Minneapolis,[a] officially the City of Minneapolis, is a city in and the county seat of Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. With a population of 429,954, it is the state's most populous city as of the 2020 census. It occupies both banks of the Mississippi River and adjoins Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota. Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the surrounding area are collectively known as the Twin Cities, a metropolitan area with 3.69 million residents. Minneapolis is built on an artesian aquifer on flat terrain, and is known for cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. Nicknamed the "City of Lakes", Minneapolis is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks, and waterfalls. The city's public park system is connected by the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.

Dakota people originally inhabited the site of today's Minneapolis. European colonization and settlement began north of Fort Snelling along Saint Anthony Falls—the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi River. The city's early growth was attributed to its proximity to the fort and the falls providing power for industrial activity. Minneapolis was the 19th-century lumber and flour milling capital of the world, and as home to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, it has preserved its financial clout into the 21st century. A Minneapolis Depression-era labor strike brought about federal worker protections. Work in Minneapolis contributed to the computing industry, and the city is the birthplace of General Mills, the Pillsbury brand, Target Corporation, and Thermo King mobile refrigeration.

The city's major arts institutions include the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Guthrie Theater. Four professional sports teams play downtown. Prince is survived by his favorite venue, the First Avenue nightclub. Minneapolis is home to the University of Minnesota's main campus. The city's public transport is provided by Metro Transit, and the international airport, serving the Twin Cities region, is located towards the south on the city limits.

Residents adhere to more than fifty religions, and thousands choose to volunteer their time. Despite its well-regarded quality of life, Minneapolis faces a pressing challenge in the form of stark disparities among its residents—arguably the most critical issue confronting the city in the 21st century. Governed by a mayor-council system, Minneapolis has a political landscape dominated by the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), with Jacob Frey serving as mayor since 2018.

Two Indigenous nations inhabited the area now called Minneapolis. Archaeologists have evidence that since 1000 A.D., they were the Dakota (one half of the Sioux nation), and, after the 1700s, the Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa, members of the Anishinaabe nations). Dakota people have different stories to explain their creation. One widely accepted story says the Dakota emerged from Bdóte, the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Dakota are the only inhabitants of the Minneapolis area who claimed no other land; they have no traditions of having immigrated. In 1680, cleric Louis Hennepin, who was probably the first European to see the Minneapolis waterfall the Dakota people call Owámniyomni, renamed it the Falls of St. Anthony of Padua for his patron saint.

In the space of sixty years, the US seized all of their land, and forced the Dakota out of their homeland. Purchasing most of modern-day Minneapolis, Zebulon Pike made the 1805 Treaty of St. Peter with the Dakota.[b] Pike bought a 9-square-mile (23 km2) strip of land—coinciding with the sacred place of Dakota origin—on the Mississippi south of Saint Anthony Falls, with the agreement the US would build a military fort and trading post there and the Dakota would retain their usufructuary rights. In 1819, the US Army built Fort Snelling to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders, and to deter war between the Dakota and Ojibwe in northern Minnesota. Under pressure from US officials in a series of treaties, the Dakota ceded their land first to the east, and then to the west of the Mississippi, the river that runs through Minneapolis.[c] Dakota leaders twice refused to sign the next treaty until they were paid for the previous one. In the decades following these treaty signings, the federal US government rarely honored their terms. At the beginning of the American Civil War, annuity payments owed in June 1862 to the Dakota by treaty were late, causing acute hunger among the Dakota.[d] Facing starvation a faction of the Dakota declared war in August and killed settlers. Serving without any prior military experience, US commander Henry Sibley commanded raw recruits, volunteer mounted troops from Minneapolis and Saint Paul with no military experience. The war went on for six weeks in the Minnesota River valley. After a trial described as a kangaroo court, 38 Dakota men died by hanging as ordered by Abraham Lincoln. The army force-marched 1,700 non-hostile Dakota men, women, children, and elders 150 miles (240 km) to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. Minneapolitans reportedly threatened more than once to attack the camp. In 1863, the US "abrogated and annulled" all treaties with the Dakota. With Governor Alexander Ramsey calling for their extermination, most Dakota were exiled from Minnesota.

While the Dakota were being expelled, Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of Saint Anthony Falls, and John H. Stevens built a home on the west bank. In the Dakota language, the city's name is Bde Óta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes Town').[e] Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' (mni[f]) with the Greek word for 'city' (polis), yielding Minneapolis. In 1851 after a meeting of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature, leaders of east bank St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul. In a close vote, Saint Paul and Stillwater agreed to divide federal funding: Saint Paul would be the capital, while Stillwater would build the prison. The St. Anthony contingent eventually won the state university. In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867, and in 1872, it merged with St. Anthony.

Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi, which was used as a source of energy. The city's two founding industries—lumber and flour milling—developed in the 19th century nearly concurrently.[g] Each came to prominence for about fifty years.[h] In 1870, lumber was the main Minneapolis industry; a decade later, flour milling overtook the annual value of lumber products. Through its expanding mill industries, Minneapolis earned the nickname "Mill City." Due to the occupational hazards of milling, six companies manufactured artificial limbs.

Disasters struck in the late 19th century: the Eastman tunnel under the river leaked in 1869; twice, fire destroyed the entire row of sawmills on the east bank; an explosion of flour dust at the Washburn A mill killed eighteen people and demolished about half the city's milling capacity; and in 1893, fire spread from Nicollet Island to Boom Island to northeast Minneapolis, destroyed twenty blocks, and killed two people.

The lumber industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, largely by lumbermen emigrating from Maine's depleting forests. The region's waterways were used to transport logs well after railroads developed; the Mississippi River carried logs to St. Louis until the early 20th century. In 1871, of the thirteen mills sawing lumber in St. Anthony, eight ran on water power, and five ran on steam power. Auxiliary businesses on the river's west bank included woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes, and wood-planing. Minneapolis supplied the materials for farmsteads and settlement of rapidly expanding cities on the prairies that lacked wood. White pine milled in Minneapolis built Miles City, Montana; Bismarck, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Omaha, Nebraska; and Wichita, Kansas. Growing use of steam power freed lumbermen and their sawmills from dependence on the falls. Lumbering's decline began around the turn of the century, and sawmills in the city including the Weyerhauser mill closed by 1919. After depleting Minnesota's white pine, some lumbermen moved on to Douglas fir in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1877, Cadwallader C. Washburn founded Washburn-Crosby,[100] the company that became General Mills.[101][i] Washburn and partner John Crosby[102] sent Austrian civil engineer William de la Barre to Hungary where he acquired innovations through industrial espionage.[103] De la Barre calculated and managed the power at the falls and encouraged steam for auxiliary power.[104] Charles Alfred Pillsbury and the C. A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn employees and began using the new methods.[103] The hard red spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable, and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized at the time as the best bread flour in the world.[103] In 1900, fourteen percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis[103] and about one third of that was shipped overseas.[105] Overall production peaked at 18.5 million barrels in 1916.[106] Decades of soil exhaustion, stem rust, and changes in freight tariffs combined to quash the city's flour industry.[107] In the 1920s, Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury developed new milling centers in Buffalo, New York, and Kansas City, Missouri, while maintaining their headquarters in Minneapolis.[108] The falls became a national historic district,[109] and the upper St. Anthony lock and dam is permanently closed.[110]

Columnist Don Morrison says that after the milling era waned a "modern, major city" emerged.[111] In 1900, Minneapolis attracted skilled workers[112] who leveraged expertise from the university.[113] In 1923, Munsingwear was the world's largest manufacturer of underwear.[114] Frederick McKinley Jones invented mobile refrigeration in Minneapolis, and with his associate founded Thermo King in 1938.[115] In 1949, Medtronic was founded in a Minneapolis garage.[116] Minneapolis-Honeywell built a south Minneapolis campus where their experience regulating indoor temperature earned them military contracts for the Norden bombsight and the C-1 autopilot.[117] In 1957, Control Data began in downtown Minneapolis, where in the CDC 1604 they replaced vacuum tubes with transistors.[118] A highly successful business until disbanded in 1990, Control Data opened a facility in economically depressed north Minneapolis, bringing jobs and good publicity.[118] A University of Minnesota computing group released Gopher in 1991, a protocol superseded three years later when World Wide Web traffic surpassed Gopher traffic.[119]

In many ways, the 20th century in Minneapolis was a difficult time of bigotry and malfeasance, beginning with four decades of corruption.[121] Known initially as a kindly physician, mayor Doc Ames made his brother police chief, ran the city into crime, and tried to leave town in 1902 according to historian Iric Nathanson.[122] The Ku Klux Klan was a force in the city from 1921[123] until 1923.[124] The gangster Kid Cann engaged in bribery and intimidation between the 1920s and the 1940s.[125] After Minnesota passed a eugenics law in 1925, the proprietors of Eitel Hospital sterilized people at Faribault State Hospital.[126]

During the summer of 1934 and the financial downturn of the Great Depression, the Citizens' Alliance, an association of employers, refused to negotiate with teamsters. The truck drivers union executed strikes in May and July–August.[127] Charles Rumford Walker said that Minneapolis teamsters succeeded in part due to the "military precision of the strike machine".[128] The union victory ultimately led to 1935 and 1938 federal laws protecting workers' rights.[129]

From the end of World War I in 1918 until 1950, antisemitism was commonplace in Minneapolis—Carey McWilliams called the city the anti-Semitic capital of the US.[130] Starting in 1936, a fascist hate group known as the Silver Shirts held meetings in the city.[131] In the 1940s, mayor Hubert Humphrey worked to rescue the city's reputation,[132] and helped the city establish the country's first fair employment practices and a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities.[133] However, the lives of Black people had not been improved.[134] In 1966 and 1967—years of significant turmoil across the US—suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue.[135] A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but again failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment.[136]

Disparate events defined the second half of the 20th century. Between 1958 and 1963, Minneapolis demolished "skid row".[j] Gone were 35 acres (10 ha) with more than 200 buildings, or roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the Gateway District and its significant architecture such as the Metropolitan Building.[138] In 1968, relocated Native Americans founded the American Indian Movement (AIM)[139] in Minneapolis. Begun as an alternative to public and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, AIM's Heart of the Earth Survival School taught Native American traditions to children for nearly twenty years.[140] In a backlash of the "dominant" White voters, Charles Stenvig, a law-and-order candidate, became mayor in 1969, and governed for almost a decade.[141][142] After their marriage license was denied, a same-sex Minneapolis couple appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson.[143] They managed to get a license and marry in 1971,[143] forty years before Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage, and Obergefell v. Hodges did so nationwide.[144] Immigration helped to curb the city's mid-20th century population decline. But because of a few radicalized persons, the city's large Somali population was targeted with discrimination after 9/11, when its hawalas or banks were closed.[145]

In 2020, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier recorded the murder of George Floyd;[146] Frazier's video contradicted the police department's initial statement.[147] Floyd, a Black man, suffocated when Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on his neck and back for more than nine minutes. Reporting on the local reaction, The New York Times said that "over three nights, a five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage"[148]—destruction included a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire.[149] Floyd's murder sparked international rebellions, mass protests,[150] and locally, years of ongoing unrest over racial injustice.[151]

The history and economic growth of Minneapolis are linked to water, the city's defining physical characteristic. Long periods of glaciation and interglacial melt carved several riverbeds through what is now Minneapolis.[153] During the last glacial period, around 10,000 years ago, ice buried in these ancient river channels melted, resulting in basins that filled with water to become the lakes of Minneapolis.[154] Meltwater from Lake Agassiz fed the glacial River Warren, which created a large waterfall that eroded upriver past the confluence of the Mississippi River, where it left a 75-foot (23-meter) drop in the Mississippi.[155] This site is located in what is now downtown Saint Paul. The new waterfall, later called Saint Anthony Falls, in turn, eroded up the Mississippi about eight miles (13 kilometers) to its present location, carving the Mississippi River gorge as it moved upstream. Minnehaha Falls also developed during this period via similar processes.[156][155]

Minneapolis is sited above an artesian aquifer[157] and on flat terrain. Its total area is 59 sq mi (152.8 km2) of which six percent is covered by water.[158] The city has a 12-mile (19 km) segment of the Mississippi River, four streams, and 17 waterbodies—13 of them lakes,[159] with 24 miles (39 km) of lake shoreline.[160]

A 1959 report by the US Soil Conservation Service listed Minneapolis's elevation above mean sea level as 830 feet (250 meters).[161] The city's lowest elevation of 687 feet (209 m) above sea level is near the confluence of Minnehaha Creek with the Mississippi River.[162] Sources disagree on the exact location and elevation of the city's highest point, which is cited as being between 967 and 985 feet (295 and 300 m) above sea level.[k]

Minneapolis has 83 neighborhoods and 70 neighborhood organizations.[165] In some cases, two or more neighborhoods act together under one organization.[166]

Around 1990, the city set up the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP), in which every one of the city's eighty-some neighborhoods participated.[167] Funded for 20 years through 2011, with $400 million tax increment financing (TIF),[167] the program caught the eye of UN-Habitat who considered it an example of best practices. Residents had a direct connection to government in NRP, whereby they proposed ideas appropriate for their area, and NRP reviewed the plans and provided implementation funds.[167][168] The city's Neighborhood and Community Relations department took NRP's place in 2011[169] and is funded only by city revenue. In 2019, the city released the Neighborhoods 2020 program, which reworked neighborhood funding with an equity-focused lens.[170] This reduced guaranteed funding, and several neighborhood organizations have since struggled with operations or merged with other neighborhoods due to decreased revenue.[171] In his 2024 proposed budget, the mayor suggested an increase in base funding for neighborhood organizations.[172]

In 2018, the Minneapolis City Council approved the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a citywide end to single-family zoning.[173] Slate reported that Minneapolis was believed to be the first major city in the US to make citywide such a revision in housing possibilities.[174] At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes,[175] though many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units.[176] City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation.[177] The Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the YIMBY agenda".[178] From 2022 until 2024,[179][180] the Minnesota Supreme Court, the US District Court, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals arrived at competing opinions, first shutting down the plan, and then securing its survival. Ultimately in 2024, the state legislature passed a bill approving the city's 2040 plan.[181]

Minneapolis experiences a hot-summer humid continental climate (Dfa in the Köppen climate classification),[182] that is typical of southern parts of the Upper Midwest; it is situated in USDA plant hardiness zone 5a.[183][184][185] The Minneapolis area experiences a full range of precipitation and related weather events, including snow, sleet, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and fog. The highest recorded temperature is 108 Â°F (42 Â°C) in July 1936 while the lowest is −41 Â°F (−41 Â°C) in January 1888.[186] The snowiest winter on record was 1983–1984, when 98.6 in (250 cm) of snow fell.[187] The least-snowy winter was 1930–1931, when 14.2 inches (36 cm) fell.[187] According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the annual average for sunshine duration is 58 percent.[188]

The Minneapolis area was originally occupied by Dakota bands, particularly the Mdewakanton, until European Americans moved westward.[197] In the 1840s,[198] new settlers arrived from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, while French-Canadians came around the same time. [199][200] Farmers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania later followed in a secondary migration. Settlers from New England had an outsized influence on civic life.[201]

Mexican migrant workers began coming to Minnesota as early as 1860, although few stayed year-round.[202] Latinos eventually settled in several neighborhoods in Minneapolis, including Phillips, Whittier, Longfellow and Northeast.[203] Before the turn of the 21st century, Latinos were the state's largest and fastest-growing immigrant group.[202][204]

Immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark found common ground with the Republican and Protestant belief systems of the New England migrants who preceded them.[205][206] Irish, Scots, and English immigrants arrived after the Civil War;[207] Germans[208] and Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Russia, followed.[209] Minneapolis welcomed Italians and Greeks in the 1890s and 1900s,[210][211] and Slovak and Czech immigrants settled in the Bohemian Flats area on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Ukrainians arrived after 1900,[212] and Central European migrants made their homes in the Northeast neighborhood.[213]

Chinese began immigration in the 1870s and Chinese businesses centered on the Gateway District and Glenwood Avenue.[214] Westminster Presbyterian Church gave language classes and support for Chinese Americans in Minneapolis, many of whom had fled discrimination in western states.[215] Japanese Americans, many relocated from San Francisco, worked at Camp Savage, a secret military Japanese-language school that trained interpreters and translators.[216] Following World War II, some Japanese and Japanese Americans remained in Minneapolis, and by 1970, they numbered nearly 2,000, forming part of the state's largest Asian American community.[217] In the 1950s, the US government relocated Native Americans to cities like Minneapolis, attempting to dismantle Indian reservations.[218] Around 1970, Koreans arrived,[219] and the first Filipinos came to attend the University of Minnesota.[220] Vietnamese, Hmong (some from Thailand), Lao, and Cambodians settled mainly in Saint Paul around 1975, but some built organizations in Minneapolis.[221][222] In 1992, 160 Tibetan immigrants came to Minnesota, and many settled in the city's Whittier neighborhood.[223] Burmese immigrants arrived in the early 2000s, with some moving to Greater Minnesota.[224] The population of people from India in Minneapolis increased by 1,000 between 2000 and 2010, making it the largest concentration of Indians living in the state.[225]

The population of Minneapolis grew until 1950 when the census peaked at 521,718—the only time it has exceeded a half million. The population then declined for decades; after World War II, people moved to the suburbs and generally out of the Midwest.[226]

By 1930, Minneapolis had one of the nation's highest literacy rates among Black residents.[227][228][229] However, discrimination prevented them from obtaining higher-paying jobs.[230] In 1935, Cecil Newman and the Minneapolis Spokesman led a year-long consumer boycott of four area breweries that refused to hire Blacks.[231] Employment improved during World War II, but housing discrimination persisted.[232] Between 1950 and 1970, the Black population in Minneapolis increased by 436 percent.[231] After the Rust Belt economy declined in the 1980s, Black migrants were attracted to Minneapolis for its job opportunities, good schools, and safe neighborhoods.[233] In the 1990s, immigrants from the Horn of Africa began to arrive,[234] from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and particularly Somalia.[235] Immigration from Somalia slowed significantly following a 2017 national executive order.[236] As of 2022, about 3,000 Ethiopians and 20,000 Somalis reside in Minneapolis.[237]

The Williams Institute reported that the Twin Cities had an estimated 4.2 percent LGBT adult population in 2020.[238] In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign gave Minneapolis 94 points out of 100 on the Municipal Equality Index of support for the LGBTQ+ population.[239] Twin Cities Pride is held in May.[240]

Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota and the 46th largest city in the United States by population as of 2023.[241][242] According to the 2020 US Census, Minneapolis had a population of 429,954.[243] Of this population, 44,513 (10.4 percent) identified as Hispanic and Latinos.[244] Of those not Hispanic or Latino, 249,581 people (58.0 percent) were White alone (62.7 percent White alone or in combination), 81,088 (18.9 percent) were Black or African American alone (21.3 percent Black alone or in combination), 24,929 (5.8 percent) were Asian alone, 7,433 (1.2 percent) were American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 25,387 (0.6 percent) some other race alone, and 34,463 (5.2 percent) were multiracial.[243]

The most common ancestries in Minneapolis according to the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) were German (22.9 percent), Irish (10.8 percent), Norwegian (8.9 percent), Subsaharan African (6.7 percent), and Swedish (6.1 percent).[245] Among those five years and older, 81.2 percent spoke only English at home, while 7.1 percent spoke Spanish and 11.7 percent spoke other languages, including large numbers of Somali and Hmong speakers.[245] About 13.7 percent of the population was born abroad, with 53.2 percent of them being naturalized US citizens. Most immigrants arrived from Africa (40.6 percent), Asia (24.6 percent), and Latin America (25.2 percent), with 34.6 percent of all foreign-born residents having arrived in 2010 or earlier.[245]

The 2021 ACS reported that the median household income in Minneapolis was $69,397. It was $97,670 for families, $123,693 for married couples, and $54,083 for non-family households.[246][247] The median gross rent in Minneapolis was $1,225, and 92.7 percent of housing units in Minneapolis were occupied. Housing units in the city built in 1939 or earlier comprised 43.7 percent.[248] About 15.0 percent of residents lived in poverty.[249] The percentage of residents who had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher was 53.6 percent, and 92.1 percent had at least a high school diploma.[250] US veterans made up 3.2 percent of the population.[245]

In Minneapolis, while African Americans comprised approximately 20 percent of the population as of 2020, Blacks owned homes at a rate one-third that of White families.[251][243] In the metro area, Black home ownership declined between 2000 and 2018; in the Twin Cities for that period, 93 percent of new Black households rented their homes.[252] In 2018, the median income for a Black family was $36,000, which was $47,000 less than a White family's median income. This income gap was one of the largest in the country, with Black Minneapolitans earning about 44 percent of what White Minneapolitans earned annually.[251]

Before 1910,[134] when a developer wrote the first restrictive covenant based on race and ethnicity into a Minneapolis deed,[253] the city was relatively unsegregated with a Black population of less than one percent.[254] Realtors adopted the practice, thousands of times preventing non-Whites from owning or leasing properties;[255] this practice continued for four decades until the city became more and more racially divided.[256] Though such language was prohibited by state law in 1953 and by the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968,[257] restrictive covenants against minorities remained in many Minneapolis deeds as of the 2020s, and in 2021 the city gave residents a means to discharge them.[258]

Minneapolis has a history of structural racism[259] and has racial disparities in nearly every aspect of society.[260] Some historians and commentators have said White Minneapolitans used discrimination based on race against the city's non-White residents. As White settlers displaced the Indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land,[261] and Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explains that today's disparities evolved from control of the land.[134] Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the East Coast and the economy declined.[262] The I-35W highway built in 1959 under the Interstate Highway System[263] cut through Black and Mexican neighborhoods.[264]

The foundation laid by racial covenants on residential segregation, property value, homeownership, wealth, housing security, access to green spaces, trees and parks, and health equity shapes the lives of people in the 21st century.[265] The city wrote in a decennial plan that racially discriminatory federal housing policies starting in the 1930s "prevented access to mortgages in areas with Jews, African-Americans and other minorities", and "left a lasting effect on the physical characteristics of the city and the financial well-being of its residents."[266]

Discussing a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report on how systemic racism compromises education in Minnesota,[267] Professor Keith Mayes says, "So the housing disparities created the educational disparities that we still live with today."[268] Professor Samuel Myers Jr. says of redlining, "Policing policies evolved that substituted explicit racial profiling with scientific management of racially disparate arrests. ... racially discriminatory policies became institutionalized and 'baked in' to the fabric of Minnesota life."[269][n] In 2020, government efforts to address these disparities include declaring racism a public health emergency,[271] and zoning changes passed by the 2018 Minneapolis City Council 2040 plan.[272]

Twin Cities residents are 70 percent Christian according to the most recent Pew Research Center religious survey in 2014.[274] Settlers who arrived in Minneapolis from New England were for the most part Protestants, Quakers, and Universalists.[275] The oldest continuously used church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, was built in 1856 by Universalists and soon afterward was acquired by a French Catholic congregation.[276] St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral was founded in 1887;[277] it opened a missionary school and in 1905 created a Russian Orthodox seminary.[278] Edwin Hawley Hewitt designed St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral and Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, both of which are located south of downtown.[279] The Basilica of Saint Mary, the first basilica in the US and co-cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, was named by Pope Pius XI in 1926.[275] The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was headquartered in Minneapolis from the 1950s until 2001.[280] Christ Church Lutheran in the Longfellow neighborhood was the final work in the career of Eliel Saarinen, and has an education building designed by his son Eero.[281]

Aligning with a national trend, the metro area's next largest group after Christians is the 23 percent non-religious population.[274] At the same time, more than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis, representing most of the world's religions.[275] Temple Israel was built in 1928 by the city's first Jewish congregation, Shaarai Tov, which formed in 1878.[209] By 1959, a Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis.[282] In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the university.[282] In 1972, a relief agency resettled the first Shi'a Muslim family from Uganda in the Twin Cities.[283] Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily Sunni Muslim.[284] In 2022, Minneapolis amended its noise ordinance to allow broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer five times per day.[285] The city has about seven Buddhist centers and meditation centers.[286]

Early in the city's history, millers were required to pay for wheat with cash during the growing season, and then to store the wheat until it was needed for flour.[289] The Minneapolis Grain Exchange was founded in 1881; located near the riverfront, it is the only exchange as of 2023 for hard red spring wheat futures.[290]

Along with cash requirements for the milling industry, the large amounts of capital that lumbering had accumulated stimulated the local banking industry and made Minneapolis a major financial center.[291] The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis serves Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota, and parts of Wisconsin and Michigan; it has the smallest population of the twelve districts in the Federal Reserve System, and has one branch in Helena, Montana.[292]

Minneapolis area employment is primarily in trade, transportation, utilities, education, health services, and professional and business services. Smaller numbers of residents are employed in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, mining, logging, and construction.[293]

In 2022, the Twin Cities metropolitan area tied with Boston as having the eighth-highest concentration of major corporate headquarters in the US.[294] Five Fortune 500 corporations were headquartered within the city limits of Minneapolis:[288] Target Corporation, U.S. Bancorp, Ameriprise Financial, Xcel Energy, and Thrivent.[288] Other companies with offices or headquarters in Minneapolis include Accenture,[295] Bellisio Foods,[296] Canadian Pacific,[297] Coloplast,[298] RBC,[299] Deloitte,[300] PricewaterhouseCoopers,[301] and Voya Financial.[302]

During the Gilded Age, the Walker Art Center began as a private art collection in the home of lumberman T. B. Walker who extended free admission to the public.[304] Around 1940, the center's focus shifted to modern and contemporary art.[305] In partnership with the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board, the Walker operates the adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden which has about forty sculptures on view year-round.[306]

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is located in south-central Minneapolis on the 10-acre (4 ha) former homestead of the Morrison family.[307] The collection of more than 90,000 artworks spans six continents and about 5,000 years.[308] Perhaps reflecting the ambitions of the founders, competition winner McKim, Mead & White designed a complex seven times the size of what opened in 1915.[309]

Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Museum, which opened in 1993, for the University of Minnesota.[310] A 2011 addition by Gehry doubled the size of the galleries.[311] The Museum of Russian Art opened in a restored church in 2005, and hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events.[312] The Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists, a center at the Northrup-King building, and presents the Art-A-Whirl open studio tour every May.[313][314]

Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War.[316] Early theaters included Pence Opera House, the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later the Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894.[317] Fifteen of the fifty-five Twin Cities theater companies counted in 2015 by Peg Guilfoyle had a physical site in Minneapolis. About half the remainder performed in variable spaces throughout the metropolitan area.[318]

In his social history of American regional theater, Joseph Zeigler calls the Guthrie Theater the "granddaddy" of regional theater.[319] Tyrone Guthrie founded the Guthrie in 1963 with an inventive thrust stage—a collaboration by Guthrie, designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, and architect Ralph Rapson[320]—jutting into the seats and surrounded by the audience on three sides.[321] French architect Jean Nouvel designed a new Guthrie that opened in 2006 overlooking the Mississippi River.[321] The design team reproduced the thrust stage with some alterations, and they added a proscenium stage and an experimental stage.[321]

Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum, the Shubert (now the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts), State, and Pantages Theatres, vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue that are now used for concerts, plays,[322] and performing arts.[323] Every August, the Minnesota Fringe Festival hosts performances in venues across town.[324] The May Day Parade is held in south Minneapolis each May.[325]

Minnesota Orchestra plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under music director Thomas Søndergård.[328] The orchestra won a 2014 Grammy for their recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 by Sibelius,[329] and a 2004 Grammy for composer Dominick Argento with their recording of Casa Guidi.[330] Minneapolis's opera companies include Minnesota Opera,[331] the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company,[332] and Really Spicy Opera.[333]

Singer and multi-instrumentalist Prince was a child prodigy,[334] born in Minneapolis and an area resident for most of his life.[335] Minneapolis became what Pitchfork called the "center of music in the '80s" thanks to the nightclub First Avenue and musicians like Prince, Hüsker Dü, and The Replacements.[336] The city hosts several other concert venues including the Cedar and the Dakota,[337] and Live Nation books the Armory and the Uptown Theater.[338]

Exhibits at Mill City Museum feature the city's history of flour milling.[340] The Bakken, formerly known as the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life,[341] shifted focus in 2016 from electricity and magnetism to invention and innovation, and in 2020 opened a new entrance on Bde Maka Ska.[342] Hennepin History Museum is housed in a former mansion.[343] Minnehaha Depot was built in 1875.[344]

The American Swedish Institute occupies a former mansion on Park Avenue.[345] The American Indian Cultural Corridor, about eight blocks on Franklin Avenue, houses All My Relatives Gallery.[346] In 2013, the Somali Museum of Minnesota opened on Lake Street.[347] The Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery was founded in 2018.[348]

In 2008, the Minneapolis Public Library merged with the Hennepin County Library. Fifteen of the system's 41 branches serve Minneapolis.[349] The downtown Central Library, designed by César Pelli, opened in 2006.[350] Seven special collections hold resources for researchers.[351]

The nonprofit literary presses Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Milkweed Editions are based in Minneapolis.[352] The University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.[353] The Open Book facility houses The Loft Literary Center, Milkweed, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.[354] Other Minneapolis publishers are 1517 Media,[355] Button Poetry,[356] and Lerner Publishing Group.[357]

After the flight to the suburbs began in the 1950s, streetcar service ended citywide.[358] One of the largest urban food deserts in the US developed on the north side of Minneapolis, where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores.[359] When Aldi closed in 2023, the area again became a food desert with two full-service grocers.[360] The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the diet of residents, competing against an influx of fast-food stores,[361] and by 2017 it administered ten gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.[362] West Broadway is one of twenty farmers markets and mini-markets operating in the city, and among them, four are open during winter.[363]

Minneapolis-based individuals who have won the food industry James Beard Foundation Award include chef Gavin Kaysen,[364] writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl,[365] television personality Andrew Zimmern,[366] and chef Sean Sherman,[367] whose restaurant Owamni received James Beard's 2022 best new restaurant award.[368]

Conceived in Minneapolis as a malted milkshake in candy form, the Milky Way bar of nougat, caramel, and chocolate was made in the North Loop neighborhood during the 1920s.[369] Both purported originators of the Jucy Lucy burger—the 5-8 Club and Matt's Bar—have served it since the 1950s.[370] East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s.[371] The Herbivorous Butcher, described by CBS News as the "first vegan 'butcher' shop in the United States", opened in 2016.[372]

Minneapolis has four professional sports teams. The American football team Minnesota Vikings and the baseball team Minnesota Twins have played in the state since 1961. The Vikings were a National Football League expansion team and the Twins were formed when the Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota.[373] The Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991, and have played at Target Field since 2010.[374] The Vikings played in the Super Bowl following the 1969, 1973, 1974, and 1976 seasons, losing all four games.[375] The basketball team Minnesota Timberwolves returned National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball to Minneapolis in 1989, and were followed by Minnesota Lynx in 1999. Both basketball teams play in the Target Center.[376] In the 2010s, the Lynx were the most-successful Minnesota professional sports team and a dominant force in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), winning four WNBA championships from 2011 to 2017.[377]

Minnesota Wild, a National Hockey League team, play at the Xcel Energy Center;[378] and the Major League Soccer soccer team Minnesota United FC play at Allianz Field, both of which are located in Saint Paul.[379]

In addition to professional sports teams, Minneapolis hosts a majority of the Minnesota Golden Gophers' college sports teams of the University of Minnesota. The Gophers football team plays at Huntington Bank Stadium and have won seven national championships.[380] The Gophers women's ice hockey team is a six-time NCAA champion.[381] The Gophers men's ice hockey team plays at 3M Arena at Mariucci, and won five NCAA championships.[382] Both the Golden Gophers men's basketball and women's basketball teams play at Williams Arena.[383]

The 1,750,000-square-foot (163,000 m2) U.S. Bank Stadium was built for the Vikings at a cost of $1.122 billion, $348 million of which was provided by the state of Minnesota and $150 million by the city of Minneapolis. The stadium, which was called "Minnesota's biggest-ever public works project", opened in 2016 with 66,000 seats, which was expanded to 70,000 for the 2018 Super Bowl.[384] U.S. Bank Stadium also hosts indoor running and rollerblading nights.[385] Each January, the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships are held on Lake Nokomis.[386] Minneapolis has two municipal golf courses[387] and one private course.[388] The Twin Cities Marathon held in October is a Boston Marathon qualifier.[389]

Landscape architect Horace Cleveland's "crowning achievement" is the Minneapolis park system.[390] In the 1880s, he preserved geographical landmarks and linked them with boulevards and parkways.[391] In their introduction to a modern reprint of Cleveland's treatise on landscape architecture, Nadenicek and Neckar add that "Cleveland was successful in Minneapolis in great measure because he operated with kindred spirits" like William Watts Folwell and Charles M. Loring.[392] In his book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't, Alexander Garvin wrote Minneapolis built "the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, and best-maintained public open space in America".[393]

The city's parks are governed and operated by the independent Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board park district.[394] Beyond its network of 185 neighborhood parks,[395] the park board owns the city's canopy of trees,[396] and nearly all land that borders the city's waterfronts.[397] The park board owns property outside the city limits including the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary which is part of its largest park, Theodore Wirth Park, shared with Golden Valley, Minnesota.[398]

As of 2020, approximately 15 percent of land in Minneapolis is parks, in accordance with the national median, and 98 percent of residents live within one-half mile (0.8 km) of a park.[399] The city's Chain of Lakes, consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bicycle paths, and running and walking paths, and is used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, and ice skating. A parkway for cars, a bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians[400] run parallel along the 51-mile (82 km) route of the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.[401] The Minneapolis Aquatennial, a festival of the city's water features, is held each July.[402] Parks are interlinked in many places, and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area connects regional parks and visitor centers.[403] Among walks and hikes running along the Mississippi River, the five-mile (8 km), hiking-only Winchell Trail offers views of and access to the Mississippi Gorge and a rustic hiking experience.[404]

Cleveland lobbied for a park on the riverfront to include the city's other waterfall.[405] In 1889, George A. Brackett arranged financing, and his associate Henry Brown paid the state to cover the condemnation of surrounding land.[406] The 53-foot (16 m) waterfall Minnehaha Falls is one of Minnesota's first state parks.[407] The falls became what historian Mary Lethert Wingerd calls a "civic emblem", appearing on products and in placenames.[408]

Minneapolis's climate provides opportunities for winter activities such as ice fishing, snowshoeing, ice skating, cross-country skiing, and sledding at many parks and lakes between December and March.[409] Scaling back on skate rental and warming houses since the COVID-19 pandemic, as of 2021, the park board maintained 20 outdoor ice rinks in winter.[410]

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), affiliated with the Democratic Party, is the dominant political force in Minneapolis. The city has not elected a Republican mayor since 1975.[412] At the federal level, Minneapolis is in Minnesota's 5th congressional district, which has been represented by Democrat Ilhan Omar since 2018. Both of Minnesota's US Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, are Democrats who were elected or appointed while residing in Minneapolis.[413][414] Jacob Frey, a former DFL city council member, was elected as the mayor of Minneapolis in 2017 and re-elected in 2021.[415] The city conducts its municipal elections using instant-runoff voting, which was first implemented ahead of the 2009 elections.[416]

The Minneapolis City Council has 13 members who represent the city's 13 wards.[417] In 2021, a ballot question shifted more weight from the city council to the mayor, a change that proponents had tried to achieve since the early 20th century.[418] The mayor and city council now share responsibility for the city's finances.[419] The city's primary source of funding is property tax,[420] and there is a sales tax of 9.03 percent[421] on purchases made within the city, which is a combination of state, county, special district taxes, a city sales tax of 0.50 percent, and a local use tax for out-of-state purchases.[422][423] The Park and Recreation Board is an independent city department with nine elected commissioners who levy their own taxes, subject to city charter limits.[394] The Board of Estimation and Taxation, which oversees city levies, is also an independent department.[424]

The restructured mayor's role created a new Minneapolis Office of Community Safety, with its commissioner overseeing the police and fire departments, 911 dispatch, emergency management, and violence prevention.[425] Within the office, four emergency response units serve the city: Behavioral Crisis Response (BCR), fire, emergency medical services, and police.[426] Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, also known as Canopy Roots, operates BCR free of charge [426] to respond to crises and some 911 calls that do not require police.[427]

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, about 166 police officers left of their own accord either to retirement or to temporary leave—many with PTSD[428]—and a crime wave resulted in more than 500 shootings.[429] A Reuters investigation found that killings surged when a "hands-off" attitude resulted in fewer officer-initiated encounters.[430] After Floyd's murder, chiefs reprimanded a dozen officers for misconduct[431] and the city had paid out US$50 million for police conduct claims through early 2024.[432] Violent crime rose three percent across Minneapolis in July 2022 compared with 2021,[433] and in 2020, it rose 21 percent compared to the average of the previous five years.[434] Violent crime was down for 2022 in every category except assaults. Carjackings, gunshots fired, gunshot wounds, and robberies decreased, and homicides were down 20 percent compared to the previous year.[435] In 2024 came approval of an independent monitor of the court-enforceable consent decree, an agreement negotiated with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the United States Department of Justice to compel reformed policing practices.[436]

In 2015, the city council passed a resolution making fossil fuel divestment city policy,[437] joining 17 cities worldwide in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Minneapolis's climate plan calls for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.[438] In 2021, the city council voted unanimously to abolish its required minimum number of parking spaces for new construction.[439] Minneapolis has a separation ordinance that directs local law-enforcement officers not to "take any law enforcement action" for the sole purpose of finding undocumented immigrants, nor to ask an individual about his or her immigration status.[440]

Volunteer missionaries,[441] the Pond brothers received permission from the US Indian agency[442] at Fort Snelling in 1834 to teach new farming techniques and a new religion to Chief Cloud Man and his community on the east shore of Bde Maka Ska.[275] That year, J. D. Stevens and the Ponds built an Indian mission near Lake Harriet, which was the first educational institution in Minneapolis.[275] In the treaty of 1837, the US promised payment to the Dakota but instead gave the monies to the missionaries earmarked for education, and in protest, fewer than ten Dakota students attended.[443] When more settlers moved to the area, by 1874, ten school buildings served nearly 4,000 students. The city of Minneapolis joined with St. Anthony and by 1922, together they enrolled 70,000 students.[444]

Minneapolis Public Schools served 28,689 K–12 students as of October 2022,[446] in more than fifty schools, divided between community and magnet.[447] As of 2023, enrollment was declining about 1.5 percent per year, and approximately 60 percent of school age children attended district schools.[446] Many students enrolled in alternatives such as charter schools, of which the city has thirty as of 2023.[448] By state law, charter schools are open to all students and are tuition free.[449] In 2022, about 1200 at-risk students attended district Contract Alternative Schools.[450]

The public school district adopted a comprehensive district design beginning with the 2020–2021 school year to address academics, equity, financial sustainability, and to end disadvantages for students of color and students from low-income neighborhoods.[447] School district demographics were 41 percent White students, 35 percent Black students, 14 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent each were Asian and Native American.[451] English-language learners were about 17 percent,[451] in a district that spoke 100 languages at home.[452] About 15 percent were special education students.[451] As of fall 2023, every public school student in the state receives one free breakfast and one free lunch each school day.[453] In 2022, the district's graduation rate was 77 percent, an improvement of three percent over the previous year.[454]

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is headquartered in Minneapolis.[455] With more than 50,000 students in 2023, it is the sixth largest campus in the US by enrollment.[456] College rankings for 2023 place the school in the range of 44th[457] (2024) to 195th for academics worldwide.[456][455] QS found a decline in rank over a decade.[455] Shanghai found excellence in ecology and library & information science.[457] Among the 2,000 schools U.S. News & World Report compared in its 2022–2023 best global universities rankings, the University of Minnesota was 57th.[458] After closing in 1858, the University of Minnesota was revived using land taken from the Dakota people under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts in 1862.[459][o] The school has unusual autonomy that has existed in Minnesota since 1858, when the state constitution included the provision: regents are in control, independent of city government.[462]

Augsburg University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and North Central University are private four-year colleges; the first two offer master's programs.[463] The public two-year Minneapolis Community and Technical College[464] and the private Dunwoody College of Technology[465] provide career training and associate degrees and the latter offers a bachelor's program. Saint Mary's University of Minnesota has a Twin Cities campus for its graduate and professional programs.[466] Opening a new Minneapolis site in 2024, Red Lake Nation College is an accredited federally recognized tribal college site that teaches Ojibwe culture.[467] The large, principally online universities Capella University[468] and Walden University[469] are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year Metropolitan State University[470] and the private four-year University of St. Thomas[471] are post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis. The city has more than twenty-five licensed career schools.[472]

As of March 2024, Minnesota Newspaper Association members who publish in Minneapolis include Insight News, Finance & Commerce, Longfellow Nokomis Messenger, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Minnesota Women's Press, North News, Northeaster, Southwest Connector, Star Tribune, and St. Paul – Midway Como Frogtown Monitor.[473] La Prensa de Minnesota,[474] Vida y Sabor,[475] and The American Jewish World[476] are published in the city.[477] Other papers are Southwest Voices,[478] Streets.mn,[479] Bring Me The News,[480] Racket,[481] MinnPost,[482] and Minnesota Daily.[483]

Media Tales called Minnesota a "plentiful" source of national trade magazines; companies in Minneapolis publish Foodservice News and Franchise Times.[484] Some other magazines published in the city are American Craft;[485] business publications Enterprise Minnesota[486] and Twin Cities Business;[487] the literary journal Rain Taxi;[488] university student publications Great River Review,[489] Minnesota Journal of International Law,[490] and Minnesota Law Review;[491] and professional magazines Architecture Minnesota,[492] Bench & Bar,[493] and Minnesota Medicine.[494]

In 2023, Nielsen found the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area to be the 15th largest designated market area, down from 14th in 2022.[495] About 75 radio stations may be heard in the Minneapolis market, some of them distantly.[496] The Twin Cities have 1,742,530 TV homes.[497] TV Guide lists 151 TV channels for Minneapolis.[498]

The 2020 census found that the average commute to work for the Minneapolis population was 22 minutes.[499] The most common means of transportation to work was driving alone (45 percent), the least common was bicycling (1.7 percent), and others were carpooling (6.5 percent), taking public transit (5.6 percent), and walking (4.8 percent).[499]

A division of the Metropolitan Council, Metro Transit operates public transportation in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.[500] As of 2023, the system has two light rail lines, one commuter rail line, and 159 total routes, five of them bus rapid transit (BRT) lines.[501] As of 2021, riders of Metro Transit system-wide were 44 percent persons of color.[502] Bus ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year and part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership, while commuter rides were down, and ridership on light rail and BRTs remained steady or grew slightly.[503]

The Metro Blue Line light rail line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington to downtown, and the Green Line travels from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown Saint Paul. A Blue Line extension to the northwest suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020.[504] A Green Line extension is planned to connect downtown with the southwestern suburbs.[p] BRT lines are 25 percent faster than regular bus lines because riders pay before boarding, stops are limited, and sometimes they employ signal prioritization.[506] The newest BRT line, the D Line, runs along one of Minnesota's most used bus lines, the 18-mile (29 km) route 5, where a quarter of households do not have access to a car.[506] The 40-mile (64 km) Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake, Minnesota, to downtown Minneapolis. Commuter rides decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as of 2023, service cut back to four from twelve daily trips.[507]

Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019.[508] Short more than a hundred police officers, in 2022, the Metro Council hired community groups to help police light rail stations; these non-profits can guide passengers to mental health services and shelters.[509] In 2023, crime in the Metro Transit system spiked 32 percent over the previous January, but for the year, ridership was up 15 percent to about 60 percent of the pre-pandemic level.[509] In 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with 300 short tons (270,000 kg) of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was rebuilt in 14 months.[510]

Evie Carshare, owned by Minneapolis and Saint Paul since 2022, is a fleet of 145 electric cars available for one-way trips in a 35-square-mile (91 km2) area of the Twin Cities.[511] Replacing Nice Ride in 2023, for part of the year Lime, Spin, and Veo had bicycles and scooters for rent with an app.[512]

Minneapolis has 16 miles (26 km) of on-street protected bikeways, 98 miles (158 km) of bike lanes, and 101 miles (163 km) of off-street bikeways and trails.[513] Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail.[514] The Minneapolis Skyway System, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) of enclosed pedestrian bridges called skyways, links 80 city blocks downtown with access to second-floor restaurants, retailers, government, sports facilities, doctor's offices, and other businesses that are open on weekdays.[515] Fifteen commercial passenger airlines serve Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP).[516] MSP is the headquarters of Sun Country Airlines.[517] After it merged with Northwest Airlines in 2009, Delta Air Lines flew 80 percent of the airport's traffic,[518] and MSP was Delta's second-largest US hub.[519]

Xcel Energy supplies electricity,[520] and CenterPoint Energy provides gas.[520] The water supply is managed by four watershed districts that correspond with the Mississippi and three streams that are river tributaries.[521]

The city has nineteen fire stations.[522] Requests for non-emergency information or service requests can be made through Minneapolis 311. The call center operates in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali, and offers 220 language options.[523] Email, TTY, text, voice, and a mobile app can access the center.[524]

The Minneapolis Department of Public Works is responsible for services including snow plowing, solid waste removal, traffic and parking, water treatment, transportation planning and maintenance, and fleet services for the city.[525] Among its engineering functions, the department was increasing the capacity of a 4,200-foot (1,300 m) storm water tunnel system 80 feet (24 m) under Washington to Chicago Avenues, and had completed 97 percent of the excavation phase and 41 percent of the lining phase as of August 2023.[526] Designed for downtown's concrete landscape, the system will drain runoff into the Mississippi in case of a 100-year storm.[527]

Downtown Improvement District ambassadors, who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a public-private partnership that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.[528]

Hennepin County Medical Center, a public teaching hospital and Level I trauma center,[530] opened in 1887 as City Hospital.[531] The city is also served by Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Children's Minnesota, and University of Minnesota and veterans medical centers.[532]

Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Heart Hospital.[533] Surgeon F. John Lewis repaired a child's congenital heart defect successfully in 1952.[534] By 1957, more than 200 patients—most of whom were children—had survived open-heart surgery.[535] Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.[536]

In 2021, opioid overdoses killed 197 people in Minneapolis.[537] For the state in 2021, Black persons were three times and Native American persons were ten times more likely to die from an opioid overdose than White persons.[538] The mayor's proposed 2024 budget added funds for the Turning Point treatment center, which provides care specifically for African Americans.[539] The Red Lake Band of Chippewa is building a culturally sensitive treatment center for opioid and fentanyl addiction. Minneapolis transferred two city-owned properties to the Red Lake Nation for the facility.[540][541]

The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy—funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa—dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status.[542]

Minneapolis's sister cities are:[543]