 10 best places in the world to visit.
In 2021, Sherman and Dana Thompson opened Owamni by The Sioux Chef, which overlooks Saint Anthony Falls (), to restore Native American cuisine and decolonize indigenous food. In 2022, Owamni won best new restaurant, the only time a Minnesota restaurant had won a James Beard award in a national category.
Both credible originators of the burger, the 5–8 Club and Matt's Bar, have served the Jucy Lucy since the 1950s. The country's first vegan butcher shop The Herbivorous Butcher opened in 2016. East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s. Young Joni was selected one of the GQ top-10 new restaurants and one of Eaters 12 best new restaurants of 2017. Esquire put Hai Hai on its list of America's best restaurants in 2018. In 2018, Food & Wine named Spoon and Stable one of the 40 most-important restaurants of the past 40 years, Kaysen and others on Team USA won a silver medal in the 2015 Bocuse d'Or. As of 2019, chefs and bakers at eight of nine Kim Bartmann Minneapolis restaurants used heritage grains from Sunrise Four Mill.
Annual events
Each January and February, a series of events called The Great Northern is held in Minneapolis. The series includes the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships; the City of Lakes Loppet, a cross-country ski race; and the Saint Paul Winter Carnival. The annual MayDay Parade returned in 2021 following the COVID-19 pandemic; other events include Art-A-Whirl; Pride Festival & Parade, Stone Arch Bridge Festival, and Twin Cities Juneteenth Celebration in June; Minneapolis Aquatennial in July; Minnesota Fringe Festival, Loring Park Art Festival, Metris Uptown Art Fair, Powderhorn Festival of Arts and the Lake Hiawatha Neighborhood Festival in August; Minneapolis Monarch Festival in September that celebrates the Monarch butterfly's migration; and the Twin Cities Marathon in October.
Sports
Minneapolis has four professional sports teams. The American football team Minnesota Vikings and the baseball team Minnesota Twins have played in the state since 1961. The Vikings were an National Football League (NFL) expansion team and the Twins were formed when the Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota. The Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991, and have played at Target Field since 2010. The Vikings played in the Super Bowl following the 1969, 1973, 1974, and 1976 seasons, losing all four games. The basketball team Minnesota Timberwolves returned National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball to Minneapolis in 1989, and were followed by Minnesota Lynx in 1999. Both basketball teams play in the Target Center.
In the 2010s, the Lynx were the most-successful sports team in the city and a dominant force in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), reaching the WNBA finals in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and winning in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. In 2016, following the killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, Lynx captains wore black shirts as a protest by Black athletes for social change.
In addition to professional sports teams, Minneapolis also hosts a majority of the Minnesota Golden Gopher college sports teams of the University of Minnesota. The Gophers football team plays at Huntington Bank Stadium and have won national championships in 1904, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1940, 1941, and 1960. The Gophers women's ice hockey team plays at Ridder Arena and is a six-time NCAA champion, and were the national champion in 2000, 2004, 2005, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016. The Gophers men's ice hockey team plays at 3M Arena at Mariucci, and won NCAA national championships in 1974, 1976, 1979, 2002, and 2003. Both the Golden Gophers men's basketball and women's basketball teams play at Williams Arena.
The U.S. Bank Stadium was built for the Vikings at a cost of $1.122 billion, $348 million of which was provided by the state of Minnesota and $150 million came from the city of Minneapolis. The stadium, which was called "Minnesota's biggest-ever public works project", opened in 2016 with 66,000 seats, which was expanded to 70,000 for the 2018 Super Bowl. U.S. Bank Stadium also hosts indoor running and rollerblading nights, concerts, and other events.
The city hosts some major sporting events, including baseball All-Star Games, World Series, Super Bowls, NCAA Division 1 men's and women's basketball Final Four, the AMA Motocross Championship, the X Games, and the WNBA All-Star Game.
Minnesota Wild, an National Hockey League team, play at the Xcel Energy Center; and the Major League Soccer soccer team Minnesota United FC play at Allianz Field, both of which are located in Saint Paul. Six golf courses are located within Minneapolis' city limits. While living in Minneapolis, Scott and Brennan Olson founded and later sold Rollerblade, the company that popularized the sport of inline skating.
The Twin Cities Marathon is a Boston Marathon qualifier.
Parks and recreation
In his book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't, Alexander Garvin wrote Minneapolis built "the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, and best-maintained public open space in America". More than a century after the Minneapolis park system was designed, in its 2022 ParkScore ranking, The Trust for Public Land reported Minneapolis has the fifth-best park system of the 100-most-populous US cities, dropping from first place in 2020.
The city's parks are governed and operated by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, an independent park district with broader powers than any other parks agency in the US. Foresight, donations, and effort by community leaders enabled Horace Cleveland to create his finest landscape architecture, preserving geographical landmarks and linking them with boulevards and parkways. The city's Chain of Lakes, consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bicycle paths, and running and walking paths, and are used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, and ice skating. A parkway for cars, a bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians run parallel along the route of the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.
Theodore Wirth is credited with developing the parks system. Approximately 15 percent of land in Minneapolis is parks, in accordance with the 2020 national median, and 98 percent of residents live within of a park.
Parks are interlinked in many places, and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area connects regional parks and visitor centers. The country's oldest public wildflower garden, the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, is located within Theodore Wirth Park, which is shared with Golden Valley and is about 90 percent of the area of Central Park, New York City. Minnehaha Park contains the 53-foot (16 m) waterfall Minnehaha Falls, and is one of the city's oldest and most popular parks. The regional park received over 2,050,000 visitors in 2017. In the bestselling and often-parodied 19th-century epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow named Hiawatha's wife Minnehaha for the Minneapolis waterfall. The , hiking-only Winchell Trail runs along the Mississippi River, and offers views of and access to the Mississippi Gorge and a rustic hiking experience.
Minneapolis's climate provides opportunities for winter activities such as ice fishing, snowshoeing, ice skating, cross-country skiing, and sledding at many parks and lakes between December and March. When there is sufficient snowfall or in the presence of snowmaking, a partnership between the park board and Loppet Foundation provides for the grooming of of cross-country ski trails between Wirth Park, the Chain of Lakes, and two of the city's golf courses. The City of Lakes Loppet cross-country ski race is part of the American ski marathon series. The park board maintains 20 outdoor ice rinks in winter and the city's Lake Nokomis is host to the annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championships.
Government
Minneapolis is currently a majority holding for the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), an affiliate of the Democratic Party. The city, which was once competitive for the Minnesota Republican Party, had its last Republican mayor in 1973.
Minneapolis City Council represents the city's 13 wards. The city adopted instant-runoff voting in 2006, first using it in the 2009 elections. The council is progressive; it has 12 DFL council members and one from the Democratic Socialists of America.
DFL council member Jacob Frey was elected mayor of Minneapolis in 2017, and was re-elected in 2021. In 2021, a ballot question shifted more power from the city council to the mayor, a change its proponents had tried to achieve for most of the 20th century. Prior to this referendum, Minneapolis was unique among major cities, the vast majority of which operate under strong mayor systems. Multiple city council members were in favor of this change. Parks, taxation, and public housing are semi-independent boards that levy their own taxes and fees, which are subject to Board of Estimate and Taxation limits. Andrea Jenkins was unanimously chosen as president of the City Council in 2022. In 2022, the 13-member council has seven political newcomers and for the first time has a majority of non-White council members.
In December 2020, the city worked through input from nearly 1,000 residents, an increase in the crime rate, COVID-19, and the threat of a mayoral veto to reach agreement on a 2021 budget. A $1.5 billion compromise maintained the number of police officers, set aside $8 million for community safety measures, cut funding to all major city departments, and included a 5.75 percent property tax increase.
At the federal level, Minneapolis is within Minnesota's 5th congressional district, which since 2018 has been represented by Democrat Ilhan Omar, one of the first two practicing Muslim women and the first Somali-American in Congress. Minnesota's US Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, were elected or appointed while living in Minneapolis, and are also Democrats.
In 2015, the City Council passed a resolution making fossil fuel divestment city policy, joining 17 cities worldwide in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Minneapolis' climate plan calls for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Police
, Amelia Huffman is the interim Minneapolis police chief. The mayor is conducting a nationwide search for a new chief to replace Medaria Arradondo, who resigned.
Minneapolis has a separation ordinance that directs local law-enforcement officers not to "take any law enforcement action" for the sole purpose of finding undocumented immigrants, nor to ask an individual about his or her immigration status.
In the decade preceding the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis Police Department caused at least ten deaths, and in 2021, the StarTribune counted 200 police-related deaths in Minnesota since 2000.
In 2020, KSTP-TV News' 5 Investigates unit found Minneapolis had paid millions of dollars in settlements because officers had lied about use of force, dishonesty for which officers are rarely disciplined. The initial police statement regarding the murder of George Floyd indicated Floyd had been "suffering medical distress" without reference to the actions of officer Derek Chauvin. A witness, Darnella Frazier, recorded the assault and murder, contradicting the department's statement. The city agreed to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from Floyd's family, the largest pre-trial settlement for a civil-rights claim ever made in the US. Frazier, who was 17 years old at the time, won the 2020 PEN/Benenson Courage Award from PEN America and a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize committee in 2021.
Former police chief Arradondo was a plaintiff in a case that resulted in a 740,000 settlement for the department's "history of tolerating racist and discriminatory remarks by its White police officers". In 2016, then-chief Janée Harteau introduced police body cameras but they were rarely used. A 2019 audit found body-camera activation eventually increased to 95 percent after a 2017 order from Arradondo.
MPD150, a community coalition formed at the department's 150th anniversary, has advocated for the abolition of police in Minneapolis.
In 2020, city council president Lisa Bender said Minneapolis should dismantle its police department and replace it with a "transformative new model of public safety". The city's Charter Commission rejected the proposal. The City Council voted to move $8 million from police to dispatcher training and mental-health crisis teams, and to maintain the level of police staffing at 888 for 2021. After mid-2020, the department lost 166 officers, either to retirement or to temporary leave—many with PTSD—and a crime wave resulted in more than 500 shootings. In 2020, Minnesota Freedom Fighters formed as a neighborhood watch patrol. In 2021, the city signed a contract with Canopy to provide two-person teams to intervene with crisis response for mental-health calls.
Following the conviction of Derek Chauvin, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the US Justice Department was opening a "sweeping investigation into policing practices in Minneapolis". The Minnesota Department of Human Rights completed a two-year investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department that found a "pattern or practice of race discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act".
Education
Primary and secondary education
Minneapolis Public Schools enroll over 35,000 students in public primary and secondary schools. The district administers about 100 public schools, including 45 elementary schools, seven middle schools, seven high schools, eight special education schools, eight alternative schools, nineteen contract alternative schools, and five charter schools. With authority granted by the state legislature, the school board makes policy, selects the superintendent, and oversees the district's budget, curriculum, personnel, and facilities. In 2017, the graduation rate was 66 percent. Students speak over 100 languages at home and most school communications are printed in English, Hmong, Spanish, and Somali. Some students attend public schools in other school districts chosen by their families under Minnesota's open enrollment statute. Besides public schools, the city has more than 20 private schools and academies, and about 20 additional charter schools.
Colleges and universities
thumb|alt=striking geometric metallic building in front of more traditional ones|University of Minnesota teaching
Minneapolis's collegiate scene is dominated by the main campus of the University of Minnesota, where more than 50,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students attend 20 colleges, schools, and institutes. The university offers free tuition to students from Minnesota families earning less than $50,000 per year. The graduate school programs with exceptional, top-five national rankings in 2020 were health care management, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy, and clinical psychology. The university has unusual constitutional autonomy that has existed in three US states since 1851, when the provision was included in the Minnesota's constitution.
Augsburg University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and North Central University are private four-year colleges. Minneapolis Community and Technical College and the private Dunwoody College of Technology provide career training. St. Mary's University of Minnesota has a Twin Cities campus for its graduate and professional programs. The large, principally online universities Capella University and Walden University are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year Metropolitan State University and the private four-year University of St. Thomas are among post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis.
Libraries
Minneapolis Public Library, which was founded by T. B. Walker in 1885, merged with the Hennepin County Library system in 2008. The new downtown Central Library designed by César Pelli opened in 2006. Ten special collections hold over 25,000 books and resources for researchers, including the Minneapolis Collection and the Minneapolis Photo Collection. About 845,000 people have free library cards.
Media
Several newspapers are published in Minneapolis; Star Tribune, Finance & Commerce, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the university's The Minnesota Daily, and MinnPost.com. TMC Publications publishes The Monitor and Longfellow Nokomis Messenger. MSP Communications publishes Mpls.St.Paul and Twin Cities Business magazines. Other publications include Minnesota Women's Press, North News, Northeaster, Insight News, and The Circle.
Nineteen FM and AM radio stations are licensed to Minneapolis, including one from the University of Minnesota and one from the public schools. Up to 79 FM and AM signals can be received in one or more areas of the city. There are 10 full-power television stations in the metro area, and one non-profit public-access cable network. WCCO-TV is based in Minneapolis proper. A majority of these signals can be streamed.
Movies filmed in Minneapolis include Airport (1970), The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), Ice Castles (1978), Foolin' Around (1980), Take This Job and Shove It (1981), Purple Rain (1984), That Was Then, This Is Now (1985), The Mighty Ducks (1992), Untamed Heart (1993), Little Big League (1994), Beautiful Girls (1996), Jingle All the Way (1996), Fargo (1996), and Young Adult (2011). In 1960s television, two episodes of Route 66 were made in Minneapolis. The 1970s CBS situation comedy set in Minneapolis, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, won three Golden Globes and 29 Emmy Awards. The show's opening sequences were filmed in the city.
Infrastructure
Transportation
Minneapolis has two light rail lines and one commuter rail line. The Metro Blue Line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington to downtown, and the Metro Green Line travels east from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown Saint Paul. Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019. In 2020, a rise in crime on the light rail system led to discussion in the state legislature on how to best address the problem. An extension of the Green Line that will connect downtown Minneapolis with the southwestern suburbs is expected to open in 2023. An extension of the Blue Line to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020. The Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake through the northern suburbs and terminates at the multi-modal transit station at Target Field using existing railroad tracks. Public transit ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year, which is part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership. Ridership on the Metro system remained steady or grew slightly.
In 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was rebuilt in 14 months. Only one quarter of the US's structurally deficient bridges had been repaired ten years later.
Walk Score rated Minneapolis as having the 13th-highest walk score and the highest bike score among US cities with more than 200,000 people in 2020. The Minneapolis Skyway System, of enclosed pedestrian bridges called skyways, links 80 city blocks downtown with second-floor restaurants and retailers that are open on weekdays. The website Bicycling named Minneapolis the fourth-best bicycling city in 2018. Minneapolis has of trails for walking and biking. Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail. Bicycle-sharing provider Nice Ride Minnesota planned expanded capacity in 2019.
Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) is served by 18 international, domestic, charter, and regional carriers, and is the headquarters of Sun Country Airlines. As of 2019, MSP is also the second-largest hub for Delta Air Lines, which operates more flights out of MSP than any other airline. This is a legacy of Delta's 2008 acquisition of MSP-based Northwest Airlines, which was the dominant MSP carrier. For terminals serving 25-to-40 million passengers, MSP was named the world's best airport for customer experience in North America in 2020 for the fourth consecutive year. Business magazine Forbes named MSP the second-best airport in North America behind Detroit in 2019.
Health care
Minneapolis has eight hospitals, four of which—Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Children's Hospitals and Clinics, University of Minnesota Medical Center, and University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital—were ranked by U.S. News & World Report among America's best hospitals in 2020–2021. Hennepin Healthcare, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Shriners Hospitals for Children, and Phillips Eye Institute also serve the city. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is from Minneapolis.
Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Hospital, where by 1957, more than 200 patients—many of whom were children—had survived open-heart operations. Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.
Hennepin Healthcare, public teaching hospital and Level I trauma center, opened in 1887 as City Hospital, and has also been known as Minneapolis General Hospital, Hennepin County General Hospital, and HCMC. The Hennepin Healthcare safety net counted 643,739 clinic visits, and 111,307 emergency and urgent care visits in 2019.
The 2018 AARP Livability Index scored Minneapolis above average on health; the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) ranked Minneapolis and its metropolitan area the US's first, second, or third-fittest city every year from 2008 to 2016, and first from 2011 to 2013. The ACSM American Fitness Index ranked the city the US's third-fittest in 2020.
Utilities
"Ambassadors", who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a public-private partnership with a $6.6 million annual budget that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.
Xcel Energy supplies electricity, CenterPoint Energy supplies gas, CenturyLink provides landline telephone service, and Comcast provides cable service. The city treats and distributes water, and charges a monthly fee for trash removal.
After each significant snowfall, called a snow emergency, the Minneapolis Public Works Street Division plows over of streets and of alleys—counting both sides, the distance between Minneapolis and Seattle and back. Ordinances govern parking on plowing routes during these emergencies, as well as snow shoveling.
Notable people
Sister cities
Minneapolis's sister cities are:
Bosaso, Somalia (2014)
Cuernavaca, Mexico (2008)
Eldoret, Kenya (2000)
Harbin, China (1992)
Ibaraki, Japan (1980)
Kuopio, Finland (1972)
Najaf, Iraq (2009)
Novosibirsk, Russia (1988)
Santiago, Chile (1961)
Tours, France (1991)
Uppsala, Sweden (2000)
Winnipeg, Canada (1973)
