[Mpls] Mpls Downtown Living (Looks More Like Detroit)?

[David Brauer]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mpls-bounces at mnforum.org [mailto:mpls-bounces at mnforum.org] On Behalf
Of
> 
> According to an article in today's Star Tribune, Minneapolis downtown
living
> claims are disputed in a major new study to be released today. According
to
> the study's author, it's not as good as Minneapolis boosters claim but it
is
> not as bad as other major cities. 

As I read the story, the only Downtown boosters claim that didn't hold up
was that we have more folks living downtown that four other major cities
(including Houston, Denver and Indianapolis). The rest was the author's
rather murky (at least from reading the story) classification of downtowns
as "emerging."

Fundamentally, Minneapolis's rank in the top 10 nationally for Downtown
population is noteworthy, for a city that isn't in the top 35
population-wise (the chart accompanying the story did a good job of showing
that). And I the Detroit comparison is population only, not amenities,
income demographics, etc.

The study's author seemed to accept the Minneapolis Downtown Council's
population number (the consultant, unnamed in the story, is locally based
Maxfield Research, by the way). Jeremy Stratton of Skyway News did a story
looking at the 30,000-population figure earlier this year:

http://www.dtjournal.com/articles/2005/04/04/news/news01.txt

David Brauer
Kingfield
Former editor, Skyway News (now Downtown Journal)