Strong Local Economy : Featured Stories

The president and the research/policy director of the local think tank Growth and Justice are "business-oriented progressives." In the face of dogma to the contrary, they dare to assert that there's an unbreakable link between economic fairness and economic growth. And they're bringing that spirit to the most compelling economic issue of all: jobs.

How are Minnesota and the Twin Cities doing as film production centers and locations? There have been some major disappointments recently, but new moves give us reason to hope we can lure Hollywood back.

"The ingredients for a successful startup and a successful city are remarkably similar," wrote Jon Bischke, a guest blogger on TechCrunch. A group of urban leaders recently met in Cincinnati to explore the implications of that statement--and came up with a cluster of surprising ideas for urban vitality.

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.

At the Grassroots and Groundwork anti-poverty conference--held at Mystic Lake Casino, of all places--attendees heard about ingenious ways to build wealth in struggling communities by adapting old-school immigrant self-help tactics to the digital age.

Geographer Bill Lindeke has an eye for the urban details that make the Twin Cities pleasurable and intriguing--and when those details have something to do with the walkable portions of our streets, they're likely to appear as images or words in his blog, Twin City Sidewalks. In this post, from last week, he highlights a Saint Paul store that embodies--and symbolizes--why, in an age of burgeoning online commerce, we will always need real places to buy things.

The New Orleans-based public artist, known for whimsical, low-tech projects that get people talking about the intersection between their cities and their lives, was here to kick off an inquiry into the  transformation of Hennepin Avenue and the future of our towns.

Minnebar, our annual, semi-structured geek get-together, is becoming a tradition and a real force in the local tech community. This year's conference happened on Saturday, April 7--and two experienced tech bloggers gave their views of the confab soon after. Here are some excerpts.