regionalism : Buzz

While the Twin Cities' population declined in the early 2000s, it's been steadily increasing in recent years, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports.

For starters, both cities have attracted more residents over the past year: Minneapolis went from 385,378 to 388,123 while St. Paul increased from 281,253 to 282,038, the article states, citing data from its sister company, Buffalo Business First. 

Those figures appear to be part of a longer-term trend for incremental growth in the urban areas. Since 2004, Minneapolis has gained over 10,000 city dwellers. And, across the river, the population has been on the rise since 2006, when it had 276,237 inhabitants.

What constitutes local food in the Twin Cities? Lenny Russo, "a de facto leader in the local and sustainable food movement," argues at his Star Tribune's Your Voices blog that it's not as restrictive as farmer's markets might have it, nor as broad as California growers want:

"Heartland is a Midwestern regional restaurant , and as such its food shelf extends as far east as Ohio, south to Missouri west to the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska and north to Canada and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  In other words, we draw products from the entire Midwestern portion of North America. While the vast majority of our ingredients are sourced within a 200 mile radius of the restaurant, there are some who would not consider much of what we serve to be local food. We certainly wouldn't pass muster with the St. Paul Farmers' Market whose members define local food as that which is grown and produced within 75 miles of the market."

Read the entire article here.

St. Paul topped a new list as the city where residents enjoy the fastest Internet speeds in the nation. Minneapolis came in seventh. But the Star Tribune reports there are local skeptics:

"Ookla, a well-known Seattle company that measures the speed of Internet connections, says St. Paul has recently become No. 1 in the nation in residential Internet download speeds. Minneapolis is no slouch either, coming in seventh in the current Net Index report.

"But some local experts say Ookla's numbers are questionable. They point out that 18 months ago the state-sponsored Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force found that average residential broadband speeds in Ramsey and Hennepin counties averaged 6 million to 10 million bits per second, also called megabits.

"But Ookla's average speeds -- 14.5 megabits in St. Paul and 12.3 in Minneapolis -- were significantly higher."

Read the rest of the article here.

It started as a one-room school house before Warren Burger's grandfather expanded it into a humble residence. The future chief justice of the United States Supreme Court lived there from the time he was seven years old, sleeping on the porch. Now the house on the East Side of St. Paul stands vacant, but there's an effort afoot to give it its due, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports:

"Local preservationists hope someone steps forward to buy it and prevent further deterioration.

"'I kind of thought some attorney might want to live in the home that Warren Burger was in,' Trimble said.

"'Someone from such a simple house on the East Side of St. Paul rose to such prestige and power,' said Matt Mazanec, a member of the St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission. 'It is such an important structure. We want to make sure it's available for future generations.'

"But at least some people in the area don't see it as much of a landmark.

"'Who's Warren Burger?' said Cindy Rowan, who lives across the street from the house.

"Things turned out differently for the Minnesota childhood homes of Judy Garland, Charles Lindbergh, Sinclair Lewis, Wanda Gag and Maud Hart Lovelace. They're all museum sites.

"Typically, that has happened because local fans decided the place where their hero carved his initials in the woodwork deserved to be enshrined and they found a way to raise the money to do it."

Read the full article here.

The big question in Showtime's new TV series "The Big C" is how actor Laura Linney, in her role as a Minneapolis school teacher, deals with her cancer. A separate, less momentous question is whether the series, filmed in Connecticut at Linney's insistence, can capture the Twin Cities' vibe without its environment. Neal Justin in the Star Tribune seems to think it can:

"The show's creator, Darlene Hunt--a veteran sitcom actress who hails from Kentucky--has spent considerable time in Minneapolis, where her husband's sister lives, and thought it would be an ideal setting.

"'It had to be a city with distinct seasons, because it's about a woman going through the seasons of life. Setting it in L.A. definitely wouldn't do it,' said Hunt.

"She plans each 13-episode season of the series to reflect one of the four seasons, starting with summer. Producers won't say which town they used as a model, but think Edina, or St. Paul. ...

"'The first day I was there, I didn't quite have my bearings, said Linney, who had never been to the Twin Cities. 'But the second and third day I realized, Oh, this is a very, very cool place. The arts are so prominent and, for someone like me, that made my heart sing.

"'I really got a sense of how the city interacts with nature in ways you don't think it's going to, in terms of walking, running, boating and how the lakes and land interact with each other.' ...

"The show has some quintessential Minnesota touches, including an episode that revolves around Cathy trying to get someone to share a bicycle-built-for-two and a Scandinavian neighbor who guards her privacy."

But Minneapolis native Jessica Flint, writing in Vanity Fair, doesn't see it:

"The houses, restaurants, and cityscapes that appear in the show feel like something straight out of suburban Stamford, Connecticut--which, it turns out, is where 'The Big C' was filmed."

Read the entire Star Tribune article here.
Read the entire Vanity Fair article here.

The Financial Times of London went looking for people struggling to achieve the American Dream and found Mark and Connie Freeman of Minneapolis. It's not a buoyant piece, but the Freemans are both employed, their house is worth more than they paid for it, and their refrigerator magnets are funny in an off-color way even if they aren't made by Minneapolis' own Magnetic Poetry.

"Every now and then the Freemans invite their neighbours round to their front porch, to watch the world go by, drink beer and eat Connie's justly renowned dish of �Minnesota wild rice. In the best American spirit, Mark and Connie are active neighbourhood people. They are the types who shovel your snow, volunteer for school events, and coach the baseball little league--Mark has done all three.

"It takes optimism to be like this. But in the past few years the Freemans have been running low on it. 'I guess the penny dropped in the last 18 months when we finally realised that it's always going to be like this--we are never going to be able to retire on our savings,' says Connie."

Read the full article here.

A proposed fee on new development in Minneapolis dedicated to funding parks appears to be on course to adoption this fall, according to the Southwest Journal. Discord between the park board and city council over the fee has been repaired, and the fee reduced:

"With some exceptions, the ordinance would require developers to create parks on new project sites or pay a fee for the creation or enhancement of nearby green space. The ordinance, similar to those used in many metro-area suburbs to develop new parkland, is meant to help the financially strapped Park Board meet the outdoor needs of the city's population as it grows....

"Fee collections would be placed in a special Park Board-managed fund and used solely for the acquisition, development and improvement of green space and park connections within the neighborhood the development is in or an adjacent neighborhood within a half-mile radius. 
 
"'The challenge is we are in very difficult financial times and any additional costs you want to make sure that they're not so great that they would limit any new development,' Erwin said. 'But the Park Board wanted to make sure that the support was enough that they could actually do something.'

"Developers of affordable housing projects would be exempt from the ordinance ..."

Read the full article here.

MPR takes note of a study by economists at Ohio State University who closely examined Baldwin, Minn. to measure the health of exurban sprawl in America. Is the phenomenon dead as a doornail at a vacant McMansion? Or just sleeping the deep sleep of an overdeveloped bedroom community? Perhaps a new concept, like agriburbia, will bring it back:

"As the demographics of households in the U.S. continues to shift from those with children--69 percent in 1990 (U.S. census records)--to those without children--60 percent in 2008--the priorities of home-buyers begin to change.

"This analysis of the 2000 census shows a clear shift: over 80% of downtown city populations are composed of non-families and families without children while the same demographic groups make up just over 60 percent of the suburbs. This shift to cities will reduce demand for exurban development.

"However, other factors will continue to increase demand, the researchers found.

"High gas prices have recently slowed exurban development, but improvements in fuel efficiency and public transport, as well as technology improvements that make working remotely possible, will create opportunities for people to live further from cities in the future, the researchers say.

"It is possible that companies will begin to create clusters of suburban or exurban remote work-sites as technology improvements continue."

Read the full article here.

Money magazine has named Eden Prairie the nation's Best Place to Live in 2010. (And, hey, if we're all about regionalism these days, that means we can count this as a victory for the entire Twin Cities, right?)

Here's what Money has to say:

"Why is Eden Prairie No. 1 this year? Not only is it family-friendly, it has a dynamite economy too. At 5.1%, its unemployment rate is nearly one percentage point below the county rate and more than four points below the national average. It helps when you've got 50,000 jobs right in town."

The publication notes the city's perfect bond rating, it's miles of trails, and major employers, including C.H. Robinson, Starkey Labs, and the Minnesota Vikings.

Eagan, Plymouth, Woodbury and Apple Valley were also in the Top 25.

Read the entire Money report here.

In the 1930s, Larpenteur Avenue on St. Paul's northern border was the favored getaway route for bank robbers seeking sanctuary in the Saintly City. Now a different kind of conspiracy--crop mobs of urbanites looking for a chance to dig in the dirt--is finding what it needs along the same road, on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus. The Twin Cities Daily Planet explains:

"Though sustainable small-scale farming may be seen as a return to low-tech methods of growing food, Anderson is organizing Crop Mobs using very contemporary mediums. One third of Saturday's volunteers signed up through his Fair Food Fight  website or follow his Twitter feed, Anderson said, another third came through the Twin Cities Crop Mob page on Facebook, and the rest were students.

"Fair Food Fight started as an online blog and conversation sponsored by Equal Exchange, an employee owned cooperative committed to fair trade relationships with farmers for crops like coffee and chocolate. River Cook, an Equal Exchange sales representative who participated Saturday, said that Fair Food Fight and the Crop Mobs are 'our way of making a local connection to the work we've done internationally.'

"After cleaning up, the Cornercopia Crop Mob air-dried while eating lunch donated by the University of Minnesota's Campus Club in a classroom. The mostly urban twenty- and thirty-something volunteers filled up tables and talked with those around them. Conversations ranged from the mainstreaming of organic products to farming experiences and plans to attend future Crop Mobs."

Read the full article here.

According to Business Week, the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area has the ninth most improved housing market in the nation:

"The Twin Cities area, which has a low 6.8 percent unemployment rate, is more stable now than it has been in years. Prices in the Minneapolis area started to rise in 2010 after falling for 41 consecutive months, reported the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors, signaling that prices have already reached bottom."

Read the full article here.

New York Times media columnist David Carr, himself a veteran of the Twin Cities media scene, takes a look at Minneapolis-based MinnPost as an example of online news experiments taking root in several cities across the country. Carr notes that MinnPost employs the equivalent of 18 full-time workers with an operating budget of $1.1 million drawn from diverse sources: advertisers, investors, members, sponsors, foundations and donors at fundraising events.

"The trends are impressive, even if the numbers sound more like a successful taco stand than a big news operation. Of course, like many other nonprofit news sites, MinnPost is taking advantage of one of the upsides of the downsides: many skilled journalists with years of expertise are on the loose and looking for a way to continue to avoid getting a real job.

"Doug Grow, a columnist at The Star Tribune for 20 years, has retired, but now finds himself filing as much as six or seven times a week for MinnPost.

"'We don't have enough staff to have any meetings, we can write with a point of view, which is wonderful, and the psychic rewards are enormous,' he said. And the money part? 'I worry about that. They haven't crossed the line in being able to sustain young reporters in the middle of their careers.'"

Read the full story here.
Source: The New York Times