Minneapolis is a dominating economic presence in Hennepin County and in the state of Minnesota. As the base of the state’s dominant newspaper even Minneapolis’ politics can dominate so many conversations all Minnesotans need to be having about the direction of our whole state.
Last week I posted a series of maps produced by Three Rivers Park District showing their future park district plans for 2030 and beyond found in their Land Inventory .pdf. What fascinated me the most was that Three Rivers Park District created maps of Hennepin County development completely excluding Minneapolis. Do maps of Hennepin minus Minneapolis reveal an existential angst like the Garfield minus Garfield does for Jon Arbuckle?
In Three Rivers Park District’s Visitor Inventory .pdf I found three demographic maps of Hennepin minus Minneapolis that I believe were worth a long hard look. This week I’m calling attention to the Hennepin minus Minneapolis People of Color demographics.
Rest of Hennepin, excluding Minneapolis, People of Color by acre.
Disappointingly I couldn’t locate a map legend of the colors in the demographic maps that Three Rivers Park District published in the Visitor Inventory document (a sin my cartography classes drilled into me). By looking at the entire Visitor Inventory document, I believe the data is from 2014. While the Three Rivers Park District park system is overlaid on the demographic data, I’m still fascinated by the demographic data here, and the colors shown are still indicating obvious patterns and trends.
The Visitor Inventory document makes note that the first-tier communities are home to the greatest concentrations of people of color, except Golden Valley and Edina, where those two cities’ racial demographics are more similar to the second-tier communities. I’d also include St. Anthony Village on this list, because to my eyes the map data makes it looks demographically similar to a second tier community.
The map reveals first-tier community concentrations along Blake Road in Hopkins, along the Richfield Bloomington border and along TH 77, and along Zane Ave and Brooklyn Blvd in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center. The Visitor Inventory .pdf notes these, but I can’t help imagining how the Hennepin County demographic patterns will change over the next 20 years. How will the second tier suburbs change? Will the desire to be near South Minneapolis spill over into Richfield and St. Louis Park, and reduce the percentage of people of color in those communities to be more like South Minneapolis?
Knowing the Twin Cities has some of the worst household unemployment disparities by race, that household wealth disparities linger for generations, and that we’re making poor progress improving this relative to other metros, if a community deliberately fails to add more housing for residents with lower incomes, are they deliberately failing to add housing for people of color?
Next week, I’m going post the map of Hennepin minus Minneapolis showing income less than $50K. Stay tuned!