Since I've yet to do a downtown Minneapolis photo thread (which is long overdue), yesterday evening I thought it might be fun to start a new collection highlighting the city's core.
Minneapolis is sometimes referred to as the "First City of the West", and the central business district consists of a mish-mash of postmodern, brutalist, and older architecture on wide streets which forms a marked contrast to it's more historic eastern twin St. Paul.
Downtown is often criticized for being sterile, devoid of greenery, and lacking in street-level foot traffic. All three of these things are at least partly attributed to the skyway system, a series of elevated walkways that connect 69 city blocks stretching seven miles. Because of the skyways, many retailers, restaurants, and other services are located one floor above the street in each building connected, thus creating an illusion of inactivity below. These climate-controlled "gerbil tubes" are considered by many a huge asset to the city in our bitter-cold winters, but also an extraordinary blight to downtown street life.
Over the last 10 years, the city has slowly begun to fill in empty parking lots with office and residential developments, although there's still a long way to go before all of them are filled. A quickly-growing residential population is bringing new changes and developments to downtown that not long ago would have been considered completely infeasible, so it's an exciting time to watch downtown evolve and improve.
This collection of photos is still vastly incomplete, and I'm still planning to add some people shots, so I'll probably be making amendments in the future as I add more.
Minneapolis is sometimes referred to as the "First City of the West", and the central business district consists of a mish-mash of postmodern, brutalist, and older architecture on wide streets which forms a marked contrast to it's more historic eastern twin St. Paul.
Downtown is often criticized for being sterile, devoid of greenery, and lacking in street-level foot traffic. All three of these things are at least partly attributed to the skyway system, a series of elevated walkways that connect 69 city blocks stretching seven miles. Because of the skyways, many retailers, restaurants, and other services are located one floor above the street in each building connected, thus creating an illusion of inactivity below. These climate-controlled "gerbil tubes" are considered by many a huge asset to the city in our bitter-cold winters, but also an extraordinary blight to downtown street life.
Over the last 10 years, the city has slowly begun to fill in empty parking lots with office and residential developments, although there's still a long way to go before all of them are filled. A quickly-growing residential population is bringing new changes and developments to downtown that not long ago would have been considered completely infeasible, so it's an exciting time to watch downtown evolve and improve.
This collection of photos is still vastly incomplete, and I'm still planning to add some people shots, so I'll probably be making amendments in the future as I add more.