Via Slate, here’s an interesting map that shows automobile ownership per capita across the Twin Cities’ metro. It’s from a recent Trulia dataset that does this for the whole country, and lets you easily glimpse the car ownership rates across the country.
Here’s the TC:
Two basic patterns emerge: the low-car areas correspond with both areas of poverty, and areas where there is a high level of walkability and transit service. You can see both of those patterns in the map data here, with low levels of car ownership both in and around downtown Minneapolis and in Phillips or North Minneapolis.
Henry Grabar did a write up of the map on Slate that came to the same conclusion
In dense, transit-rich cities like New York and Boston, vehicle ownership is more closely linked to population density than to income. What kind of neighborhood you live in is likely to align with whether you own a car, or two. In places like Los Angeles and Houston, vehicle ownership is much more closely tied to income. Families who make more money buy more cars.
This map could serve as a useful shorthand for where to focus transit and pedestrian improvements in the Twin Cities.