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Minneapolis () is the largest city in
Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
, United States, and the
county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US ...
of
Hennepin County Hennepin County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its county seat is Minneapolis, the state's most populous city. The county is named in honor of the 17th-century explorer Father Louis Hennepin. The county extends from Minne ...
. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the
Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, ...
, 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 The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, ...
and adjoins
Saint Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
, the state capital of Minnesota. Prior to European settlement, the site of Minneapolis was inhabited by
Dakota people The Dakota (pronounced , Dakota language: ''Dakȟóta/Dakhóta'') are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into ...
. The settlement was founded along
Saint Anthony Falls Saint Anthony Falls, or the Falls of Saint Anthony ( dak, italics=no, Owámniyomni, ) located at the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the only natural major waterfall on the Mississippi River. Throughout the mid-to-lat ...
on a section of land north of
Fort Snelling Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint A ...
; its growth is 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 Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in statu ...
. Minneapolis has one of the most extensive 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 General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
,
Pillsbury Company The Pillsbury Company is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company that was one of the world's largest producers of grain and other foodstuffs until it was bought by General Mills in 2001. General Mills brands consist of Annie's, Betty Crocker, Na ...
, and the
Target Corporation Target Corporation (doing business as Target and stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the seventh largest retailer in the United States, and a compo ...
. The city's cultural offerings include the
Guthrie Theater The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone ...
, the First Avenue nightclub, and four professional sports teams. Most of the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
'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 a mayor-council government system. The
Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
(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 Derek Michael Chauvin ( ; born March 19, 1976) is an American former police officer who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin was a member of the Minneapolis Police ...
, a White officer of the Minneapolis Police Department, murdered
George Floyd George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit t ...
, 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 settlement, the Dakota Sioux were the sole occupants of the site of modern-day Minneapolis. In the Dakota language, the city's name is ''Bde Óta Othúŋwe'' ('Many Lakes Town'). 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 The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, ...
to the United States. In 1803, the U.S. acquired land to the west of the Mississippi from France in the
Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase (french: Vente de la Louisiane, translation=Sale of Louisiana) was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or appr ...
. In 1819,
US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, c ...
built
Fort Snelling Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint A ...
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 The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
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 The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
, 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 War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
and killed settlers. The Dakota were
interned Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...
and exiled from Minnesota. While the Dakota were being expelled,
Franklin Steele Franklin Steele (1813 – September 10, 1880) was an early settler of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, of Scottish descent, Steele worked in the Lancaster post office as a young man, where he once met James Bucha ...
laid claim to the east bank of
Saint Anthony Falls Saint Anthony Falls, or the Falls of Saint Anthony ( dak, italics=no, Owámniyomni, ) located at the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the only natural major waterfall on the Mississippi River. Throughout the mid-to-lat ...
, and
John H. Stevens John Harrington Stevens (June 13, 1820 – May 28, 1900) was the first authorized colonial resident on the west bank of the Mississippi River in what would become Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was granted permission to occupy the site, then part ...
built a home on the west bank. Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. In 1852, Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (''mni'') with the Greek word for 'city' (), yielding ''Minneapolis''. In 1851 after a meeting of the
Minnesota Territorial Legislature The Minnesota Territorial Legislature was a bicameral legislative body created by the United States Congress in 1849 as the legislative branch of the government of the Territory of Minnesota. The upper chamber, the Council, and the lower chamber ...
, leaders of St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul. In a close vote, St. Paul and Stillwater agreed to divide federal funding between them: St. Paul would be the capital, while Stillwater would build the prison. The St. Anthony contingent eventually won the state university. Courtesy ''Star Tribune'' and the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, in In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867 and in 1872, it merged with the city of St. Anthony on the river's east bank. and and , and and


Waterpower; lumber and flour milling

Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the
Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, ...
, which was used as a source of energy. A
lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...
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 The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...
was shipped by rail to the city's 34
flour mills A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separated ...
. A 1989 Minnesota Archaeological Society analysis of the Minneapolis riverfront describes the use of
water power Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by converting the gravitational potential or kinetic energy of a ...
in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen". Minneapolis was the nation's leading flour producer for nearly 50 years, and got the nickname "Mill City." Cadwallader C. Washburn, a founder of modern milling and of what became
General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
, 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 Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governme ...
in
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...
. Charles Alfred Pillsbury and the C.A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn employees and immediately began using the new methods. An 1867 court case allowed digging the Eastman tunnel under the river at Nicollet Island. In 1869, a leak soon sucked the
tailrace A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or bucket ...
into a -wide chasm. Community-led repairs failed and in 1870, several buildings and mills fell into the river. For years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers struggled to close the gap with timber until their concrete dike held in 1876. 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 Bran, also known as miller's bran, is the hard outer layers of cereal grain. It consists of the combined aleurone and pericarp. Corn (maize) bran also includes the pedicel (tip cap). Along with germ, it is an integral part of whole grains ...
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 Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made foo ...
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 A maternity hospital specializes in caring for women during pregnancy and childbirth. It also provides care for newborn infants, and may act as a centre for clinical training in midwifery and obstetrics. Formerly known as lying-in hospitals, mo ...
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. Minneapolis has a long history of
structural racism A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such a ...
and has large racial disparities in housing, income, health care, and education. Some historians and commentators have said White Minneapolitans 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, and Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explains that today's disparities evolved from control of the land. In 1910, Minneapolis "was not a particularly segregated place". Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the east coast and the economy declined. 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, preventing 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 The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and C ...
entered family life but was only effectively a force in the city from 1921 until 1923. and The gangster Kid Cann engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s. After Minnesota passed a
eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior o ...
law in 1925, the proprietors of Eitel Hospital sterilized about 1,000 people at Faribault State Hospital. From the end of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fight ...
in 1918 until 1950,
antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Ant ...
was commonplace in Minneapolis— Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the United States. A
hate group A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society. Accordi ...
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 Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The Financial contagion, ...
, the violent Teamsters Strike of 1934 led to laws acknowledging workers' rights. Mayor
Hubert Humphrey Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing M ...
helped the city establish fair employment practices and by 1946, a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities was established. 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 engaged with the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...
; in 1968, the
American Indian Movement The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police b ...
was founded in Minneapolis. Between 1958 and 1963, as part of
urban renewal Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blig ...
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 Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...
of
George Floyd George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit t ...
, an African-American man who suffocated when
Derek Chauvin Derek Michael Chauvin ( ; born March 19, 1976) is an American former police officer who was convicted for the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin was a member of the Minneapolis Police ...
, 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 Glacial River Warren, also known as River Warren, was a prehistoric river that drained Lake Agassiz in central North America between about 13,500 and 10,650 BP calibrated (11,700 and 9,400 14C uncalibrated) years ago. A part of the uppermost por ...
, 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 An artesian aquifer is a confined aquifer containing groundwater under positive pressure. An artesian aquifer has trapped water, surrounded by layers of impermeable rock or clay, which apply positive pressure to the water contained within t ...
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 There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' a ...
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 The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...
called it "a relatively rare example of success for the
YIMBY The YIMBY movement (short for "yes, in my back yard") is a pro-housing movement in contrast and opposition to the NIMBY ("''not'' in my back yard") phenomenon. The YIMBY position supports increasing the supply of housing within cities where hous ...
agenda". A Hennepin County District Court judge blocked the city from enforcing the plan because it lacked an overall environmental review. Arguing it will evaluate projects on an individual basis, as of July 2022, the city is allowed to use the plan while an appeal is pending.


Climate

Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer
humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezin ...
(''Dfa'' in the
Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, notabl ...
), that is typical of southern parts of the
Upper Midwest The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau's Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the Midwest. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed-upon, the region is defined as referrin ...
, 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 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditi ...
, 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 England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces o ...
,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * ...
,
Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohe ...
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 The Rust Belt is a region of the United States that experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s. The U.S. manufacturing sector as a percentage of the U.S. GDP peaked in 1953 and has been in decline since, impacting certain regions an ...
economy declined during the early 1980s, Minnesota's Black population, a large fraction of whom arrived from cities such as Chicago and
Gary, Indiana Gary is a city in Lake County, Indiana, United States. The city has been historically dominated by major industrial activity and is home to U.S. Steel's Gary Works, the largest steel mill complex in North America. Gary is located along the sou ...
, 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 The Horn of Africa (HoA), also known as the Somali Peninsula, is a large peninsula and geopolitical region in East Africa.Robert Stock, ''Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation'', (The Guilford Press; 2004), ...
, 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 The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGBT ...
gave Minneapolis its highest-possible score in 2019. A Black family in Minneapolis earns less than half as much per year as a White family. Black people own their homes at one-third the rate of White families. Specifically, the median income for a Black family was $36,000 in 2018, about $47,000 less than for a white family. Black Minneapolitans thus earn about 44 percent per year compared to White Minneapolitans, one of the country's largest income gaps. 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.


Religion

The indigenous Dakota people, the original inhabitants of the Minneapolis area, believed in the
Great Spirit The Great Spirit is the concept of a life force, a Supreme Being or god known more specifically as Wakan Tanka in Lakota,Ostler, Jeffry. ''The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee''. Cambridge University Press ...
. 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
Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
s,
Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...
, 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
Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites"" ...
ish 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 Russian Orthodoxy (russian: Русское православие) is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, whose liturgy is or was traditionally conducted in Church Slavonic language. Most C ...
seminary in the US. Edwin Hawley Hewitt designed 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 Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its nam ...
in the US and co-cathedral of the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis ( la, Archidiœcesis Paulopolitana et Minneapolitana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church in the United States. It is led by an archbishop who administers ...
, was named by
Pope Pius XI Pope Pius XI ( it, Pio XI), born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939), was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 to his death in February 1939. He was the first sovereignty, sovereign of Vati ...
in 1926. By 1959, Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota was established in 1965. The city's first
mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers (sujud) are performed, in ...
was built in 1967. Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily
Sunni Muslim Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disag ...
. In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the university. In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first Shi'a Muslim family from Uganda in the Twin Cities. The city has about 20
Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
centers and meditation centers. Minneapolis has a body of
Ordo Templi Orientis Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.; ) is an occult initiatory organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The origins of the O.T.O. can be traced back to the German-speaking occultists Carl Kellner, Heinrich Klein, Franz Hartmann and ...
. The
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is a non-profit Christian outreach organization that promotes multimedia evangelism, conducts evangelistic crusades, and engages in disaster response. The BGEA operates the Billy Graham Train ...
was headquartered in Minneapolis from the late 1940s until the early 2000s.
Jim Bakker James Orsen Bakker (; born January 2, 1940) is an American televangelist and convicted fraudster. Between 1974 and 1987, Bakker hosted the television program ''The PTL Club'' and its cable television platform, the PTL Satellite Network, with ...
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 Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
in southwest Minneapolis was the nation's second-largest Lutheran congregation, with about 6,000 attendees. Christ Church Lutheran in the Longfellow neighborhood, the final work in the career of
Eliel Saarinen Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1873 – July 1, 1950) was a Finnish-American architect known for his work with art nouveau buildings in the early years of the 20th century. He was also the father of famed architect Eero Saarinen. Lif ...
, has an education building designed by his son Eero Saarinen.


Economy

As of 2020, the Minneapolis–St. Paul area is the second-largest economic center in the American Midwest behind
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
. 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. As of mid-2022, Minneapolis area employment is primarily in trade, transportation, utilities, education, health services, professional and business services. Smaller numbers are employed in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality; mining, logging, and construction. 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 Accenture plc is an Irish-American professional services company based in Dublin, specializing in information technology (IT) services and consulting. A ''Fortune'' Global 500 company, it reported revenues of $61.6 billion in 2022. Accentu ...
, Bellisio Foods,
Canadian Pacific The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...
, Coloplast, RBC and
Voya Financial Voya Financial is an American financial, retirement, investment and insurance company based in New York City. Voya began as ING U.S., the United States operating subsidiary of ING Group, which was spun off in 2013 and established independent fin ...
. The National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology & Education has Minneapolis headquarters. As of 2020, the Minneapolis metropolitan area contributes $273 billion or 74% to the
gross state product Gross regional domestic product (GRDP), gross domestic product of region (GDPR), or gross state product (GSP) is a statistic that measures the size of a region's economy. It is the aggregate of gross value added (GVA) of all resident producer un ...
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 Gross metropolitan product (GMP) is a monetary measure of the value of all final goods and services produced within a metropolitan statistical area during a specified period (''e.g.'', a quarter, a year). GMP estimates are commonly used to compare ...
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 Option or Options may refer to: Computing *Option key, a key on Apple computer keyboards *Option type, a polymorphic data type in programming languages *Command-line option, an optional parameter to a command *OPTIONS, an HTTP request method ...
. The
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Federal or foederal (archaic) may refer to: Politics General * Federal monarchy, a federation of monarchies * Federation, or ''Federal state'' (federal system), a type of government characterized by both a central (federal) government and states ...
serves Minnesota,
Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Colu ...
,
North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...
and
South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large portio ...
, and parts of
Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michi ...
and
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
; it has the smallest population of the 12 regional banks in the
Federal Reserve System The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States of America. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a ...
. Along with supporting consumers and the community, the bank executes monetary policy, regulates banks in its territory, and provides cash and oversees electronic deposits.


Arts and culture


Visual arts

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
is located at the summit of Lowry Hill near downtown. The center's size doubled in 2005 with an addition by
Herzog & de Meuron Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd.,
" Herzog & de Meuron. Retrieved on 11 October 2012. "Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. R ...
, 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 The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...
, which is known as since its 100th anniversary and is located in south-central Minneapolis, was designed by
McKim, Mead & White McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wi ...
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 is a common masculine Japanese given name. Possible writings Kenzō can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: *賢三, "wise, three" *健三, "healthy, three" *謙三, "humble, three" *健想, "healthy, concept" *建造, " ...
and
Michael Graves Michael Graves (July 9, 1934 – March 12, 2015) was an American architect, designer, and educator, as well as principal of Michael Graves and Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. He was a member of The New York Five and the Memphis Gr ...
, opened in 1974 and 2006, respectively; the new wings house contemporary and modern works, and provide additional gallery space.
Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are considered ...
designed Weisman Art Museum, which opened in 1993, for the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
. 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 Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The concept of the theater was born in 1959 in a series of discussions between Sir Tyrone ...
, the area's largest theater company, occupies a three-stage complex that was designed by French architect
Jean Nouvel Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and '' Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has ...
and overlooks the Mississippi River. The company was founded in 1963 by Sir Tyrone Guthrie as a prototype alternative to
Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street ** Broadway Theatre (53rd Stre ...
, and it produces a wide variety of shows throughout the year. Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum,
State State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...
, and Pantages Theatres,
vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
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 The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded originally as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, the Minnesota Orchestra plays most of its concerts at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall. History Em ...
plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under Thomas Søndergård, the music director effective with the 2023–2024 season; ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' critic Alex Ross said of one 2010 special performance at
Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built ...
, "...  the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world". The orchestra recorded '' Casa Guidi'', winning a
Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...
in 2004 for composer Dominick Argento. Singer and multi-instrumentalist
Prince A prince is a Monarch, male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary title, hereditary, in s ...
was born in Minneapolis, and lived in the area most of his life. After
Jimmy Jam Jimmy may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Jimmy'' (2008 film), a 2008 Hindi thriller directed by Raj N. Sippy * ''Jimmy'' (1979 film), a 1979 Indian Malayalam film directed by Melattoor Ravi Varma * ''Jimmy'' (2013 f ...
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. The city hosts a number of other concert venues, including Icehouse, the Cedar, the Dakota and the Cabooze.
Live Nation Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. is an American global entertainment company and monopoly that was founded in 2010 following the merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. The company promotes, operates, and manages ticket sales for live entertainmen ...
books The Armory, the
Fillmore Fillmore may refer to: Places Canada * Fillmore, Saskatchewan * Rural Municipality of Fillmore No. 96, Saskatchewan United States * Fillmore, California * Fillmore District, San Francisco, California * Fillmore, Louisiana * Fillmore, Illi ...
and the Varsity Theater.
Hüsker Dü Hüsker Dü () was an American punk rock band formed in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1979. The band's continual members were guitarist/vocalist Bob Mould, bassist/vocalist Greg Norton, and drummer/vocalist Grant Hart. They first gained notabili ...
and The Replacements were pivotal in the US
alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or commercia ...
boom during the 1980s. Their respective frontmen
Bob Mould Robert Arthur Mould (born October 16, 1960) is an American musician, principally known for his work as guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for alternative rock bands Hüsker Dü in the 1980s and Sugar in the 1990s. Early years Born in Malone, ...
and
Paul Westerberg Paul Harold Westerberg (born December 31, 1959) is an American musician, best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the Replacements. Following the breakup of the Replacements, Westerberg launched a solo career that saw him re ...
developed successful solo careers. MN Spoken Word Association and independent hip hop label
Rhymesayers Entertainment Rhymesayers Entertainment (sometimes abbreviated RSE) is an American independent hip-hop record label based in Minneapolis. History Rhymesayers Entertainment was co-founded in 1995 by Sean Daley (Slug), Anthony Davis ( Ant), Musab Saad ( Sab ...
have garnered attention for their rap, hip hop, and
spoken word Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics o ...
performances and recordings. Underground Minnesota hip hop acts such as
Atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
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 Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during ...
released two songs about the city; " Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" ('' Blue Valentine,'' 1978) and "9th & Hennepin" (''
Rain Dogs ''Rain Dogs'' is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits, released in September 1985 on Island Records. A loose concept album about "the urban dispossessed" of New York City, ''Rain Dogs'' is generally considered the middle ...
,'' 1985).
Lucinda Williams Lucinda Gayle Williams (born January 26, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums: '' Ramblin' on My Mind'' (1979) and '' Happy Woman Blues'' (1980), in a traditional country and blues style ...
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. In 2012, the
anechoic chamber An anechoic chamber (''an-echoic'' meaning "non-reflective") is a room designed to stop reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also often isolated from energy entering from their surroundings. This combination means t ...
at Orfield Labs measured −13decibels, and the company has applied to
Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
with a −24.9decibel measurement as of 2022. Minneapolis's opera companies are
Minnesota Opera Minnesota Opera is a performance organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was founded as the Center Opera Company in 1963 by the Walker Art Center, and is known for premiering such diverse works as ''Where the Wild Things Are'' by Oliver ...
, Mill City Summer Opera, the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, and Really Spicy Opera.


Museums

Exhibits at Mill City Museum feature the city's history of flour milling, and Minnehaha Depot 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 the 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 AmeriCorps (officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work pro ...
, 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. The
University of Minnesota Press The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018. Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its book ...
publishes books, journals, and the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized psychometric test of adult personality and psychopathology. Psychologists and other mental health professionals use various versions of the MMPI to help develop treatment ...
. Open Book, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and The Loft Literary Center are 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 A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport a ...
service ended citywide. One of the largest urban
food desert Food is any substance consumed by an organism for nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is inges ...
s in the US was on the north side of Minneapolis, 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 diet of local residents, 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. Many Minneapolis-based individuals have won James Beard Foundation Awards; these include chef Sean Sherman—whose restaurant Owamni received James Beard's 2022 national award for the best new restaurant—writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl and television personality
Andrew Zimmern Andrew Scott Zimmern (born July 4, 1961) is an American chef, restaurateur, television and radio personality, director, producer, businessman, food critic, and author. Zimmern is the co-creator, host, and consulting producer of the Travel Channe ...
. Both credible originators of the Jucy Lucy burger the
5-8 Club The 5-8 Club Tavern & Grill is a restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1928 as a speakeasy, the eatery is one of two Minneapolis establishments that claim to have invented the Jucy Lucy, Juicy Lucy cheeseburger in the 1950s, the other ...
and Matt's Bar have served it since the 1950s. The United States' 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. Gavin Kaysen and others on Team USA won a silver medal in the 2015 Bocuse d'Or.


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 Saint Paul Winter Carnival is an annual festival in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. History In 1885, a New York reporter wrote that Saint Paul was, "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation" in winter. Offended by this attack on ...
. The annual
MayDay Parade Mayday Parade is an American rock band from Tallahassee, Florida. Their debut EP '' Tales Told by Dead Friends'' was released in 2006, and sold over 50,000 copies without any label support. In July 2007, Mayday Parade released their debut album ...
returned in 2021 following the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
; 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 The Minnesota Fringe Festival is a performing arts festival held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, every summer, usually during the first two weeks in August. The eleven-day event, which features performing artists of many genres and d ...
, 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 The monarch butterfly or simply monarch (''Danaus plexippus'') is a milkweed butterfly ( subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae. Other common names, depending on region, include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black-veined brown. ...
's
migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum l ...
; and the Twin Cities Marathon in October.


Libraries

The Minneapolis Public Library, founded by T. B. Walker in 1885, merged with the Hennepin County Library system in 2008. Fifteen branches of the Hennepin County Library serve Minneapolis. The downtown Central Library, designed by
César Pelli César Pelli (October 12, 1926 – July 19, 2019) was an Argentine-American architect who designed some of the world's tallest buildings and other major urban landmarks. Two of his most notable buildings are the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur ...
, opened in 2006. Ten special collections hold over 25,000 books and resources for researchers, including the Minneapolis Collection and the Minneapolis Photo Collection.


Sports

Minneapolis has four professional sports teams. The American football team
Minnesota Vikings The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expan ...
and the baseball team
Minnesota Twins The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis. The Twins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central Division. The team is named after the Twin Cities area w ...
have played in the state since 1961. The Vikings were an
National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ma ...
(NFL)
expansion team An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...
and the Twins were formed when the Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota. The Twins won the
World Series The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the Wor ...
in 1987 and 1991, and have played at Target Field since 2010. The Vikings played in the
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
following the 1969, 1973, 1974, and 1976 seasons, losing all four games. The basketball team
Minnesota Timberwolves The Minnesota Timberwolves are an American professional basketball team based in Minneapolis. The Timberwolves compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Northwest Division. Founded in 19 ...
returned
National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United ...
(NBA) basketball to Minneapolis in 1989, and were followed by
Minnesota Lynx The Minnesota Lynx are an American professional basketball team based in Minneapolis, playing in the Western Conference in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). The team won the WNBA title in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. Founded ...
in 1999. Both basketball teams play in the
Target Center Target Center is a multi-purpose arena located in Minneapolis that opened in 1990. It hosts major family shows, concerts, sporting events, graduations and private events. Target Corporation, founded and headquartered in Minneapolis since 1902, ...
. 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 The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is an American professional basketball league. It is composed of twelve teams, all based in the United States. The league was founded on April 22, 1996, as the women's counterpart to the Natio ...
(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 University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
. 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 3M Arena at Mariucci is the home arena for the Minnesota Golden Gophers men's ice hockey team of the University of Minnesota. The arena is located on the Minneapolis campus and seats approximately 10,000 fans (9,600 in the main bowl plus club ro ...
, and won NCAA national championships in 1974, 1976, 1979,
2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains independence from Indonesia a ...
, and
2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A d ...
. Both the Golden Gophers men's basketball and
women's basketball Women's basketball is the team sport of basketball played by women. It began being played in 1892, one year after men's basketball, at Smith College in Massachusetts. It spread across the United States, in large part via women's college com ...
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 NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athleti ...
men's and women's basketball Final Four, the
AMA Motocross Championship The AMA Motocross Championship (commercially known as Lucas Oil Pro Motocross) is an American motorcycle racing series. The motocross race series was founded and sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) in 1972. The series is ...
, the
X Games The X Games are an annual extreme sports event organized, produced and broadcast by ESPN. Coverage is also shown on ESPN's sister network, ABC. The inaugural X Games were held during the summer of 1995 in Providence and Newport, Rhode Islan ...
, and the
WNBA All-Star Game The Women's National Basketball Association All-Star Game, commonly referred to as the WNBA All-Star Game, is an annual exhibition basketball game played in the United States between the best players of the Western and Eastern Conference of ...
.
Minnesota Wild The Minnesota Wild are a professional ice hockey team based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Wild competes in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference and play their home games at the Xcel Ener ...
, an
National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
team, play at the
Xcel Energy Center Xcel Energy Center (also known as "The X") is a multipurpose arena in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. Completed in 2000, it is named for its locally based corporate sponsor Xcel Energy. With an official capacity of 17,954, the arena has fou ...
; and the
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
soccer team
Minnesota United FC Minnesota United FC is an American professional soccer club based in Saint Paul, Minnesota that plays in the Western Conference of Major League Soccer. The club began play in 2017 as the league's 22nd club, and replaced the North American Soc ...
play at
Allianz Field Allianz Field is a soccer-specific stadium in Saint Paul, Minnesota, home to Minnesota United FC of Major League Soccer (MLS). Opening in 2019, the 19,400-seat stadium was designed by Populous, during the club's third MLS season. It is locate ...
, both of which are located in Saint Paul. Six
golf course A golf course is the grounds on which the sport of golf is played. It consists of a series of holes, each consisting of a tee box, a fairway, the rough and other hazards, and a green with a cylindrical hole in the ground, known as a "cup". T ...
s are located within Minneapolis' city limits. While living in Minneapolis, Scott and Brennan Olson founded and later sold
Rollerblade Rollerblade is a brand of inline skates owned by Nordica, part of the Tecnica Group of Giavera del Montello, Treviso, Italy. The company was started by Scott Olson (b. 1960), Brennan Olson (b. 1964) and Christopher Middlebrook in Minneapolis ...
, the company that popularized the sport of
inline skating Inline skating is a multi-disciplinary sport and can refer to a number of activities practiced using inline skates. Inline skates typically have two to five polyurethane wheels depending on the style of practice, arranged in a single line by a ...
. The Twin Cities Marathon is a
Boston Marathon The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon race hosted by several cities and towns in greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts, United States. It is traditionally held on Patriots' Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897, the event was i ...
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". The city's parks are governed and operated by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, an independent
park district A park district is a form of local special-purpose district for providing public parks and recreation in or near its geographic boundaries. Some park districts also own or maintain related cultural facilities such as monuments, zoos, sports venu ...
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 Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...
, 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 Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except wh ...
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.and Parks are interlinked in many places, and the
Mississippi National River and Recreation Area The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area is a and protected corridor along the Mississippi River through the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro in the U.S. state of Minnesota, from the cities of Dayton and Ramsey, to just downstream of ...
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 ''The Song of Hiawatha'' is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his l ...
'',
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
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 Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mississ ...
and a rustic hiking experience. Minneapolis's climate provides opportunities for winter activities such as
ice fishing Ice fishing is the practice of catching fish with lines and fish hooks or spears through an opening in the ice on a frozen body of water. Ice fishers may fish in the open or in heated enclosures, some with bunks and amenities. Shelters Longe ...
,
snowshoeing Snowshoes are specialized outdoor gear for walking over snow. Their large footprint spreads the user's weight out and allows them to travel largely on top of rather than through snow. Adjustable bindings attach them to appropriate winter footwe ...
,
ice skating Ice skating is the self-propulsion and gliding of a person across an ice surface, using metal-bladed ice skates. People skate for various reasons, including recreation (fun), exercise, competitive sports, and commuting. Ice skating may be perf ...
,
cross-country skiing Cross-country skiing is a form of skiing where skiers rely on their own locomotion to move across snow-covered terrain, rather than using ski lifts or other forms of assistance. Cross-country skiing is widely practiced as a sport and recreatio ...
, and
sledding Sledding, sledging or sleighing is a winter sport typically carried out in a prone or seated position on a vehicle generically known as a sled (North American), a sledge (British), or a sleigh. It is the basis of three Olympic sports: luge, skele ...
at many parks and lakes between December and March. When there is sufficient snowfall or in the presence of
snowmaking Snowmaking is the production of snow by forcing water and pressurized air through a "snow gun", also known as a "snow cannon". Snowmaking is mainly used at ski resorts to supplement natural snow. This allows ski resorts to improve the reliabilit ...
, 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 Competitive cross-country skiing encompasses a variety of race formats and course lengths. Rules of cross-country skiing are sanctioned by the International Ski Federation and by various national organizations. International competitions incl ...
series. The park board maintains 20 outdoor
ice rink An ice rink (or ice skating rink) is a frozen body of water and/or an artificial sheet of ice created using hardened chemicals where people can ice skate or play winter sports. Ice rinks are also used for exhibitions, contests and ice shows. The ...
s in winter and the city's
Lake Nokomis Lake Nokomis is one of several lakes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and part of the city's Chain of Lakes. The lake was previously named Lake Amelia in honor of Captain George Gooding's daughter, Amelia, in 1819. Its current name was adopted in 1910 ...
is host to the annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championships.


Government

Minneapolis is currently a majority holding for the
Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) is the Minnesota affiliate of the U.S. Democratic Party. As of 2022, it controls four of Minnesota's eight U.S. House seats, both of its U.S. Senate seats, the Minnesota House of Represen ...
(DFL), an affiliate of the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa * Botswana Democratic Party * Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *De ...
, and had its last Republican mayor in 1973. DFL council member Jacob Frey was elected
mayor of Minneapolis This is a list of mayors of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The current mayor is Jacob Frey (DFL). Minneapolis From 1867 to 1878 mayors were elected for a 1-year term. Beginning in 1878 the term was extended to 2 years. As the city became larger and mor ...
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 that proponents had tried to achieve since the early 20th century. 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. The Minneapolis City Council represents the city's 13
wards Ward may refer to: Division or unit * Hospital ward, a hospital division, floor, or room set aside for a particular class or group of patients, for example the psychiatric ward * Prison ward, a division of a penal institution such as a pris ...
. The city adopted
instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV) is a type of ranked preferential voting method. It uses a majority voting rule in single-winner elections where there are more than two candidates. It is commonly referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV) in the U ...
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 The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a left-wing multi-tendency socialist and labor-oriented political organization. Its roots are in the Socialist Party of America (SPA), whose leaders included Eugene V. Debs, Norman Thomas and Mich ...
.
Andrea Jenkins Andrea Jenkins (born May 10, 1961) is an American politician, writer, performance artist, poet, and transgender activist. She is known for being the first black openly transgender woman elected to public office in the United States, serving sin ...
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. At the federal level, Minneapolis is within Minnesota's 5th congressional district, which since 2018 has been represented by Democrat
Ilhan Omar Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (born October 4, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2019. She is a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. Before her election to Congress, Omar served in the Minnesota ...
, one of the first two practicing Muslim women and the first Somali-American in Congress. Minnesota's US Senators,
Amy Klobuchar Amy Jean Klobuchar ( ; born May 25, 1960) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2007. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minne ...
and
Tina Smith Christine Elizabeth Smith (née Flint, born March 4, 1958) is an American politician, retired Democratic political consultant, and former businesswoman serving as the junior United States senator from Minnesota since 2018. She is a member of th ...
, were elected or appointed while living in Minneapolis, and are also Democrats. In 2015, the City Council passed a resolution making
fossil fuel divestment Fossil fuel divestment or fossil fuel divestment and investment in climate solutions is an attempt to reduce climate change by exerting social, political, and economic pressure for the institutional divestment of assets including stocks, bonds ...
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 Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and lar ...
by 2050. 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 immigrant Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwar ...
s, nor to ask an individual about his or her immigration status. The city council unanimously approved Frey's budget of $1.66 billion for 2023, after the council made amendments that moved a few civilian police jobs to oversight and to immigration. The source of funding is a 6.5 percent property tax increase in 2023. and The
US Justice Department The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. have been investigating policing practices in Minneapolis. The budget plans for one negotiated consent decree and the statutory minimum of 731 officers in 2023, in the police department which is about 260 officers short. After the
murder of George Floyd On , George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in the U.S. city of Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer. Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's ne ...
in May 2020, about 166 police officers left of their own accord either to retirement or to temporary leave—many with
PTSD Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on ...
—and a crime wave resulted in more than 500 shootings. A
Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was establ ...
investigation found that killings surged when a "hands-off" attitude resulted in fewer officer-initiated encounters. As of July 2022, violent crime rose about 3% across Minneapolis compared with 2021, and in 2020, it rose 21%. A 2021 ballot question to abolish the police department failed. The restructured mayor's role created a new Minneapolis Office of Community Safety, with its commissioner overseeing the police and fire departments, 911 dispatch, emergency management, and violence prevention. The city in 2021 proposed a new cooperation with the police department and a mental health services company, Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, to respond to some 911 calls that do not require police. The organization had responded to more than three thousand 911 calls as of September 2022 and was proposed to continue through the 2023-2024 budget year.


Education


Primary and secondary education

Minneapolis Public Schools Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) or Special School District Number 1 is a public school district serving students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis Public Schools enrolls 36,370 students in publi ...
enroll over 35,000 students in public
primary Primary or primaries may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Primary (band), from Australia * Primary (musician), hip hop musician and record producer from South Korea * Primary Music, Israeli record label Works ...
and
secondary Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...
schools. The district administers about 100 public schools, including 45
elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...
s, seven
middle school A middle school (also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school) is an educational stage which exists in some countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school. ...
s, seven
high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper second ...
s, eight
special education Special education (known as special-needs education, aided education, exceptional education, alternative provision, exceptional student education, special ed., SDC, or SPED) is the practice of educating students in a way that accommodates th ...
schools, eight
alternative school An alternative school is an educational establishment with a curriculum and methods that are nontraditional. Such schools offer a wide range of philosophies and teaching methods; some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical orientati ...
s, nineteen contract alternative schools, and five
charter school A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of autono ...
s. With authority granted by the state legislature, the
school board A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution. The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional are ...
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

Minneapolis's collegiate scene is dominated by the main campus of the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...
, 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 Minnesota's constitution.
Augsburg University Augsburg University is a private university in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It was founded in 1869 as a Norwegian-American Lutheran seminary known as Augsburg Seminarium. Today, ...
,
Minneapolis College of Art and Design The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer ...
, 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 Capella University is a private for-profit, online university headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school is owned by the publicly traded Strategic Education, Inc. and delivers most of its education online. Capella has 52 degree progr ...
and
Walden University Walden University is a private online for-profit university headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It offers Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, Master of Business Administration, Master of Public Administration, Master of Public Healt ...
are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year
Metropolitan State University Metropolitan State University (Metro State) is a public university in the Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area. It is a member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.
and the private four-year University of St. Thomas are among post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis.


Media

Several newspapers are published in Minneapolis; ''
Star Tribune The ''Star Tribune'' is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. It originated as the ''Minneapolis Tribune'' in 1867 and the competing ''Minneapolis Daily Star'' in 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s, Minneapolis's competing newspapers were consolida ...
'', '' Finance & Commerce'', ''
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder The ''Minnesota SpokesmanRecorder'' is an African-American, English-language newspaper headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota and serves readers in the Twin Cities. Founded in 1934 by Cecil Earle Newman (who remained editor until his death in 19 ...
'', the university's ''
The Minnesota Daily The ''Minnesota Daily'' is the campus newspaper of the University of Minnesota, published Monday and Thursday while school is in session, and published weekly on Wednesdays during summer sessions. Published since 1900, the paper is currently the la ...
'', and '' MinnPost.com''. TMC Publications publishes '' The Monitor'', ''Longfellow Nokomis Messenger'' and the ''Southwest Connector''. MSP Communications publishes ''Mpls.St.Paul'' and ''Twin Cities Business'' magazines. Other publications include '' Minnesota Women's Press'', ''North News'', ''Northeaster'', ''Insight News'', ''The Circle'', ''Southwest Voices'', and ''Dispatch'' and '' Racket.'' 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 WCCO-TV (channel 4) is a television station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, broadcasting the CBS network to the Twin Cities area. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division, and maintains studios o ...
is based in Minneapolis proper. A majority of these signals can be
streamed Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...
.
Krista Tippett Krista Tippett (née Weedman; born November 9, 1960) is an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur. She created and hosts the public radio program and podcast '' On Being''. In 2014, Tippett was awarded the National Humanities Medal by U.S. ...
, winner of a
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
and the
National Humanities Medal The National Humanities Medal is an American award that annually recognizes several individuals, groups, or institutions for work that has "deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the human ...
, produces the ''
On Being ''On Being'' is a podcast and a former public radio program. Hosted by Krista Tippett, it examines what it calls the "animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live?" Radio program and p ...
'' project from her studio across Hennepin from the basilica. In 2022, she changed her show from weekly radio to seasonal podcasts. Movies filmed in Minneapolis include ''Airport (1970 film), Airport'' (1970), ''The Heartbreak Kid (1972 film), The Heartbreak Kid'' (1972), ''Slaughterhouse-Five (film), Slaughterhouse-Five'' (1972), ''Ice Castles'' (1978), ''Foolin' Around'' (1980), ''Take This Job and Shove It (film), Take This Job and Shove It'' (1981), ''Purple Rain (film), Purple Rain'' (1984), ''That Was Then, This Is Now (film), That Was Then, This Is Now'' (1985), ''The Mighty Ducks (film), The Mighty Ducks'' (1992), ''Untamed Heart'' (1993), ''Little Big League'' (1994), ''Beautiful Girls (film), Beautiful Girls'' (1996), ''Jingle All the Way'' (1996), ''Fargo (1996 film), Fargo'' (1996), and ''Young Adult (film), Young Adult'' (2011). In 1960s television, List of Route 66 episodes#Season 4 (1963–64), two episodes of ''Route 66 (TV series), Route 66'' were made in Minneapolis. The 1970s CBS situation comedy set in Minneapolis, ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'', won three Golden Globe Award, Golden Globes and 29 Emmy Awards. The show's opening sequences were filmed in the city.


Infrastructure


Transportation

Minneapolis has two light rail lines, one commuter rail line, five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, and about 90 transit bus, bus lines with over 8,000 stops. Among bus lines, local Minneapolis routes are numbered 1 to 49, and higher numbers are for limited-stop, commuter, express, and routes in directional parts of the city. Riders of Metro Transit system-wide are 44 percent persons of color. The Metro Blue Line (Minnesota), Metro Blue Line light rail line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington, Minnesota, Bloomington to downtown, and the Green Line (Minnesota), Metro Green Line travels east from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown
Saint Paul Paul; grc, Παῦλος, translit=Paulos; cop, ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ; hbo, פאולוס השליח (previously called Saul of Tarsus;; ar, بولس الطرسوسي; grc, Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, Saũlos Tarseús; tr, Tarsuslu Pavlus; ...
. 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 Minnesota state legislature, state legislature on how to best address the problem. A Green Line Southwest LRT, extension called the Southwest LRT will connect downtown Minneapolis with the southwestern suburbs St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie. About a decade late, the Southwest line is expected to open in 2027, and has cost $1.8 billion as of 2022. An Bottineau LRT, extension of the Blue Line to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020. The Northstar Line, Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake, Minnesota, Big Lake through the northern suburbs and terminates at the multi-modal transit station at Target Field Station, Target Field using existing railroad tracks. BRT lines are 25 percent faster than regular bus lines because riders pay before boarding, stops are limited, and sometimes they employ signal prioritization. Due to staffing shortages, BRT lines started just as Metro Transit reduced or cut service on the local bus lines they largely replaced. The newest BRT line, the D Line, runs along one of Minnesota's most used bus lines, the route 5, where a quarter of households don’t have access to a car. 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 (Minnesota), Metro system remained steady or grew slightly. About 4 percent of commuters cycle to work as of 2019. Minneapolis has of on-street protected bikeways, of bike lanes and of off-street bikeways and trails. Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail. Seeking funding for 2023, bicycle-sharing provider Nice Ride Minnesota served 70,000 riders in 2021. In 2007, the I-35W Mississippi River bridge, Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge, bridge was rebuilt in 14 months. Only one quarter of the US's structurally deficient bridges had been repaired ten years later. 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. 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.


Health care

Abbott Northwestern Hospital, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center, University of Minnesota Medical Center, Hennepin County Medical Center, Hennepin Healthcare, Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, Shriners Hospitals for Children, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, Children's Hospitals and Clinics, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, and Phillips Eye Institute 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, a 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 Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy on Bloomington Avenue dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status. The pharmacy has 3,500 active patients and is funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.


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 as wide as possible—in "lane miles," enough to plow a lane between Minneapolis and Anchorage, Alaska. Ordinances govern parking on plowing routes during these emergencies, as well as snow shoveling.


Notable people


Sister cities

Minneapolis's Sister city, sister cities are: *Bosaso, Somalia (2014) *Cuernavaca, Mexico (2008) *Eldoret, Kenya (2000) *Harbin, China (1992) *Ibaraki, Osaka, Ibaraki, Japan (1980) *Kuopio, Finland (1972) *Najaf, Iraq (2009) *Novosibirsk, Russia (1988) *Santiago, Chile (1961) *Tours, France (1991) *Uppsala Municipality, Uppsala, Sweden (2000) *Winnipeg, Canada (1973)


See also

* List of events and attractions in Minneapolis * List of tallest buildings in Minneapolis * National Register of Historic Places listings in Hennepin County, Minnesota


Notes


References


Works cited

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Further reading

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External links

*
"Minneapolis Past"
— ''documentary produced by Twin Cities Public Television''. {{Featured article Minneapolis, Cities in Hennepin County, Minnesota County seats in Minnesota Minneapolis–Saint Paul Minnesota populated places on the Mississippi River Articles containing video clips Populated places established in 1856 1856 establishments in Minnesota Territory Cities in Minnesota