America's Favorite Cities

[Nathan]

Minnesotans and a lot of Northern (and Nordic) people have very reserved groups of people

I hear this a lot and it's just B.S. Minnesota and the Twin Cities is much more ethnically German than Nordic. And then there are the Irish, Italians, Polish, etc. I don't think the Twin Cities have ever been majority Nordic.

Minnesotans aren't any more reserved than any other population. They do seem to be more resistant to change, however, at least in my experience.

In MN currently, 37% German, 33% Scandinavian. In mpls 20% German 11% Scandinavian, but historically they were much more dominant. The two largely controlled the out state culture, where a lot of the people living in the Cities families come from. even the non Scandinavians were raised with some of the mentality. There is a reason the American Swedish Institute and Norwegian Consulate are in the Twin Cities... It's had a much higher influence in the Upper Midwest than the rest of the country. (and Germans aren't really that much different, a very to themselves culture (pre-wars immigrants at least))

That combined with the younger generation being the flakeyist generation in history I'm sure it's difficult.

[David Greene]

I think one reason it is difficult to meet people in MN is because so many folks who are from here, stay here.

This.

One of the jokes between me and other Minnesota friends at an out-of-state university had was that no one from states other than Minnesota wanted to go live back home while everyone from Minnesota of course wanted to go back home.

But anyway, I think with this topic we'll basically all anecdote ourselves to death.

Also this.

I'd like to see if we might have a more interesting discussion by taking NickP's observation and exploring the implications for how development and change happen in MSP.

I'll start off with the inflammatory statement that sometimes the NIMBYs are right.

And I am totally serious about that.

Because people tend to stay here a long time, we have a lot of institutional knowledge of what works, what's worth preserving, what doesn't work, what we should get rid of. People know that some things have to change but people who haven't lived outside MSP for any extended perioid of time don't really have a good concept of what kinds of change are possible. That's where the transplants can really help.

On the other hand, the transplants don't have the same kind of deep knowledge about the area that long-timers have. Transplants know the kind of change they'd like to see but don't necessarily always know *what* needs changing.

I live in The Wedge. The 24th and Colfax project has created a lot of chatter. I generally support the proposed development but many of my neighbors are strongly against it. They're against it because we have a shitload of really craptastic apartment buildings in the neigborhood, built by developers who gobbled up houses and put whatever they wanted there with no oversight or interaction with the neighborhood. The long-timers tell me about the houses that were torn down for those buildings. Something very real *was* lost and the long-timers, back when they were young, worked hard to halt the destruction and preserve the single-family homes that today make the neighborhood very attractive.

When researching the history of my own house, I cam across old copies of The Wedge newspaper at the library. Issues went back to the '70's (when in fact people were *also* debating a Kenilworth vs. Uptown LRT alignment. ). Anyway, it was really informative to read through some of those papers and get an idea of the history of the place. Some amazing things were lost but some amazing things were also saved. I owe a great debt to my neighbors past and present.

Still, (relative) newcomers like me who have lived for many years outside Minnesota also have a vision of what *could* be. This doesn't mean one side or the other is right or wrong, we just have different life experiences and different perspectives.

It seems to me that we have an enormous set of resources that if properly guided could really get some good stuff going. Those who have grown up here can teach us about what works and what needs fixing and those newer to the area can teach us how how to fix things and bring in new ideas of what is possible.

It's important to get these groups talking to each other. Words like "NIMBY" and "newcomer" make that more difficult. Every person alienated is one less insight we have on how to make things better. Building trust is at the center. We have to be able to have conversations that are not just technical but emotional and passionate as well. As uncomfortable as it can get, I have seen that what comes out the other side is simply incredible.

I'm sorry if that's too Pollyanna for some, but I've seen the amazing things that can happen when people actually get together and share knowledge, experiences, ideas, fears and dreams.

[Minneapolisite]

Minnesota Nice = Ohio Nice (if that term had been coined). In Ohio, if you didn't find a clique in high school, it takes a lot of effort to find one outside of that. Cleveland may be an exception, due to the influx of non-Ohioans from the coasts vs the on going exodus of locals where non-Ohioans can actually make a strong cultural impact. Even in a university as large as OSU, it was extremely difficult meeting people in your field (no one wanted to talk in class and never frequently attended relevant student groups if they did at all) and even joining numerous student organizations was no guarantee: almost everyone already had their social circles already: sound familiar? Getting involved with Columbus locals and students in organizations outside of OSU was the best way to go. Doesn't seem much different than Mpls really, which is much more livable for urbanites to boot. It's a Midwestern issue aside from Chicago obviously, since there's a lot more cross traffic/transients on the coasts than inland. That seems to be changing though, but it's a more recent phenomenon.