Smart Cities Challenge

[nBode]

Does anyone know if Minneapolis/Saint Paul submit/will submit a proposal for this?

https://www.transportation.gov/smartcity

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing ... ity-future

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-50-mil ... ican-city/

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/107319 ... e-ces-2016

Also, what are people's thoughts on this?

[Tiller]

It sounds like there aren't any minnesotan cities of the size they're looking for, since they're looking for a city with 200,000-850,000 people inside its boundaries that isn't part of a larger metropolitan area.

Which is unfortunate, because while $50 million isn't much relative to the whole Twin Cities metro, it would be a lot for any other city/metro in the state, or even for the individual municipalities of St Paul or Minneapolis.

[grant1simons2]

Aren't almost all cities of that size at least part of some metropolitan area? Hell even Duluth has suburbs.

[Tiller]

American cities are now invited to submit proposals for how they would remake themselves. The challenge is open to medium-sized cities of between 200,000 and 850,000 people, that have a public transportation system of some sort. They should not be part of a larger metro region, so the proposal doesn’t have to work in conjunction with other cities. Of the prize, $40 million is coming from the DOT (subject to future appropriations), and the rest is coming from Vulcan, Paul Allen’s philanthropic organization.

I mean, Duluth could sorta work (280k metro and a good public transit system), but only ~90k of them live in Duluth itself, and they want to avoid having to work with multiple cities.

I would personally love to see Duluth successfully take part in something like this, though it sounds like they have a western-style city in mind (with liberal annexation powers).

[grant1simons2]

Ways and Means approved an application for this

http://minneapolismn.gov/meetings/legis ... MSP-172518

[nBode]

Oh, cool!