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Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 census, it is the state's most populous city. Located in the state's center near the eastern border, it occupies both banks of the Upper Mississippi River and adjoins Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota. Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the surrounding area are collectively known as the Twin Cities, a metropolitan area with 3.69 million residents. Minneapolis is built on an artesian aquifer on flat terrain and is known for cold, snowy winters and hot, humid summers. Nicknamed the "City of Lakes", Minneapolis is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks, and waterfalls. The city's public park system is connected by the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway.
Dakota people previously inhabited the site of today's Minneapolis. European colonization and settlement began north of Fort Snelling along Saint Anthony Falls—the only natural waterfall on the Mississippi River. Location near the fort and the falls' power—with its potential for industrial activity—fostered the city's early growth. For a time in the 19th century, Minneapolis was the lumber and flour milling capital of the world, and as home to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, it has preserved its financial clout into the 21st century. A Minneapolis Depression-era labor strike brought about federal worker protections. Work in Minneapolis contributed to the computing industry, and the city is the birthplace of General Mills, the Pillsbury brand, Target Corporation, and Thermo King mobile refrigeration.
The city's major arts institutions include the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Guthrie Theater. Four professional sports teams play downtown. Musician Prince played the First Avenue nightclub. Minneapolis is home to the University of Minnesota's main campus. The city's public transport is provided by Metro Transit, and the international airport, serving the Twin Cities region, is located towards the south on the city limits.
Residents adhere to more than fifty religions. Despite its well-regarded quality of life, Minneapolis has stark disparities among its residents—arguably the most critical issue confronting the city in the 21st century. Governed by a mayor-council system, Minneapolis has a political landscape dominated by the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), with Jacob Frey serving as mayor since 2018.
In the space of sixty years, the US seized all of the Dakota land and forced them out of their homeland. Purchasing most of modern-day Minneapolis, Zebulon Pike made the 1805 Treaty of St. Peter with the Dakota. Pike bought a strip of land—coinciding with the sacred place of Dakota origin—on the Mississippi south of Saint Anthony Falls, with the agreement the US would build a military fort and trading post there and the Dakota would retain their usufructuary rights. In 1819, the US Army built Fort Snelling to direct Native American trade away from British-Canadian traders and to deter war between the Dakota and Ojibwe in northern Minnesota. Under pressure from US officials in a series of treaties, the Dakota ceded their land first to the east and then to the west of the Mississippi, the river that runs through Minneapolis. Dakota leaders twice refused to sign the next treaty until they were paid for the previous one. In the decades following these treaty signings, the federal US government rarely honored their terms. At the beginning of the American Civil War, annuity payments owed in June 1862 to the Dakota by treaty were late, causing acute hunger among the Dakota. Facing starvation a faction of the Dakota declared war in August and killed settlers. Serving without any prior military experience, US commander Henry Sibley commanded raw recruits, volunteer mounted troops from Minneapolis and Saint Paul with no military experience. The war went on for six weeks in the Minnesota River valley. After a kangaroo court, 38 Dakota men were hanged. The army force-marched 1,700 non-hostile Dakota men, women, children, and elders to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. Minneapolitans reportedly threatened more than once to attack the camp. In 1863, the US "abrogated and annulled" all treaties with the Dakota. With Governor Alexander Ramsey calling for their extermination, most Dakota were exiled from Minnesota.
While the Dakota were being expelled, Franklin Steele laid claim to the east bank of Saint Anthony Falls, and John H. Stevens built a home on the west bank. In the Dakota language, the city's name is Bde Óta Othúŋwe ('Many Lakes Town'). Residents had divergent ideas on names for their community. Charles Hoag proposed combining the Dakota word for 'water' ( mni) with the Greek word for 'city' (polis), yielding Minneapolis. In 1851, after a meeting of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature, leaders of east bank St. Anthony lost their bid to move the capital from Saint Paul, but they eventually won the state university. Courtesy Star Tribune and the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, in In 1856, the territorial legislature authorized Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank. Minneapolis was incorporated as a city in 1867, and in 1872, it merged with St. Anthony.
Disasters struck in the late 19th century: the Eastman tunnel under the river leaked in 1869; twice, fire destroyed the entire row of sawmills on the east bank; an explosion of flour dust at the Washburn A mill killed eighteen people and demolished about half the city's milling capacity; and in 1893, fire spread from Nicollet Island to Boom Island to northeast Minneapolis, destroyed twenty blocks, and killed two people.
The lumber industry was built around forests in northern Minnesota, largely by lumbermen emigrating from Maine's depleting forests. The region's waterways were used to transport logs well after railroads developed; the Mississippi River carried logs to St. Louis until the early 20th century. In 1871, of the thirteen mills sawing lumber in St. Anthony, eight ran on water power, and five ran on steam power. Auxiliary businesses on the river's west bank included woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes, and wood-planing. Minneapolis supplied the materials for farmsteads and settlement of rapidly expanding cities on the that lacked wood. White pine milled in Minneapolis built Miles City, Montana; Bismarck, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Omaha, Nebraska; and Wichita, Kansas. Growing use of steam power freed lumbermen and their sawmills from dependence on the falls. Lumbering's decline began around the turn of the century, and sawmills in the city including the Weyerhauser mill closed by 1919. After depleting Minnesota's white pine, some lumbermen moved on to Douglas fir in the Pacific Northwest.
In 1877, Cadwallader C. Washburn co-founded Washburn-Crosby, the company that became General Mills. Washburn and partner John Crosby sent Austrian civil engineer William de la Barre to Hungary where he acquired innovations through industrial espionage. De la Barre calculated and managed the power at the falls and encouraged steam for auxiliary power. C. A. Pillsbury Company across the river hired Washburn-Crosby employees and began using the new methods. Wheat farming developed west across the Great Plains, from Minnesota, to the Dakota Boom and Montana, and new rail lines connected these farmers to the Minneapolis mills, reciprocally spurring further expansion. The hard red spring wheat grown in Minnesota became valuable, and Minnesota "patent" flour was recognized at the time as the best bread flour in the world. In 1900, fourteen percent of America's grain was milled in Minneapolis and about one third of that was shipped overseas. Overall production peaked at 18.5 million barrels in 1916. Decades of soil exhaustion, stem rust, and changes in freight tariffs combined to quash the city's flour industry. In the 1920s, Washburn-Crosby and Pillsbury developed new milling centers in Buffalo, New York, and Kansas City, Missouri, while maintaining their headquarters in Minneapolis. The falls became a national historic district, and the upper St. Anthony lock and dam was permanently closed to traffic. The city announced that in accordance with a 2020 act of Congress, ownership of of federal land around the falls will transfer in 2026 to a Dakota-led nonprofit Owámniyomni Okhódayapi.
Columnist Don Morrison says that after the milling era waned a "modern, major city" emerged. Around 1900, Minneapolis attracted skilled workers who leveraged expertise from the University of Minnesota. In 1923, Munsingwear was the world's largest manufacturer of underwear. Frederick McKinley Jones invented mobile refrigeration in Minneapolis, and with his associate founded Thermo King in 1938. In 1949, Medtronic was founded in a Minneapolis garage. Minneapolis-Honeywell built a south Minneapolis campus where their experience regulating earned them military contracts for the Norden bombsight and the C-1 autopilot. In 1957, Control Data began in downtown Minneapolis, where in the CDC 1604 computer they replaced with . A highly successful business until disbanded in 1990, Control Data opened a facility in economically depressed north Minneapolis, bringing jobs and good publicity. A University of Minnesota computing group released Gopher in 1991; three years later, the World Wide Web superseded Gopher traffic.
During the summer of 1934 and the financial downturn of the Great Depression, the Citizens' Alliance, an association of employers, refused to negotiate with teamsters. The truck drivers trade union executed strikes in May and July–August. Charles Rumford Walker said that Minneapolis teamsters succeeded in part due to the "military precision of the strike machine". The union victory ultimately led to 1935 and 1938 federal laws protecting workers' rights.
From the end of World War I in 1918 until 1950, antisemitism was commonplace in Minneapolis—Carey McWilliams called the city the antisemitic capital of the US. Starting in 1936, a fascist hate group known as the Silver Shirts held meetings in the city. In the 1940s, mayor Hubert Humphrey worked to rescue the city's reputation and helped the city establish the country's first municipal fair employment practices and a human-relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities. However, the lives of Black people had not been improved. In 1966 and 1967—years of significant turmoil across the US—suppressed anger among the Black population was released in two disturbances on Plymouth Avenue. Historian Iric Nathanson says young Blacks confronted police, arson caused property damage, and "random gunshots" caused minor injuries in what was a "relatively minor incident" in Minneapolis compared to the loss of life and property in similar incidents in Detroit and Newark. A coalition reached a peaceful outcome but again failed to solve Black poverty and unemployment. In the wake of unrest and voter backlash, Charles Stenvig, a law-and-order candidate, became mayor in 1969, and governed for almost a decade.
Disparate events defined the second half of the 20th century. Between 1958 and 1963, Minneapolis demolished "skid row". Gone were with more than 200 buildings, or roughly 40 percent of downtown, including the Gateway District and its significant architecture such as the Metropolitan Building. Opened in 1967, I-35W displaced Black and Mexican neighborhoods in south Minneapolis. In 1968, relocated Native Americans founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis. Begun as an alternative to public and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, AIM's Heart of the Earth Survival School taught Native American traditions to children for nearly twenty years. A same-sex Minneapolis couple appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court but their marriage license was denied. They managed to get a license and marry in 1971, forty years before Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage. Immigration helped to curb the city's mid-20th century population decline. But because of a few radicalized persons, the city's large Somali population was targeted with discrimination after 9/11, when its or banks were closed.
In 2020, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier recorded the murder of George Floyd; Frazier's video contradicted the police department's initial statement. Floyd, a Black man, suffocated when Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, knelt on his neck and back for more than nine minutes. Reporting on the local reaction, The New York Times said that "over three nights, a five-mile stretch of Minneapolis sustained extraordinary damage"—destruction included a police station that demonstrators overran and set on fire. Floyd's murder sparked international rebellions, mass protests, and locally, years of ongoing unrest over racial injustice. As of 2024, protest continued daily at the intersection where Floyd died, now known as George Floyd Square, with the slogan "No justice, no street".Continuing protests in: Minneapolis gathered ideas for the square and through community engagement promised final proposals for the end of 2024, that could be implemented by 2026 or thereafter. Protesters continued to ask for twenty-four reforms—many now met; a sticking point was ending qualified immunity for police.
Minneapolis is sited above an artesian aquifer and on flat terrain. Its total area is of which six percent is covered by water. The city has a segment of the Mississippi River, four streams, and 17 waterbodies—13 of them lakes, with of lake shoreline.
A 1959 report by the US Soil Conservation Service listed Minneapolis's elevation above mean sea level as . The city's lowest elevation of above sea level is near the confluence of Minnehaha Creek with the Mississippi River. Sources disagree on the exact location and elevation of the city's highest point, which is cited as being between above sea level.
Around 1990, the city set up the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP), in which every one of the city's eighty-some neighborhoods participated. Funded for 20 years through 2011, with $400 million tax increment financing , the program caught the eye of UN-Habitat, who considered it an example of . Residents had a direct connection to government in NRP, whereby they proposed ideas appropriate for their area, and NRP reviewed the plans and provided implementation funds. The city's Neighborhood and Community Relations department took NRP's place in 2011 and is funded only by city revenue. In 2019, the city released the Neighborhoods 2020 program, which reworked neighborhood funding with an equity-focused lens. This reduced guaranteed funding, and several neighborhood organizations have since struggled with operations or merged with other neighborhoods due to decreased revenue. Base funding for every neighborhood organization increased in the 2024 city budget.
In 2018, the Minneapolis City Council approved the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which resulted in a citywide end to single-family zoning. Slate reported that Minneapolis was the first major city in the US to make citywide such a revision in housing possibilities. At the time, 70 percent of residential land was zoned for detached, single-family homes, though many of those areas had "nonconforming" buildings with more housing units. City leaders sought to increase the supply of housing so more neighborhoods would be affordable and to decrease the effects single-family zoning had caused on racial disparities and segregation. The Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the YIMBY agenda". From 2022 until 2024, the Minnesota Supreme Court, the US District Court, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals arrived at competing opinions, first shutting down the plan, and then securing its survival. Ultimately in 2024, the state legislature passed a bill approving the city's 2040 plan.
Mexican people migrant workers began coming to Minnesota as early as 1860, although few stayed year-round. Latin Americans eventually settled in several neighborhoods in Minneapolis, including Phillips, Whittier, Longfellow and Northeast. Before the turn of the 21st century, Latinos were the state's largest and fastest-growing immigrant group.
Immigrants from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark found common ground with the Republicanism and Protestant belief systems of the New England migrants who preceded them. Irish people, Scottish people, and English people immigrants arrived after the Civil War; Germans and Jews from Central Europe and Eastern Europe, as well as Russians, followed. Minneapolis welcomed Italians and Greeks in the 1890s and 1900s, and Slovaks and Czechs immigrants settled in the Bohemian Flats area on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Ukrainians arrived after 1900, and Central European migrants made their homes in the Northeast neighborhood.
Chinese people began immigration in the 1870s and Chinese businesses centered on the Gateway District and Glenwood Avenue. Westminster Presbyterian Church gave language classes and support for Chinese Americans in Minneapolis, many of whom had fled discrimination in western states. Japanese Americans, many relocated from San Francisco, worked at Camp Savage, a secret military Japanese-language school that trained interpreters and translators. Following World War II, some Japanese and Japanese Americans remained in Minneapolis, and by 1970, they numbered nearly 2,000, forming part of the state's largest Asian American community. In the 1950s, the US government relocated Native Americans to cities like Minneapolis, attempting to dismantle Indian reservations. Around 1970, Koreans arrived, and the first Filipinos came to attend the University of Minnesota. Vietnamese, Hmong people (some from Thailand), Lao people, and Khmer people settled mainly in Saint Paul around 1975, but some built organizations in Minneapolis. In 1992, 160 Tibetan people came to Minnesota, and many settled in the city's Whittier neighborhood. Burmese people immigrants arrived in the early 2000s, with some moving to Greater Minnesota. The population of people from Indian people in Minneapolis increased by 1,000 between 2000 and 2010, making it the largest concentration of Indians living in the state.
The population of Minneapolis grew until 1950 when the census peaked at 521,718—the only time it has exceeded a half million. The population then declined for decades; after World War II, people moved to the suburbs and generally out of the Midwest.
By 1930, Minneapolis had one of the nation's highest literacy rates among Black people residents. However, discrimination prevented them from obtaining higher-paying jobs. In 1935, Cecil Newman and the Minneapolis Spokesman led a year-long consumer boycott of four area breweries that refused to hire Blacks. Employment improved during World War II, but housing discrimination persisted. Between 1950 and 1970, the Black population in Minneapolis increased by 436 percent. After the Rust Belt economy declined in the 1980s, Black migrants were attracted to Minneapolis for its job opportunities, good schools, and safe neighborhoods. In the 1990s, immigrants from the Horn of Africa began to arrive, from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and particularly Somalia. Immigration from Somalia slowed significantly following a 2017 national executive order. As of 2022, about 3,000 Ethiopians and 20,000 Somalis reside in Minneapolis.
The Williams Institute reported that the Twin Cities had an estimated 4.2-percent LGBT adult population in 2020. In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign gave Minneapolis 94 points out of 100 on the Municipal Equality Index of support for the LGBTQ+ population. Twin Cities Pride is held every June.
The most common ancestries in Minneapolis according to the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) were German Americans (22.9 percent), Irish Americans (10.8 percent), Norwegian (8.9 percent), Subsaharan African (6.7 percent), and Swedish (6.1 percent). Among those five years and older, 81.2 percent spoke only English language at home, while 7.1 percent spoke Spanish language and 11.7 percent spoke other languages, including large numbers of Somali language and Hmong language speakers. About 13.7 percent of the population was Foreign born, with 53.2 percent of them being naturalization US citizens. Most immigrants arrived from Africa (40.6 percent), Latin America (25.2 percent), and Asia (24.6 percent), with 34.6 percent of all foreign-born residents having arrived in 2010 or earlier.
Comparable to the US average of $70,784 in 2021, the ACS reported that the 2021 median household income in Minneapolis was $69,397 , It was $97,670 for families, $123,693 for married couples, and $54,083 for non-family households. In 2023, the median Minneapolis rent was $1,529, compared to the national median of $1,723. Over 92 percent of housing units in Minneapolis were occupied. Housing units in the city built in 1939 or earlier comprised 43.7 percent. Almost 17 percent of residents lived in poverty in 2023, compared to the US average of 11.1 percent. As of 2022, 90.8 percent of residents age 25 years or older had earned a high school degree compared to 89.1 percent nationally, and 53.5 percent had a bachelor's degree or higher compared to the 34.3 percent US national average. US veterans made up 2.8 percent of the population compared to the national average of 5 percent in 2023.
In Minneapolis in 2020, Blacks owned homes at a rate one-third that of White families. Statewide by 2022, the gap between White and Black home ownership declined from 51.5 percent to 48 percent. Statewide, alongside this small improvement was a sharp increase in the Black-to-White comparative number of deaths of despair (e.g., alcohol, drugs, and suicide). The Minneapolis income gap in 2018 was one of the largest in the country, with Black families earning about 44 percent of what White families earned annually. Statewide in 2022 using inflation-adjusted dollars, the median income for a Black family was $34,377 less than a White family's median income, an improvement of $7,000 since 2019.
| + Race and ethnicity of Minneapolis, 1990–2020 | ||||
| White alone | 249,581| | 230,650| | 249,466| | 288,967| |
| Black alone | 81,088| | 69,971| | 67,262| | 47,948| |
| Hispanic or Latino (any race) | 44,513| | 40,073| | 29,085| | 7,900| |
| Asian American alone | 24,743| | 21,399| | 23,912| | 15,550| |
| American Indian and Alaska Native alone | 5,184| | 6,351| | 7,576| | 12,335| |
| Other race alone | 2,136| | 962| | —| — | 3,410| |
| Two or more races | 22,538| | 13,004| | 17,771|| || — | — | |
Minneapolis has a history of societal racism and has racial disparities in nearly every aspect of society. As White settlers displaced the Indigenous population during the 19th century, they claimed the city's land, and Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice explains that today's disparities evolved from control of the land. Discrimination increased when flour milling moved to the East Coast and the economy declined.
The foundation laid by racial covenants on residential segregation, property value, homeownership, wealth, housing security, access to green spaces, and health equity shapes the lives of people in the 21st century. The city wrote in a decennial plan that racially discriminatory federal housing policies starting in the 1930s "prevented access to mortgages in areas with Jews, African-Americans and other minorities" and "left a lasting effect on the physical characteristics of the city and the financial well-being of its residents".
Discussing a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis report on how systemic racism compromises education in Minnesota,Factors outlined include racial gaps in opportunity, limited pre-school subsidy programs, educator bias, differences in families' and schools' economic resources, less-experienced teachers, and completion rate gaps. Professor Keith Mayes says, "So the housing disparities created the educational disparities that we still live with today." Professor Samuel Myers Jr. says of redlining, "Policing policies evolved that substituted explicit racial profiling with scientific management of racially disparate arrests. discriminatory policies became institutionalized and 'baked in' to the fabric of Minnesota life." Government efforts to address these disparities included zoning changes passed in the 2040 plan, and declaring racism a public health emergency in 2020.
Aligning with a national trend, the metro area's next largest group after Christians is the 23-percent irreligion population. At the same time, more than 50 denominations and religions are present in Minneapolis, representing most of the world's religions. Temple Israel was built in 1928 by the city's first Judaism congregation, Shaarai Tov, which formed in 1878. By 1959, a Temple of Islam was located in north Minneapolis. In 1971, a reported 150 persons attended classes at a Hindu temple near the University of Minnesota. In 1972, the Twin Cities' first Shia Islam family resettled from Uganda. Somalis who live in Minneapolis are primarily Sunni Muslim. In 2022, Minneapolis amended its noise ordinance to allow broadcasting the adhan five times per day. The city has about seven Buddhist centers and meditation centers.
| + Largest downtown Minneapolis employers 2023 |
| Company/Organization |
| Hennepin Healthcare |
| Target Corporation |
| Hennepin County |
| Wells Fargo |
| Ameriprise Financial |
| U.S. Bancorp |
| Xcel Energy |
| City of Minneapolis |
| SPS Commerce |
| RBC Wealth Management |
| + Largest Minneapolis companies by revenue 2023 |
| Revenue (in millions) |
| $109,120 |
| $27,401 |
| $15,310 |
| $14,347 |
| $9,347 |
Along with cash requirements for the milling industry, the large amounts of capital that lumbering had accumulated stimulated the local banking industry and made Minneapolis a major financial center. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis serves Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, and parts of Wisconsin and Michigan; it has the smallest population of the twelve districts in the Federal Reserve System, and it has one branch in Helena, Montana.
Minneapolis area employment is primarily in trade, transportation, utilities, education, health services, and professional and business services. Smaller numbers of residents are employed in government, manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, and financial activities.
In 2024, the Twin Cities metropolitan area had the eighth-highest concentration of major corporate headquarters in the US. Five Fortune 500 corporations were headquartered within the city limits of Minneapolis: Target Corporation, U.S. Bancorp, Xcel Energy, Ameriprise Financial, and Thrivent. The metro area's gross domestic product was $323.9 billion in 2022 .
The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is located in south-central Minneapolis on the former homestead of the Dorilus Morrison family. McKim, Mead & White designed a vast complex meeting the ambitions of the founders for a cultural center with spaces for sculpture, an art school, and orchestra. One-seventh of their design was built and opened in 1915. Additions by other firms from 1928 to 2006 achieved much of the original scheme. Today the collection of more than 90,000 artworks spans six continents and about 5,000 years.
Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Museum, which opened in 1993, for the University of Minnesota. A 2011 addition by Gehry doubled the size of the galleries. The Museum of Russian Art opened in a restored church in 2005, and it hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events. The Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists and a center at the Northrup-King building, and it presents the Art-A-Whirl open studio tour every May.
In his social history of American regional theater, Joseph Zeigler calls the Guthrie Theater the "granddaddy" of regional theater. Tyrone Guthrie founded the Guthrie in 1963 with an inventive thrust stage—a collaboration by Guthrie, designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, and architect Ralph Rapson—jutting into the seats and surrounded by the audience on three sides. French architect Jean Nouvel designed a new Guthrie that opened in 2006 overlooking the Mississippi River. The design team reproduced the thrust stage with some alterations, and they added a proscenium stage and an experimental stage.
Minneapolis purchased and renovated the Orpheum, Shubert (now the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts), State, and Pantages theaters, vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue that are now used for concerts, plays, and performing arts. Every August, the Minnesota Fringe Festival hosts performances in venues across town. The May Day Parade is held in south Minneapolis each May.
Singer and multi-instrumentalist Prince was a child prodigy who was born in Minneapolis and lived in the area for most of his life. In an era of music scenes, 1980s Minneapolis was a hotbed for American underground rock alongside R&B, funk, and soul thanks to the nightclub First Avenue and musicians like Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, and Prince. The city hosts several other concert venues including the Cedar and the Dakota. The Armory, the Skyway Theatre, and the Uptown Theater have national management.
The American Swedish Institute occupies a former mansion on Park Avenue. The American Indian Cultural Corridor, about eight blocks on Franklin Avenue, houses All My Relatives Gallery. In 2013, the Somali Museum of Minnesota opened on Lake Street. The Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery was founded in 2018.
The nonprofit literary presses Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Milkweed Editions are based in Minneapolis. The University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The Open Book facility houses The Loft Literary Center, Milkweed, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Other Minneapolis publishers are 1517 Media, Button Poetry, and Lerner Publishing Group.
Minneapolis-based individuals who have won the food industry James Beard Foundation Award include chef Gavin Kaysen, writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, television personality Andrew Zimmern, and chef Sean Sherman, whose restaurant Owamni received James Beard's 2022 best new restaurant award.
Conceived in Minneapolis as a malted milkshake in candy form, the Milky Way bar of nougat, caramel, and chocolate was made in the North Loop neighborhood during the 1920s. Both purported originators of the Jucy Lucy burger—the 5-8 Club and Matt's Bar—have served it since the 1950s. East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s. The Herbivorous Butcher, described by CBS News as the "first vegan 'butcher' shop in the United States", opened in 2016.
Minnesota Frost, the champion Professional Women's Hockey League team in 2024 and 2025, and the Minnesota Wild, a National Hockey League team, play at the Grand Casino Arena, and the Major League Soccer soccer team Minnesota United FC play at Allianz Field. Both venues are located in Saint Paul.
In addition to professional sports teams, Minneapolis hosts a majority of the Minnesota Golden Gophers' college sports teams of the University of Minnesota. The twenty-five-member dance team performs at home football and men's basketball games and has won twenty-three national championships since 2003. The Gophers football team plays at Huntington Bank Stadium and has won seven national championships. The Gophers women's ice hockey team is a six-time NCAA champion. The Gophers men's ice hockey team plays at 3M Arena at Mariucci, and won five NCAA championships. Both the Golden Gophers men's basketball and women's basketball teams play at Williams Arena.
The U.S. Bank Stadium was built for the Vikings at a cost of $1.122 billion ; of this, the state of Minnesota provided $348million , and the city of Minneapolis spent $150million . The stadium, which MPR News called "Minnesota's biggest-ever public works project", opened in 2016 with 66,000 seats, which was expanded to 70,000 for the 2018 Super Bowl. U.S. Bank Stadium also hosts indoor running and rollerblading nights. Minneapolis has two municipal Columbia and Hiawatha in and one private course. Each January, the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships are held on Lake Nokomis. The Twin Cities Marathon held in October is a Boston Marathon qualifier. The final weekend of the 2024 pond hockey championships was canceled due to above average temperatures, as was the 2023 marathon.
Cleveland lobbied for a park on the riverfront to include the city's other waterfall. In 1889, George A. Brackett arranged financing, and his associate Henry Brown paid the state to cover the condemnation of surrounding land. Minnehaha Park, containing the 53-foot (16 m) waterfall Minnehaha Falls, is one of Minnesota's first state parks. The falls became what historian Mary Lethert Wingerd calls a "civic emblem" that appears on products and in placenames.
The city's parks are governed and operated by the independent Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board park district. Beyond its network of 185 neighborhood parks, the park board owns the city's street trees. The board owns nearly all land that borders the city's waterfronts—thus the public owns the city's lakeshore property. The park board owns land outside the city limits including its largest park, Theodore Wirth Park—sitting west of downtown Minneapolis and partly in Golden Valley—which incorporates the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary.
As of 2020, approximately 15 percent of land in Minneapolis is parks, in accordance with the national median, and 98 percent of residents live within of a park. The city's Chain of Lakes extends through five lakes in southwest Minneapolis. The chain is connected by bicycle, running, and walking paths and is used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, ice skating, and other activities. A parkway for cars, a bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians run parallel along the route of the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway. Parks are interlinked in many places, and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area connects regional parks and visitor centers. Among walks and hikes running along the Mississippi River, the , hiking-only Winchell Trail offers views of and access to the Mississippi Gorge and a rustic hiking experience. The Minneapolis Aquatennial, a civic celebration of the "City of Lakes", is held each July.
Minneapolis's climate provides opportunities for winter activities such as ice fishing, snowshoeing, ice skating, cross-country skiing, and sledding at many parks and lakes. As of 2024, the park board maintained 43 outdoor at 20 sites in winter.
The Minneapolis City Council has 13 members who represent the city's 13 wards. In 2021, a ballot question shifted more weight from the city council to the mayor; proponents had tried to achieve this change since the early 20th century. The mayor and city council now share responsibility for the city's finances. The city's primary source of funding is property tax. A sales tax of 9.03 percent on purchases made within the city is a combination of the city sales tax of 0.50 percent, along with county, state, and special district taxes. The Park and Recreation Board is an independent city department with nine elected commissioners who levy their own taxes, subject to city charter limits. The Board of Estimation and Taxation, which oversees city levies, is also an independent department.
The mayoral reform ballot measure led to four direct reports to the mayor—two officers, the city attorney, and the chief of staff—and the creation of two new offices. The Office of Public Service is led by the city operations officer. The Minneapolis departments of civil rights and public works report to the office which oversees communications and engagement; development, health, and livability; and internal operations. The Office of Community Safety has a single commissioner responsible for overseeing the police and fire departments, 911 dispatch, emergency management, and violence prevention; within this office, four emergency response units serve the city: Behavioral Crisis Response (BCR), fire, emergency medical services, and police. Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, also known as Canopy Roots, operates BCR free of charge to respond to crises and some 911 calls that do not require police.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, about 166 police officers left of their own accord either to retirement or to temporary leave—many with PTSD—and a crime wave resulted in more than 500 shootings. A Reuters investigation found that killings surged when a "hands-off" attitude resulted in fewer officer-initiated encounters. After Floyd's murder, chiefs reprimanded a dozen officers for misconduct, and as of early 2024, the city had paid out $50million for police conduct claims. In 2024 came approval of an independent monitor of a court-enforceable consent decree, an agreement negotiated with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and the United States Department of Justice to compel reformed policing practices. In May 2025, the Trump administration moved to dismiss the consent decree.
Violent crime rose three percent across Minneapolis in July 2022 compared with 2021, and in 2020, it rose 21 percent compared to the average of the previous five years. Violent crime was down for 2022 in every category except assaults. Carjackings, gunshots fired, gunshot wounds, and robberies decreased, and homicides were down 20 percent compared to the previous year.
In 2015, the city council passed a resolution making fossil fuel divestment city policy, joining 17 cities worldwide in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Minneapolis's climate change calls for an 80-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In 2021, the city council voted unanimously to abolish its required minimum number of parking spaces for new construction. Minneapolis has a separation ordinance that directs local law-enforcement officers not to "take any law enforcement action" for the sole purpose of finding undocumented immigrants, nor to ask an individual about their immigration status.
School district demographics were 41 percent White students, 35 percent Black, 14 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent each were Asian and Native American. English-language learners were about 17 percent in a district that spoke 100 languages at home. About 15 percent were special education students. As of fall 2023, every public school student in the state receives one free breakfast and one free lunch each school day. In 2022, the district's graduation rate was 77 percent, an improvement of 3 percent over the previous year.
Augsburg University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and North Central University are private four-year colleges; the first two offer master's programs. The public two-year Minneapolis Community and Technical College and the private Dunwoody College of Technology provide career training and associate degrees, and the latter offers a bachelor's program. Saint Mary's University of Minnesota has a Twin Cities campus for its graduate and professional programs. Opening a new Minneapolis site in 2024, Red Lake Nation College is an accredited federally recognized tribal college site that teaches Ojibwe culture and awards associate degrees. The large, principally online universities Capella University and Walden University are both headquartered in the city. The public four-year Metropolitan State University and the private four-year University of St. Thomas are post-secondary institutions based elsewhere that have campuses in Minneapolis. The city has more than twenty-five licensed career schools.
Media Tales called Minnesota a "plentiful" source of national ; companies in Minneapolis publish Foodservice News and Franchise Times. Some other magazines published in the city are American Craft; business publications Enterprise Minnesota and Twin Cities Business; the literary journal Rain Taxi; university student publications Great River Review, Minnesota Journal of International Law, and Minnesota Law Review; and professional magazines Architecture Minnesota, Bench & Bar, and Minnesota Medicine.
In 2023, Nielsen Holdings found the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area to be the 15th-largest Media market which is down from 14th in 2022. Of the 89 FM and 57 AM stations that can be heard in the city, 17 FM stations and 11 AM stations are licensed in Minneapolis. The Twin Cities have 1,742,530 TV homes. TV Guide lists 151 TV channels for Minneapolis.
A division of the Metropolitan Council, Metro Transit operates public transportation in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. As of 2023, the system has two light rail lines, five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, and one commuter rail line. A fleet of 736 buses serves 10,745 bus stops. As of 2021, riders of Metro Transit system-wide were 55 percent persons of color. The system provided nearly 45 million rides in 2023, a sixteen-percent increase over the previous year. In 2023, bus service had returned to 90 percent of its ridership before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Metro Blue Line light rail line connects the Mall of America and Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport in Bloomington to downtown, and the Green Line travels from downtown through the University of Minnesota campus to downtown Saint Paul. A Bottineau LRT to the northwest suburbs is scheduled to be built and completed by 2030. A Southwest LRT is planned to connect downtown with the southwestern suburbs. BRT lines are 25 percent faster than regular bus lines because riders pay before boarding, stops are limited, and sometimes they employ signal prioritization. The newest BRT line, the D Line, runs along one of Minnesota's most used bus lines, the route5, where a quarter of households do not have access to a car. In January 2026, bus service will replace the Northstar Line from Big Lake, Minnesota, to downtown Minneapolis. Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019. Short more than a hundred police officers, in 2022, the Metro Council hired community groups to help police light rail stations; these non-profits can guide passengers to mental health services and shelters. In partnership with a private security company in 2024, Metro Transit improved security and safety with 24 trip agents who ride the light rail lines each day and work with transit police and community officers.
In 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was rebuilt in 14 months.
Evie Carshare, owned by Minneapolis and Saint Paul since 2022, is a fleet of 145 electric cars available for one-way trips in a area of the Twin Cities. In warm weather, Lime and Veo have shared electric bikes and scooters for rent at sixty mobility hubs located on transit lines; riders may end their trip anywhere in the city.
Minneapolis has of on-street protected bikeways, of bike lanes, and of off-street bikeways and trails. Off-street facilities include the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway, Midtown Greenway, Little Earth Trail, Hiawatha LRT Trail, Kenilworth Trail, and Cedar Lake Trail. The Minneapolis Skyway System, of enclosed pedestrian bridges called , links 80 city blocks downtown with access to second-floor restaurants, retailers, government, sports facilities, doctor's offices, and other businesses that are open on weekdays. Fifteen commercial passenger airlines serve Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (MSP). MSP is the headquarters of Sun Country Airlines. After it merged with Northwest Airlines in 2009, Delta Air Lines flew 80 percent of the airport's traffic, and MSP was Delta's second-largest US hub.
The city has nineteen . Requests for non-emergency information or service requests can be made through Minneapolis 311. The call center operates in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Somali, and offers 220 language options. Email, TTY, text, voice, and a mobile app can access the center.
The Minneapolis department of public works is responsible for services including snow plowing, solid waste removal, traffic and parking, water treatment, transportation planning and maintenance, and fleet services for the city. Among its engineering functions, the department was increasing the capacity of a storm drain system under Washington to Chicago avenues and had completed 97 percent of the excavation phase and 41 percent of the lining phase as of August 2023. Designed for downtown's concrete landscape, the system will drain runoff into the Mississippi in case of a 100-year storm.
Downtown Improvement District ambassadors, who are identified by their blue-and-green-yellow fluorescent jackets, daily patrol a 120-block area of downtown to greet and assist visitors, remove trash, monitor property, and call police when they are needed. The ambassador program is a public-private partnership that is paid for by a special downtown tax district.
Cardiac surgery was developed at the University of Minnesota's Variety Club Heart Hospital. Surgeon F. John Lewis successfully repaired a child's congenital heart defect in 1952. By 1957, more than 200 patients—most of whom were children—had survived open-heart surgery. Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.
In 2022, opioid overdoses killed 231 persons in Minneapolis. For the state in 2021, Black persons were three times and Native American persons were ten times more likely to die from an opioid overdose than White persons. The 2024 city budget added funds for the Turning Point treatment center, which provides care specifically for African Americans. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa is building a culturally sensitive treatment center for opioid and fentanyl addiction. Minneapolis transferred two city-owned properties to the Red Lake Nation for the facility.
The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy—funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa—dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognized tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status.
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