Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

🇺🇸 Minneapolis is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the seat of Hennepin County. Minneapolis and its neighbour Saint Paul are known as the Twin Cities. In all 16 counties make up the Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington MN–WI metropolitan area, and twenty-two making up the combined statistical area, the sixteenth largest metropolitan area in the United States. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River at historic Fort Snelling, and adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital.

With one of the nation's best park systems, the city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls, many connected by parkways in the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway. The city and surrounding region is the largest population and primary business centre between Chicago and Seattle. Minneapolis was historically a marketplace for timber, became the flour milling capital of the world, and, to the present day, preserved its financial clout.

Anchoring strong music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the Guthrie Theater and the First Avenue nightclub. Reflecting the region's status as a centre of folk, funk, and alternative rock music, the city was the launching pad for several of the 20th century's most influential musicians, including Bob Dylan and Prince. Hip-hop and rap scenes produced artists Lizzo, Brother Ali, Atmosphere, and Dessa.

Economy As of 2020, Minneapolis–St. Paul area is the second largest economic centre in the Midwest, behind Chicago. During the city's formative years, millers had to pay cash for wheat during the growing season and then hold it until it was needed for flour. This required large amounts of capital, which stimulated the local banking industry and made Minneapolis a major financial center. The economy of Minneapolis today is based in commerce, finance, rail and trucking services, health care, and industry. Smaller components are in publishing, milling, food processing, graphic arts, insurance, education, and high technology.

The Twin Cities metropolitan area has the fifth highest concentration of major corporate headquarters in the country as of 2018, and in 2020, five Fortune 500 corporations were headquartered within the city limits of Minneapolis. Foreign companies with US offices in Minneapolis include Accenture, Bellisio Foods (now part of Charoen Pokphand Foods), Canadian Pacific, Coloplast, RBC and Voya Financial. In its 2018 survey based on 2017 cost of living for expatriate executives, The Economist ranked Minneapolis the third-most expensive city in North America and 26th in the world.

As of 2020, the Minneapolis metropolitan area contributes $273 billion or 74% to the gross state product of Minnesota. Measured by gross metropolitan product per resident ($62,054), as of 2015, Minneapolis is the fifteenth richest city in the US. In 2011, the area's $199.6 billion gross metropolitan product and its per capita personal income ranked thirteenth in the US.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis serves Minnesota, Montana, North and South Dakota, and parts of Wisconsin and Michigan, the smallest population of the twelve regional banks in the Federal Reserve System. Along with supporting consumers and the community, the bank executes monetary policy, regulates the banks in its territory, provides cash, and oversees electronic deposits. The Minneapolis Grain Exchange, founded in 1881, is still located near the river-front and is the only exchange for hard red spring wheat futures and options.

Top publicly traded companies: 1 Target Corporation

2 U.S. Bancorp

3 Ameriprise Financial

4 Xcel Energy

5 Thrivent.

Economy: Top employers 1 Target Corporation

2 Hennepin Healthcare

3 Wells Fargo

4 Hennepin County

5 U.S. Bancorp

6 Ameriprise Financial

7 Xcel Energy

8 City of Minneapolis

9 RBC Wealth Management

10 Strategic Education.

Visual arts During the Gilded Age, the Walker Art Center began as a private art collection in the home of lumberman T. B. Walker who extended free admission to the public. Around 1940, the Walker's focus shifted to modern and contemporary art. The centre expanded in 2005 with an addition by Herzog & de Meuron. The Walker said in 2023, that together with the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden across the street, it received more than 700,000 visitors each year.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is located in south-central Minneapolis on the 10-acre (4 ha) former homestead of the Morrison family. The collection of more than 90,000 artworks spans six continents and about 5,000 years. Perhaps reflecting the ambitions of the founders, competition winner McKim, Mead & White designed a complex seven times the size of what opened in 1915. Between 1972 and 1974, Kenzō Tange built right and left wings in the minimalist style yet following the original McKim, Mead & White scheme, adding 314,000 square feet (29,200 m²). In 2006, Michael Graves added a 13,000-square-foot (1,200 m²) wing to the south.

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 hosts a collection of 20th-century Russian art and special events. Northeast Minneapolis Arts District hosts 400 independent artists, a centre at the Northrup-King Building, and recurring annual events.

Theater and performing arts Minneapolis has hosted theatrical performances since the end of the American Civil War. Early theaters included Pence Opera House, the Academy of Music, Grand Opera House, Lyceum, and later the Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1894. Fifteen of the fifty-five Twin Cities theater companies counted in 2015 by Peg Guilfoyle had a physical site in Minneapolis. About half the remainder performed in variable spaces throughout the metropolitan area.

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, State, and Pantages Theatres, vaudeville and film houses on Hennepin Avenue that are now used for concerts and plays. Another renovated theater, the Shubert, joined with the Hennepin Center for the Arts to become the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, which represents more than 20 performing arts groups.

Culture: Music Minnesota Orchestra plays classical and popular music at Orchestra Hall under Thomas Søndergård, the music director effective with the 2023–2024 season. The orchestra won a 2014 Grammy for their recording of Symphonies Nos. 1 & 4 by Sibelius, and a 2004 Grammy for composer Dominick Argento with their recording of Casa Guidi. Minneapolis's opera companies include Minnesota Opera, the Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company, and Really Spicy Opera.

Prince was a child prodigy, born in Minneapolis and an area resident for most of his life. For a time in the 1980s, Prince and other musicians like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements helped make First Avenue and the 7th Street Entry the heart of American popular music. The city hosts several other concert venues, including Icehouse, the Cedar, the Dakota, and the Cabooze. Live Nation books The Armory, the Fillmore, the Varsity Theater, and the Uptown Theater. Underground Minnesota hip hop acts such as Atmosphere feature the city and Minnesota in their song lyrics.

Charity Philanthropy and charitable giving have been part of the Minneapolis community since the 1800s. According to AmeriCorps, in 2017, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, with 46.3 percent of the population volunteering, had the highest proportion of volunteers among US cities. Catholic Charities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is one of the largest non-profit organizations in the state, and a provider of several social services.

After refugees explained the old name was a reminder of their most dreadful days, the American Refugee Committee changed its name to Alight. Alight helps millions of refugees in Africa and Asia with water, shelter, and economic support.

Historical museums Exhibits at Mill City Museum feature the city's history of flour milling, and Minnehaha Depot was built in 1875. The Bakken, formerly known as the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life, shifted focus in 2016 from electricity and magnetism to invention and innovation, and in 2020 opened a new entrance on Bde Maka Ska. Hennepin History Museum is housed in a former mansion.

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. The Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery was founded in 2018. Minneapolis hosts the world's only Somali history museum as of 2021, the tiny Somali Museum of Minnesota.

Literary arts The nonprofit literary presses Coffee House Press, Milkweed Editions, and Graywolf Press are based in Minneapolis. The University of Minnesota Press publishes books, journals, and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The Open Book facility houses Milkweed, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and The Loft Literary Center. Other Minneapolis publishers are 1517 Media, Button Poetry, and Lerner Publishing Group.

Cuisine After the flight to the suburbs began in the 1950s, streetcar service ended citywide. One of the largest urban food deserts in the US developed on the north side of Minneapolis, where as of mid-2017, 70,000 people had access to only two grocery stores. When Aldi closed in 2023, the area again became a food desert with two full-service grocers. The nonprofit Appetite for Change sought to improve the diet of residents, competing against an influx of fast-food stores, and by 2017 it administered ten gardens, sold produce in the mid-year months at West Broadway Farmers Market, supplied its restaurants, and gave away boxes of fresh produce.

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.

Both purported originators of the Jucy Lucy burger—the 5-8 Club and Matt's Bar—have served it since the 1950s. The Herbivorous Butcher opened in 2016; the shop offers natural alternatives to meat that were described by CBS News as "meat-free meat" from the "first vegan 'butcher' shop in the United States". East African cuisine arrived in Minneapolis with the wave of migrants from Somalia that started in the 1990s.

Annual events Each January and February, a series of events called The Great Northern is held in Minneapolis. The series includes the annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on Lake Nokomis; and the City of Lakes Loppet, a 13-mile (21-kilometer) or 26-mile (42-kilometer) cross-country ski race that is part of the American ski marathon series; The annual MayDay Parade is held in south Minneapolis in May. Other events include Art-A-Whirl in May; Twin Cities Pride, the Stone Arch Bridge Festival, and Twin Cities Juneteenth in June; Minnehaha Falls Art Fair and Loring Park Art Festival in July; the Minneapolis Aquatennial, the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Uptown Art Fair, Powderhorn Art Fair, and Downtown Mpls Street Art Festival in August; the Minneapolis Monarch Festival in September that celebrates the monarch butterfly's 2,300-mile (3,700 km) migration; and in October, the Twin Cities Marathon which is a Boston Marathon qualifier.

Libraries In 2008, the Minneapolis Public Library merged with the Hennepin County Library. Fifteen of the system's 41 branches serve Minneapolis. The downtown Central Library, designed by César Pelli, opened in 2006. Seven special collections hold resources for researchers.

Sport Minneapolis has four professional sports teams. The American football team Minnesota Vikings and the baseball team Minnesota Twins have played in the state since 1961. The Vikings were an National Football League expansion team and the Twins were formed when the Washington Senators relocated to Minnesota. The Twins won the World Series in 1987 and 1991, and have played at Target Field since 2010. The Vikings played in the Super Bowl following the 1969, 1973, 1974, and 1976 seasons, losing all four games. The basketball team Minnesota Timberwolves returned National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball to Minneapolis in 1989, and were followed by Minnesota Lynx in 1999. Both basketball teams play in the Target Center.

In the 2010s, the Lynx were the most-successful sports team in the city and a dominant force in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), winning four WNBA championships from 2011 to 2017. In 2016, following the killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, Lynx captains wore black shirts as a protest by Black athletes for social change.

Minnesota Wild, a National Hockey League team, play at the Xcel Energy Center; and the Major League Soccer soccer team Minnesota United FC play at Allianz Field, both of which 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 Gophers football team plays at Huntington Bank Stadium and have 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 1,750,000-square-foot (163,000 m²) U.S. Bank Stadium was built for the Vikings at a cost of $1.122 billion, $348 million of which was provided by the state of Minnesota and $150 million came from the city of Minneapolis. The stadium, which was 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.

Six golf courses are located within the Minneapolis city limits. While living in Minneapolis, Scott and Brennan Olson founded and later sold Rollerblade, the company that popularized the sport of inline skating.

Parks and recreation Charles M. Loring and William Watts Folwell enabled Horace Cleveland to create his finest landscape architecture, preserving geographical landmarks and linking them with boulevards and parkways. Theodore Wirth, park superintendent from 1906 to 1935, built parkways for the automobile, dredged lakes, sculpted land, and managed details of park expansion. Superintendent in the 1960s and 1970s, Robert W. Ruhe created neighborhood parks and recreation centres in hitherto underserved areas. In 2022, 500 participants ages 14 to 24 served as Teen Teamworks recruits for on-the-job training in green careers or as future park employees. In his book The American City: What Works, What Doesn't, Alexander Garvin wrote Minneapolis built "the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, and best-maintained public open space in America".

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 canopy of trees, and nearly all land that borders the city's diverse waterfronts. The park board owns property outside the city limits including the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary which is part of its largest park, Theodore Wirth Park, shared with Golden Valley, Minnesota.

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 one-half mile (0.8 km) of a park. Minneapolis slipped in the ParkScore index to 3rd place in 2023. The city's Chain of Lakes, consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bicycle paths, and running and walking paths, and is used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, and ice skating. A parkway for cars, a bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians run parallel along the 51-mile (82 km) 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 five-mile (8 km), hiking-only Winchell Trail offers views of and access to the Mississippi Gorge and a rustic hiking experience.

When it was established in 1889, Minnehaha Park was Minnesota's first state park, not to mention the nation's second state park. The park contains the 53-foot (16 m) waterfall Minnehaha Falls. In the bestselling and often-parodied 19th-century epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow named Hiawatha's wife Minnehaha for the Minneapolis waterfall. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people per year visited the falls before 1889. Visitors increased to about that many per day after Minnehaha became a park. In 2017, the park received over two million visitors.

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 between December and March. Scaling back on skate rental and warming houses since the COVID-19 pandemic, as of 2021, the park board maintained 20 outdoor ice rinks in winter.

Government The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, holds the majority in Minneapolis. The city has not had a Republican mayor since 1973. At the federal level, Minneapolis is situated in Minnesota's 5th congressional district, which has been represented by Democrat Ilhan Omar since 2018. Both of Minnesota's US Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, were elected or appointed while residing in Minneapolis and are Democrats as well. Jacob Frey, a former DFL city council member, was elected as the mayor of Minneapolis in 2017 and re-elected in 2021.

In 2006, the city adopted instant-runoff voting and first used it during the 2009 elections. The Minneapolis City Council has 12 DFL council members and one Democratic Socialists of America member, representing the city's 13 wards. Seven political newcomers joined the council in 2022, and for the first time, a majority of the council members were non-White. Andrea Jenkins was unanimously elected as the president of the city council in 2022.

In 2021, a ballot question shifted more weight from the city council to the mayor, a change that proponents had tried to achieve 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, and there is a sales tax of 8.03 percent on purchases made within the city, which is a combination of state, county, special district taxes, a city sales tax of 0.50 percent, and a local use tax for out-of-state purchases. 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 restructured mayor's role created a new Minneapolis Office of Community Safety, with its commissioner overseeing the police and fire departments, 911 dispatch, emergency management, and violence prevention. The city in 2021 proposed a new cooperation with the police department and a mental health services company, Canopy Mental Health & Consulting, to respond to some 911 calls that do not require police. The organization had responded to more than three thousand 911 calls as of September 2022 and was proposed to continue through the 2023–2024 budget year.

After the murder of George Floyd in May 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. Violent crime rose three percent across Minneapolis in July 2022 compared with 2021, and in 2020, it rose 21 percent compared to 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 2023, the US Justice Department (DOJ) proposed 28 immediate "remedial" steps as it completed its investigation of the city's policing practices. Among DOJ findings, Minneapolis police officers routinely used excessive force, discriminated against people, and, with the city, violated people's rights. In 2022, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights completed its two-year investigation of the police department that found a "pattern or practice of race discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act". The state stipulated that the federal decree would take precedence in the case of conflicts, and city leaders sought one monitor to oversee both, to assure a single measure of compliance. The 2023 city budget planned for one negotiated consent decree, and the statutory minimum of 731 officers in the police department, which had been short of that minimum.

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 plan calls for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 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 his or her immigration status.

Education Primary and secondary education Volunteer missionaries, the Pond brothers got permission at Fort Snelling to teach new farming techniques and a new religion to Chief Cloud Man and his community on the east shore of Bde Maka Ska. J. D. Stevens and the Ponds built an Indian mission near Lake Harriet, which was the first educational institution in Minneapolis. When more settlers moved to the area, by 1874, ten school buildings served nearly four thousand students. The city of Minneapolis joined with St. Anthony and by 1922, together they enrolled seventy thousand students.

Minneapolis Public Schools serves 28,689 K–12 students as of October 2022, in more than fifty schools, divided between community and magnet. As of 2023, enrollment is declining about 1.5 percent per year, and approximately 60 percent of school age children attend district schools. Many students enrolled in alternatives such as charter schools, of which the city has thirty as of 2023. By state law, charter schools are open to all students and are tuition free. In 2022, about 1200 at-risk students attended district Contract Alternative Schools.

The public school district adopted a comprehensive district design beginning with the 2020–2021 school year to address academics, equity, financial sustainability, and to end disadvantages for students of color and students from low-income neighborhoods. The design changed student placement, changed the boundaries for almost all schools, moved magnet schools to central locations and narrowed the magnet types, standardized many start times to improve bus service, and gave every student a community elementary and middle school in their neighborhood. Students may attend a community school by request, and be accepted to the school in their neighborhood. Students enter a lottery to be enrolled in a magnet school. Eight high schools have school-based clinics with a doctor, nurses, a mental health counselor, and a registered dietitian. School district demographics differ from the city's. White students make up 41 percent, Black students 35 percent, Hispanic 14 percent, and 5 percent each are Asian and Native American. English-language learners are about 17 percent, in a district that speaks 100 languages at home. About 15 percent are special education students. Beginning in fall 2023, every Minneapolis public school student will receive one free breakfast and one free lunch each school day. In 2022, the district's graduation rate was 77 percent, an improvement of three percent over the previous year.

Education: Universities The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is headquartered in Minneapolis. With more than 50,000 students in 2023, it is the sixth largest campus in the US by enrollment. College rankings for 2023 place the school in the range of 44th (2022) to 185th for academics worldwide. QS found a decline in rank over a decade. Shanghai found excellence in ecology, business management, library & information science, and biotechnology. Among the 2,000 schools U.S. News & World Report compared to make its 2022–2023 best global universities rankings, the University of Minnesota was 57th. The state's land-grant university, the school has unusual autonomy—regents are in control, independent of city government—that has existed in Minnesota since 1858, when the provision was included in the state constitution.

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 2023, Red Lake Nation College is a federally recognised tribal college site that teaches Ojibwe culture. 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. These institutions offer short term training, some diplomas, and certificates in a wide variety of fields including business, yoga, pilates, portfolio development, CompTIA certification, floral design, cosmetology, construction, healthcare, information technology, and for those who wish to become a personal trainer, ophthalmic technician, or phlebotomy technician.

Media As of 2022, Minnesota Newspaper Association members who publish in Minneapolis include The Circle, Insight News, Finance & Commerce, Longfellow Nokomis Messenger, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, Minnesota Daily, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, Minnesota Women's Press, MinnPost, The Monitor, North News, Northeaster, Southwest Connector, Star Tribune, and St. Paul – Midway Como Frogtown Monitor. La Prensa de Minnesota, Vida y Sabor, Metro Lutheran, and The American Jewish World are published in the city. Other papers are Dispatch, Southwest Voices, Streets.mn, and Racket.

Some of the magazines published in the city are American Craft, Artful Living, and Mpls. St. Paul; the literary journal Rain Taxi; business publications Enterprise Minnesota, Franchise Times, Restaurant Finance Monitor, and Twin Cities Business; university student publications Great River Review, The Tower, Minnesota Journal of International Law, and Minnesota Law Review; and professional magazines Architecture Minnesota, Bench & Bar, and Minnesota Medicine.

In 2023, Nielsen found the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area to be the 15th largest designated market area, down from 14th in 2022. About 75 radio stations may be heard in the Minneapolis market, some of them distantly. The Twin Cities have 1,742,530 TV homes. TV Guide lists 151 TV channels for Minneapolis.

Krista Tippett, awarded a Peabody and the National Humanities Medal, produced the On Being project from her Minneapolis studio.

Transport The 2020 census found that the average commute to work for the Minneapolis population was 22 minutes. The most common means of transportation to work was driving alone (45 percent), the least common was bicycling (1.7 percent), and others were carpooling with other people (6.5 percent), taking public transit (5.6 percent), and walking (4.8 percent).

A division of the Metropolitan Council, Metro operates public transportation in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. The system has two light rail lines, one commuter rail line, about five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, and about 90 bus lines with over 8,000 stops. As of 2021, riders of Metro Transit system-wide are 44 percent persons of color. Bus ridership in the Twin Cities was 91.6 million in 2019, a three-percent decline over the previous year and part of a national trend in falling local bus ridership, while commuter rides were down, and ridership on light rail and BRTs remained steady or grew slightly.

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. Hundreds of homeless people nightly sought shelter on Green Line trains until overnight service was cut back in 2019. In 2020, a rise in crime on the light rail system led to discussion in the state legislature on how to best address the problem. A Blue Line extension to the north-west suburbs re-entered the planning stages for a new route alignment in 2020. A Green Line extension is planned to connect downtown with the south-western suburbs.[m] 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 18-mile (29 km) route 5, where a quarter of households do not have access to a car. The 40-mile (64 km) Northstar Commuter rail runs from Big Lake, Minnesota, to downtown Minneapolis. Commuter rides decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as of 2023, service cut back to four from 12 daily trips.

Minneapolis has 16 miles (26 km) of on-street protected bikeways, 98 miles (158 km) of bike lanes and 101 miles (163 km) 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. Replacing Nice Ride in 2023, for part of the year Lime, Spin and Veo have bicycles and scooters for rent with an app.

In 2007, the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi, which was overloaded with 300 short tons (270,000 kg) of repair materials, collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The bridge was rebuilt in 14 months.

The Minneapolis Skyway System, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) of enclosed pedestrian bridges called skyways, 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% of the airport's traffic, and MSP was Delta's second-largest US hub.

Health care Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Children's Minnesota, Hennepin Healthcare, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children's Hospital, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center, M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center, Minneapolis VA Medical Center, and Phillips Eye Institute serve the city.

Cardiac surgery was developed at the university's Variety Club Heart Hospital, where by 1957, more than 200 patients—most of whom were children—had survived open-heart operations. Working with surgeon C. Walton Lillehei, Medtronic began to build portable and implantable cardiac pacemakers about this time.

Hennepin Healthcare, a public teaching hospital and Level I trauma centre, opened in 1887 as City Hospital, and has been known as Minneapolis General Hospital, Hennepin County General Hospital, and HCMC. In 2022, the Hennepin Healthcare safety net counted 626,000 in-person and 50,586 virtual clinic visits, and 87,731 emergency room visits.

The Mashkiki Waakaa'igan Pharmacy on Bloomington Avenue dispenses free prescription drugs and culturally sensitive care to members of any federally recognised tribes living in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, regardless of insurance status. The pharmacy is funded by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

Services and utilities The city has 19 fire stations. Xcel Energy supplies electricity, and CenterPoint Energy provides gas. The water supply is managed by four watershed districts that correspond with the Mississippi and three streams that are river tributaries.

The Minneapolis Department of Public Works is responsible for myriad 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 4,200-foot (1,300 m) storm water tunnel system 80 feet (24 m) under Washington to Chicago Avenues. They 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 (DID) 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.