A couple weeks ago, I posted a map showing average jobs+population density along the planned Southwest LRT corridor. By request, I have created a similar map for Hennepin County as a whole:
Average jobs+pop density per acre. Map by the author.
This map was created in the same way as my previous map, taking 2010 Census population data and 2011 jobs data (also available from the Census Bureau) at the census block level and averaging them out. We can see that, not surprisingly, the densest parts of the county are downtown, the U of M campus, and parts of Phillips and Ventura Village. Most of Minneapolis and the inner ring suburbs have a density of at least 5 per acre, which is generally considered the minimum threshold to support basic bus service.
As noted with the Southwest LRT map, there are a number of clusters that are connected by that planned line, and the Blue Line connects to the cluster centered on the Mall of America. There are a number of other clusters, though, that are not along a current or planned LRT line, including southern Edina, Southdale, the southwest corner of 394/100, and near the General Mills headquarters.
A curious anomaly on the map is the lack of density around the airport. At first, I thought this was an artifact of how I created the map, as there are thousands of jobs located at the airport. However, these jobs are also spread out across multiple square miles. With one square mile equaling 640 acres, these jobs are technically spread out across a large area when looking at the data on a census block level.
What else do you see?