Minneapolis Leads the Metro Out of Recession

With all of the negative financial news being published and broadcast, here's an upbeat counterpoint from MinnPost. 

A state's biggest city is often expected to play the role of basket case. By some measures, Minneapolis fits the stereotype. It has more than its fair share of poverty, criminals, troubled schools, high taxes and dense city-hall bureaucracy.

But there's another side to the city that might surprise a lot of people. Minneapolis is better educated than its suburbs, an attribute that may have helped it weather the recession better than the state and metro area. The city's unemployment rate — 6.6 percent — is lower than either the metro's or state's. Its housing market is comparatively stronger, having led the metro in housing starts, even in the teeth of the recession. And through the darkest months of 2008 and 2009 it maintained its momentum on construction, in part because of a new ballpark but also because of targeted public investments in neighborhood projects.

We caught up this week with Mike Christenson, director of the city's Department of Community Planning and Economic Development, to talk about how cities might best protect their potential during hard times.

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