how would you rate Minnesota as a state?
ah, minnesota. the land of 10,000 lakes. a state mostly known for... uh... tim walz? what do most people know minnesota for? i don't actually know
(SORRY FOR THIS BEING SO LATE I HAVE SO MUCH TO WRITE YOUR STATE IS SO COOL)
but that's not gonna stop me from rating it! once again, we have five categories: political, culture, nature, urban, and transit:
political rating: 7/10. minnesota hasn't voted for a republican at a statewide level since tim pawlenty was reelected as governor in 2006 (i actually had to look that up!), but it very, very nearly elected a republican to the senate in 2008: al franken won in 2008 by a mere 300 votes. in fact that election was so hotly contested that franken was not certified as having won the election until nearly july 2009.
but that's history. nowadays, minnesota only has one thing that makes it politically interesting nowadays, and that is its upper and lower chambers, which are both much swingier than the state is at every level. but because the governorship is unlikely to swing red anytime soon, that hopefully won't result in republicans being able to pass a serious conservative agenda.
which is great! when democrats took the minnesota senate in 2022, they passed an enormous amount of really cool laws, including trans rights protections and a free school lunch program.
fortunately, or unfortunately from the perspective of this rating, it also means the state can be kinda boring from a political standpoint. every since tim walz and rick nolan left the house, and ever since colin peterson got his butt kicked, minnesota hasn't had a competitive federal race. so, minnesota has great policies, but otherwise, it isn't very politically interesting.
culture rating: 9/10 i think most people who know minnesota would say that you can pretty easily divide minnesota into two places: the twin cities area, and the rest of the state. but i think that's an oversimiplification. to me, we can actually divide minnesota cleanly into 3 sections.
we can start by looking at rural southern and western minnesota. these are more traditionally midwestern farming communities, which i assume come with all of the charms of traditional midwestern culture. while i'm sure they have their own minnesota-specific traditions... so does the rest of the midwest. this isn't a dig at rural minnesota - far from it, i'm sure it's great! i just don't know much about it aside from "midwestern"
then there's northeastern minnesota, which is vastly different from what you might expect of the rest of the midwest. it's the home of the iron range - a massive swath of land primarily used for mining metals.
it also contains duluth, one of the world's furthest inland port cities, which is insane, because it's kinda located smack in the middle of the continent. but it serves as the end of the saint lawrence seaway, which means a lot of the surrounding area - including the iron range mines - use it for shipping.
and best of all? the area is heavily unionized! most of those port workers and miners in northeastern minnesota are part of collective bargain units! isn't that awesome? 10/10 culture for northeast minnesota.
and last but not least is the twin cities of minneapolis and saint paul - the state's largest city and capital, respectively. despite minnesota having a reputation of being white and midwestern, the twin cities area is very diverse. it has the largest hmong community in the entire united states. it's also home to one of the largest somali communities in the US, and is represented in congress by a somali american, ilhan omar. all this diversity adds a humongous amount to the culture of the area.
so yeah. minnesota culture is awesome.
nature rating: 4/10 okay this one might sound kinda controversial, and maybe it's just because i've never been to minnesota before, but from what i can gather, minnesota's nature primarily consists of lakes, rivers, and more lakes. and there's nothing wrong with that - they have really cool ecosystems. plus, the mississippi river starts in minnesota, as does the saint lawrence seaway.
but... what else does minnesota have? yes, the lakes and rivers and stuff are cool. the source of the mississippi is neat, as is voyageurs national park and the entire grand portage. but... it doesn't strike me as anything amazing. there isn't very much nature in minnesota that you can't find elsewhere in the country.
and this feels wrong, because minnesota, from what i can tell, is known as a very outdoorsy, natural state. but i think that more speaks to the success of their urban areas, which i will get to now:
urban rating: 8/10 minneapolis is hands down one of the best cities in the united states from a zoning and layout perspective. it has a lot of nature integrated into it, with lots of bike paths encouraging people to exercise and take non-invasive forms of transit, and lots of parks around the city - which i imagine is why people perceive of minnesota as a very nature-y, outdoorsy state.
it also has perhaps the best zoning laws in the country. it was the first city in the country to abolist single family housing, which has lead to it being one of the only growing cities in which rents fell, due to the influx of housing. minneapolis is awesome.
but. minneapolis is not the entire state.
i don't know much about duluth, but it doesn't seem to be as good as minneapolis. it has a massive freeway separating nearly the entire city from its lakeshore, with the notable exception of park point - a 7-mile-long beach-lined peninsula jutting out of the city into the lake, ending with an old growth forest. aside from that, though, duluth doesn't seem to be particularly interesting from an urban perspective.
i know literally nothing about rochester. lemme check maps.
back. it seems pretty cool - no downtown highways and lots of parks. gonna assume it's pretty good.
anyway, these two cities bump up minnesota's urban score to be quite high. duluth is meh so it's not perfect.
i will ignore saint paul. for all intents and purposes, it's just minneapolis. sorry, saint paul.
transit score: 3/10. minnesota is quite possibly the king of what is referred to as BRT creep - bus lines that do not qualify as bus rapid transit claiming to be bus rapid transit. look, i'm sure they're more frequent than regular bus lines (15 minute headways???? that's good but philly and new york have bus lines that are more frequent than that and don't claim to be "BRT"), but if you can't even have bus lanes, you're not a high-quality bus line.
oh yeah, and then there's the northstar commuter rail line. it runs 4 TIMES A DAY IN EITHER DIRECTION. that's HALF the frequency of VRE, and VRE isn't very good either. plus, northstar is one line, and VRE is 2
it's not all bad. minneapolis has two decent light rail lines, and they're building more. the bus system, despite not having anything resembling real BRT (aside from sheltered stations, which is fine, but also the bare minimum), is not altogether bad.
minnesota's amtrak service also used to be terrible, but it just got a whole lot better with the introduction of the borealis train, making one daily round trip between saint paul and chicago. there's also plans to make another daily amtrak line between minneapolis and duluth, which would be super cool.
plus, the bike lines around the city are quite good, and that's got to count for something.
unfortunately, minneapolis and saint paul are not the only cites in the state. duluth and rochester have no passenger train service whatsoever, which is a huge point against the state. sorry, minnesota.
overall rating: 6.2/10 this state has bizarre contradictions. it's got fantastic urbanism, and fairly bad transit (they're working on it!) it's fairly outdoorsy, and yet it lacks significantly distinctive natural features. it has a very fun political history, and some of the best laws in the country, but it's also not a very interesting state to watch on election day.
i'm gonna be honest, i expected this rating to be a lot more positive when i went in, given the wealth of culture this state has that many states lack. maybe that should count for more, idk. but 6.2/10 isn't that bad, either.
what do you guys think? did i disparage a wonderful state?
