a little good news about Minneapolis

[mellowtigger]

I know nothing about the Institute For Quality Of Life, but they recently produced a Happy City Index for 2024. Their methodology included only cities with at least 300,000 people (which included 1,692 cities in the world in 2014 when that requirement changed) and have objective data available for 24 activities across 5 categories. These activities include things like the following:

• citizens (education, inclusion, libraries),
• governance (openness, digital service, strategy/vision),
• environment (management, green spaces, pollution),
• economy (GDP, innovation, entrepreneurship, flexibility), and
• mobility (public transport, mobile applications, safety, multimodal).

There is only one USA city to make the "gold" rating:

Minneapolis, at #18 in the rankings

This metro area is like Austin (a gay-friendly and bike-trail city which didn't make the list at all) but without the awful traffic congestion and ozone pollution. The USA cities that earned silver ratings are: Boston (#38), Baltimore (#57), and Washington (#85). The USA cities that earned bronze ratings are: San Francisco (#114), Salt Lake City (#145), Madison (#167), Pittsburgh (#190), Rochester (#214), and Portland (#237). See the whole list yourself.

I tell you occasionally about the high voter participation in Minnesota, but the civic mindedness here includes both conservatives and liberals, best exemplified by our US Senator, Paul Wellstone and his famous truism, "We all do better when we all do better." Don't let my little warzone dissuade you from considering Minneapolis (or Minnesota in general) as a relocation destination. Most of the people here are nice and want peaceful coexistence. Even my Jordan neighborhood of north Minneapolis has its small charms. If we can ever get the gunfire under control, it could easily become the kind of creative center that's typical of many multicultural zones throughout the world. While Prince lived in north Minneapolis as he learned music, that home was rather far south of me. It's an obvious example, though, of the potential that I see in the community here.