Reply #26: Minneapolis

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Scandinavian heritage overlaid with a more diverse recent population of Southeast Asians, East Africans, and Latinos.

2. Both major candidates for mayor are Democrats, and the third is a Green. Two Greens on the city council. My precinct went 80% for Kerry. Kucinich got 27% in the caucuses.

3. Great park system with eleven lakes in the city limits, all surrounded by walking and cycling trails and interconnected.

4. Thriving theater scene. The Minnesota Orchestra. The Minnesota Opera and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (okay, they're both in St. Paul).

5. Excellent public TV and radio, including a new public radio station that plays everything that isn't commercial pop and a progressive community radio station that plays you-name-it

6. Neighborhood associations and real neighborhoods

7. The University of Minnesota's main campus

8. Downtown, which seemed on the edge of extinction 20 years ago, is coming back with a vengeance and is full of new housing.

9. The good news: The international airport has flights to everywhere. The bad news: They're almost all on Northwest.

10. Lots of liberal religious groups, if that's your thing.

11. St. Paul is just across the river and shares many of the same advantages but somehow ended up with fewer lakes.

The bad news: mediocre public transit, some really bad urban planning decisions in the past twenty years, suburbs and exurbs full of empty-headed Republicans, winters can be cold (although not so much recently, thanks(?) to global warming, summers can be muggy.