Then & Now: The Mall of America site

• November 1, 2013

Here are some more pics from the Borchert Aerial Map Archive of the Mall of America site in Bloomington by the Minnesota River. You can see it change from farmland to baseball stadium parking lots to mall parking lots, the airport grow, Bloomington homes fill in, freeway strip development, and the river valley.

(Sorry about the incomplete photo coverage of the area… I did the best I could.)

For an extra bonus, check out the development of the area from 1980 to the present using the neat Google Earth Engine.

[click on images to embiggen.]

then-and-now-5a then-and-now-5b then-and-now-5c then-and-now-5d then-and-now-5e then-and-now-5f

Bill Lindeke

About Bill Lindeke

Pronouns: he/him

Bill Lindeke has writing blogging about sidewalks and cities since 2005, ever since he read Jane Jacobs. He is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota Geography Department, the Cityscape columnist at Minnpost, and has written multiple books on local urban history. He was born in Minneapolis, but has spent most of his time in St Paul. Check out Twitter @BillLindeke or on Facebook.