Southwest : Featured Stories

We recently sat down with Shawn Combs Walding, MnDOT’s Transit Advantages Coordinator for the Twin Cities Metro District to discuss alternative transportation in the Twin Cities, what local entities can do to promote transit use, and how easy it really is to be car-free. 

Driven by the seemingly boundless energy of local creatives, community leaders and entrepreneurs, Minneapolis-St. Paul’s burgeoning startup culture shows no signs of slowing down. Here are 10 compelling, life-changing startups to know about now.  

The Twin Cities is emerging as a hotbed of innovative agricultural activity. An ambitious group of producers and retailers aims to redefine what it means to be local, and give retaurants and consumers more control over what they eat and drink.

The Twin Cities metro is a hotbed of manufacturers and fabricators innovating and growing their businesses to provide easier, faster, less expensive solutions for design and construction challenges.    

Navigation and exploration are at the heart of Studio/E, a Twin Cities-based entrepreneurial experience. In collaboration with the James J. Hill Library and Babson College, Studio/E brings 24 participants together for four days of exploration into the meaning and the mindset of entrepreneurship.

What turns a pint at the local microbrewery into a feast? Transforms ho-hum lunch hours into culinary adventures? Generates curbside communities? Tests an entrepreneur's appetite for a new business? Twin Cities food trucks!  

A sneak peek at the solar initiatives of a Twin Cities homeowner, nonprofit and entrepreneurial restaurant/farm featured during the EcoMetro Sustainable Living Tour on May 31 sponsored by the Minnesota Renewable Energy Society.

Since the passage of the Surly Bill 2012, craft-beer entrepreneurs have rapidly opened breweries with taprooms in neighborhoods throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. All are doing their part to turn neighborhoods into top-of-mind destinations.

From Seattle to Washington D.C., alleys are being reinvented as people-friendly spaces. Often perceived as dirty and dangerous, alleys are moving beyond garbage and garages to become havens for pedestrians, public art and small business.

The Green Line sets the stage for a full regional transit network unlike anything we've seen since the heyday of the streetcars.

Get ready for some changes in our already-stellar park system that will expand your ideas about recreation, ecology, and economic development.

Croissant-loving editor compares four of the finest products of local artisanship.

For artist/gallerist Pete Driessen and the theater artists of Off-Leash Area, turning their garages into art spaces provided opportunities for innovation, experimentation, and freedom, very close to home. And the neighbors don't mind a bit.

The debut of a new market in Minneapolis' Linden Hills neighborhood underlines the exciting upsides--and a few lesser-known downsides--of the farmers' market boom.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: Do you live in, or know about, a great microneighborhood in Minneapolis or Saint Paul? A block, an alley, a corner where people come together regularly to have fun and share their lives? Tell us about it.