Category: Maps

Map Monday: Fantasy Eastern US Rail Network

Here’s a map from erstwhile rail and transit blogger, Alon Levy, with a proposed “high-speed” / low-speed rail network that would connect to Minnesota. First, the map itself: For Levy’s proposal, the Chicago-to-Minneapolis travel time would be 2 hours and 30 minutes. There would also be connection north to Duluth. Here’s what Levy writes about […]

Google Maps Bottineau

Google Maps in the Minneapolis Bottineau Neighborhood

Note: Original post is from the LocalMN Stories blog in July, 2017. It’s edited just a bit regarding any recent changes to my knowledge. Definitely comment away if there are more! Plus, it’s chilly outside. Thinking happy summer thoughts. The Bottineau neighborhood is at the very north end of the 3rd ward. Google Maps does make it a bit […]

Map Monday: Saint Paul What Even Am I Looking At

Here’s a map on the wall at the new Treasure Island Center in downtown Saint Paul, which is the old Macy’s Building which was the old Dayton’s, which was designed by famous mall architect and quasi-pedestrian-focused architect Victor Gruen to be a windowless box. Today it has windows in it thanks to a drastic deconstructive […]

Saint Paul's 1922 zoning map (MN Historical Society)

St. Paul 2040 Could Learn Something from St. Paul 1922

As Saint Paul debates its 2040 plan, it is revealing to look back at one of the city’s first zoning maps from the early 1920s. A little inspection of the map reveals some of the origins of the city’s current social geography and social divides, but also some elements worthy of resurrection. The dominance of […]

494 Historical Land Use Map Cu

Map Monday: 494 Corridor Land Uses, 1953-76

Here’s a fun historical map showing how land use changed during the boom time heyday of the I-494 strip on the south edge of the Twin Cities. It’s from a chapter out of a book called “The Geography of Urban Transportation,” edited by Susan Hanson and Genevieve Giuliano. The chapter, by Peter O. Muller, is […]

Map Monday: Minneapolis Home Values Minus Purchase Price

Here’s a fascinating map put together by Scott Shaffer for a new post on the blog of streets.mn Board alum Nick Magrino. It shows the current home values of homes in the city minus their purchase price, or as Magrino states “a rough way of estimating how much equity people have on top of whatever […]

Twin Cities Opportunity Zones

Map Monday: Designated Opportunity Zones of the Twin Cities

This past weekend Star Tribune metro reporter Eric Roper wrote about the census tract that includes the Mall of America and Bloomington’s South Loop being classified as Opportunity Zones. He notes that in the 2017 tax code overhaul, Congress created Opportunity Zones to offer tax advantages for investments made in designated distressed areas. The designations stay in […]

Life Expectancy Map

Map Monday: Twin Cities Metro by Life Expectancy

Check out this new mapping project from Quartz, showing the average life expectancy for every zip code in the US. [You can search any city in the state or the country using the map!] The differences in life expectancy are striking, and nowhere more so than right in Saint Paul. The Quartz team found that […]

Map Monday: Minnesota Carbon Footprints by Zip Code

Here is a very cool map showing the “average annual carbon footprints” of different parts of the state, down to the level of individual zip codes! It’s put together by the Cool Climate Institute at Berkeley using a carbon footprint calculator developed in an academic paper in the Environmental Science and Technology journal. Here’s the […]

Constellation Maps Lg

Map Monday: Constellation City Map of Minnesota & Neighboring States

Here is a fun and graphically minimalist approach to mapping cities in different states, from the Barely Maps website created by Peter Gorman. These “maps” show the largest cities in any state as stars in constellations, with the largest city as the large star, the lines demarcate a larger distance): Here is Minnesota: And our […]