Overall A-
-
7/6/2007
In my opinion, Minneapolis is a great place to live, and I moved here from a small town in Ohio a little more than 11 years ago. It's not a cheap city to live in, it has crime and it has traffic congestion. But all of these aspects of city life can be viewed in the positive OR negative just depending on (a) your attitude, and (b) how many other cities you've experienced. And I don't mean as a tourist.
The city is not a cheap place to live, but I believe you get what you pay for here. Minneapolis has an extensive network of parks, lakes, and trails that any other city would be hard-pressed to match. It has slightly better-than-average shopping, a vibrant downtown no matter what day or time of day (unlike other cities that die at 5pm), and lots of great restaurants. Entertainment is almost limitless because in the winter there's nothing else to do (lol) and in the summer everyone's dying to get outside. There are so many summer festivals they have a hard time fitting them into the limited weekends available, and several are an entire week long! It just recently completed an internationally-renowned theatre with a one-of-a-kind platform that overlooks the Mississippi River, and the new public library is not only state of the art, but a work of art itself.
Of course there's crime, and if you're looking at one of those ridiculous rankings that compares Minneapolis to Bismark, ND, then of course it looks like a hellhole. There are good and bad neighborhoods, just like any other city its size. But the point is you have plenty of space to choose from and plenty of housing options, and while the real estate boom pushed property values pretty high, you can still find good deals. I'm a single man with a $70,000 salary, and I OWN a 4-bedroom, 2-bath house in the south part of the city proper—not too bad for a city this size. That would translate to a modest-sized 2-bedroom condo in most areas if you didn't pick the heart of downtown (naturally).
If you think this city has traffic problems, then you’ve lived under a rock. You can travel from downtown Minneapolis to any of the suburbs about 25 miles away in rush hour traffic in 45 minutes or less. That same distance would easily take you 2 hours or more in cities with real congestion. I will say the problem with people in this area is they’re too selfish to take advantage of the wonderful public transportation options, like busses that use shoulder lanes and can get you to these suburbs I mention
Sean | Minneapolis, MN