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Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
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How about "Kansas City is the Minneapolis/St. Paul of the Great Plains"? We're more upper-midwestern or Northern/Great Lakes, but have similar regional relationships.
I lived in isolated Minneapolis for 21 years, and when I couldn't afford to escape it,
my source of fun would come from going to any number of these anti-development, anti-density Fargo-minded neighborhood groups (Nimby's everywhere in this city) and raising hell!
One group doesn't want a Mexican restaurant in their Phillips neighborhood (would draw too much traffic and perhaps an undesirable clientele), one group
is opposed to construction of any building over 3 stories around Lake Calhoun or Lake of the Isles, one group wants to put a moratorium on furthur construction of any mid or high rise building along the Mississippi river,
one group doesn't want any new buildings downtown to exceed the height of the one that's currently the tallest (one rabid Nimby even wanted the developers to shave off 10 floors of every office building downtown to give it a more Fargo-like flavor ).
Cedar Riverside. They even have their own "mayor" over there who has the power to accept or reject any building proposal. Any developer who proposes a building higher than 6 stories is asked: What kind of drugs are you on!!!
Loring Park, which could be the Central Park of Minneapolis. Before any new high rise gets approved there, every single resident of Summit House must agree to it, that it's not going to impede their views of the downtown core.
The Wedge/Uptown Nimby's, they're the worst! If I had my way, I'd sentence each and every one of them to prison with no chance of parole!
If you think San FranNimby has control freaks when it comes to new development in their city, you ain't been to Nimby-apolis!
And how's Kansas City for Nimby's? Only the most masochistic developer would propose to build anything there?
Last edited by tijlover; 10-04-2010 at 10:32 PM..
Reason: Add word
Yes, because Las Vegas is such a progressive, dense, urban city.
What is with you and Fargo? Minneapolis isn't like Fargo. Anyway, what is wrong with Fargo?! It's a great city. I'd like to see Mpls. become more like Fargo.
tijlover, I can understand your point, and have spent many an hour railing against the Uptown NIMBYs myself; I will say, though, that after spending a lot of time reading old Wedge newspapers from the 1970s I can see where some of the older NIMBYs are coming from, or at least why they are conditioned to fear change; that was the era when a lot of really nice older houses were torn down in the name of progress, and were replaced with all those sprawling apartment buildings that you find dotted amidst the older homes and apartment buildings. Most aren't particularly dense (being only three stories tall or so), are ugly, and take up a lot of room. I'd protest having more of those in the neighborhood, too. I suppose people who cut their political teeth protesting that sort of ugly and suburban-esque development have a knee-jerk reaction to all new developments, although I think today's options (like the earlier incarnation of the proposed Mosaic project on Lagoon) will go a long way to returning the "character" of the neighborhood, not taking away from it. Still, there's just too many people who don't like living in a city neighborhood, and one really has to ask: if you don't like it, why not move to one of the many, many other Minneapolis neighborhoods that DOESN'T have parking problems or traffic? Minneapolis is indeed a city of NIMBYs, and I think the neighborhood and NRP structure gave them a greater voice (or at least validates the impression that a small but vocal group of people speaks for the neighborhoods as a whole) than they have in other cities with less formalized neighborhood groups.
In 1981, Joel Garreau wrote a book called The Nine Nations of North America. He divided the United States into nine regions based on cultural and economic ties. He put all of Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, along with portions of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana in the region he called The Breadbasket. This is a map of the nine regions from his book:
What I think is most interesting is that he put the capital of The Breadbasket in Kansas City! Not Minneapolis.
This is the portion from his book where he writes about The Breadbasket and why he placed the capital in Kansas City rather than Minneapolis:
Quote:
THE BREADBASKET
That brings me to the Breadbasket. What characterizes the Breadbasket is that it is the nation that works best in many ways. It is based on an enviable renewable economy, the most fecund agriculture that the world has ever seen. And since, of course, most people in the Breadbasket are not farmers, it is good for the Breadbasket that its industry is complementary. We’re talking about firms like John Deere, Caterpillar, Cargill. This is an integrated, stable economy and it is not likely to change any time soon. The other feature of the Breadbasket is that it is the ratifier of social change in this continent. I think Nixon was right about one thing; it is tremendously important whether ideas play in Peoria. Things like opposition to the Vietnam War or being in favor of casual sex are just kinky regional ideas from New England or southern California until they play in the Breadbasket.
Why is Kansas City the capital of this nation? Take a look at the options. First of all, Chicago is the capital of nothing since the Midwest doesn’t exist.
Basically, Chicago is best understood as a Foundry town. It has a lot of the decline and industrialization problems and overcrowding and minority problems that are typical of the Foundry. It is an important city, but it can best be understood as a border town between trade and ideas, between the Breadbasket and the Foundry. Border towns can be just as important as capitals. That is the way to understand Chicago.
St. Louis can’t be the capital of the Breadbasket because, first of all, it is a border town between Dixie and the Breadbasket. This is the place where a lot of cultural attitudes change between the South and the Plains. Second, it is somewhat of an outpost for the Foundry-like problems. And third, Missouri is such a mixed-up place that even the Federal Reserve recognizes that it isn’t one place and has a capital in both St. Louis and Kansas City.
So the only real competition we are left with is Minneapolis. It is not unusual to have a two-city competition. We see it all over North America. We see New York-Chicago, Houston-Dallas, Los Angeles-San Francisco, Anchorage-Fairbanks. So the question then is, why not Minneapolis? I picked Kansas City for several reasons. The first is its sheer centrality. It is not that far from the exact center of the continent. More important, in the last century, if you had drawn a line between New York and San Francisco and had figured out where in mid-America you were going to make your fortune, clearly you would not have picked 400 miles northwest of Chicago, especially if you had experienced its winter. You would have realized that Kansas City or someplace like it was going to be the place to make your fame and fortune.
The second reason for picking Kansas City is that its economic strength is so reflective of this Breadbasket nation. This is a city which has farms within the city limits. At the same time, as someone has said, you manufacture everything here except ships and cigarettes. This is the kind of diversity that we are looking for in a Breadbasket capital.
But for me, more important than the statistics is the way Kansas City reflects a certain bedrock philosophy. This is the most important reason for its selection. Let me try to explain what I mean by that. There are certain holders of the cultural mirrors, like Harold Ross, who used to be the editor of The New Yorker. He made it abundantly clear that he had little use for the “old lady from Dubuque.†As a result, a lot of people in the Breadbasket have developed a certain defensiveness. They think this is the best place in the world to live. But the Breadbasket is by no means parochial. They’ve been internationalists all along. And there is a lot of truth to that.
First of all, this is a great center of learning, with all the land grant universities. This chain of land grant universities is unmatched in educational achievements for everyone. And there is one of the most sophisticated senses of international interdependence here, for two reasons. First, everyone here knows where the Minuteman bases and silos are even if Easterners and Westerners don’t. And on the brighter side, they also know that the weather over Siberia or the political climate in the Middle East is going to have an immediate impact on the Breadbasket. When you see that the Soviet Union is going into its third straight bad harvest, you know that means better vacations, more John Deere equipment, more jobs for union members, more activity for the Fed. What happens in Siberia is almost as important here as what happens in Washington.
Finally, what it boils down to is that Kansas City is the capital because of the nature of its soul. I want to quote from the terrific book Missouri: Faces and Places, with photos by Wes Lyle and text by John Hall. Hall writes about Kansas City,
We’re the rivers and the faces and the streets and the straight lines of steel coming together. There is another city rising up from man’s imaginings. The essence of this place is the minglings of its fountains and its jazz. Kansas City is on the edge of the prairie, looking off into the future from different beginnings. It has its own particular sound and light.
And that’s why it is the capital of the Breadbasket.
I can't believe that map puts Houston (or at least its western suburbs), Austin (TX) and Minneapolis in the same region.
It puts a portion of the Gulf of Mexico in the Breadbasket, because so much of the grain, raw materials, and manufactured products from the plains and Midwest are sent to ports on the Gulf for shipment overseas. It's about economic ties. It's the same reason it puts the Lake Superior region in the Breadbasket, because of shipping traffic on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
That book is horribly out of date and does not reflect American society as it exists today. Not that that has any bearing on Minneapolis vs Kansas City.
Garreau also chose Detroit as the capitol of "The Foundry". Among the cities located in this "state": New York, Chicago, Toronto, and Philadelphia!
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