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> Essentially this is just the city of Minneapolis making it harder for people to actually work in Minneapolis.

I'm pretty sure the idea is actually the exact opposite. Mandatory parking is expensive, this drives up the cost of housing. 2040 is about reducing the costs of housing and not making the same mistakes that San Francisco continues to make every day. 2040 is about getting ahead of NIMYism and making sure there is housing that is affordable inside the city so people don't have to drive from the suburbs.

>very few people actually live in downtown minneapolis.

This way people can live closer to work and not have to drive cars. Its more sustainable, its better for the environment, its better for people. So the idea is to change Minneapolis into a city where people do live downtown again.

> a commuter city

The result of terrible city planning starting in the mid century that is going to be expensive and difficult to undo. 2040 is a good plan that will fix this.

I agree. I moved to Minneapolis 20 years ago and one of my first political memories is of Jesse Ventura arguing that mass transit had to be improved because building more roads just means that more people will drive. He was right.

Parking is horrendous in Minneapolis. I moved away and now live in rural MN but take the bus into the city. It is far less stressful than driving and then wasting time trying to find a place to park. Especially as the surface lots are sold off to build apartments and condos. The parking situation will only get worse.

If it weren't for MetroTransit, etc., building massive Park&Ride lots in the far suburbs, many of us would refuse to even work in the cities, likely causing an outflux of talent to better areas.

I was never really a fan of Ventura, but he wasn't actually terrible.

>not making the same mistakes that San Francisco continues to make every day.

I am happy to report that San Francisco recently voted to eliminate minimum parking requirements:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/minimum-parking-requirements-way-s...

Yet MEDA, Calle 24, and Ronen continue to block any change in the Mission. To the absurd point of demanding that a failed bakery that was sold off be reopened as it once was by the new owner. Also, addional bike rental services are yuppie/techie/white and are blocked as well. There is a big hole in the ground on Mission st that will never be developed. Plans for development on Folsom were scuttled. Same for So Van Ness. Same for 16th and Mission.

>The result of terrible city planning starting in the mid century that is going to be expensive and difficult to undo. 2040 is a good plan that will fix this.

Or the result of people that want a yard and a house that isn't 4ft from their neighbor.

No plan is going to fix the fact that not everyone wants to live downtown.

You can choose to live outside the city and commute in.. there is light rail and the metro bus park and ride system. That + work remote makes it pretty reasonable. I imagine they will expand the light rail too.

> This way people can live closer to work and not have to drive cars.

How will they get to work? How will they get to other places?

Seems pretty unrealistic to think that a large number of people will be able to arrange their lives to not need a car at all. And Minneapolis winters? Forget walking/biking unless you like frostbite.

Even if there's good mass transit, that doesn't go everywhere, all the time.

I can imagine living in a situation where I didn't need a car for my daily trip to work. I've done it in Chicago. But I can't imagine not having a car at all. It would just be too inconvenient. And if I own a car, I need to be able to park it somewhere. And if that arrangement is too expensive or impossible downtown, I will live in the suburbs.

When you say "downtown Minneapolis", are you talking about just downtown, or about the whole area of Minneapolis proper? I don't think the parking rule applied to downtown in the first place - and if you include the warehouse district with "downtown", the downtown population has grown tremendously over the past two decades.

I think this matters a lot more for, say, my neighborhood in SE (down by Minnehaha Park), which is almost exclusively single-family, and a pretty expensive place to live. A lot of 100 year old bungalows are getting torn down and replaced by ugly oversized single-family houses. I'd rather see some small apartment buildings to get more density, but it won't happen if there are strong parking restrictions.

What you are saying about how Minneapolis currently works is true, but the car-dominated commuter culture is an unfortunate situation that will not change unless Minneapolis changes the incentive structures that made it this way.

Minneapolis proper needs more livable core communities that aren't dominated by cars and commuters. I'm glad they are taking these steps because even though you are right that it makes the status quo more difficult in some ways, the status quo is not good and makes Minneapolis much less attractive long run.

Other things need to change in the zoning, too. Like my own neighborhood... I love it, but there is very little in the way of restaurants that are walkable. But we're getting a walking-distance grocery, at least (Cub, unfortunately, but one that fits in the first floor of a new apartment complex).

The incentive structures are mostly the "go anywhere, anytime" convenience of owning a car. That's a pretty tough one to overcome. For me, I'd say it's impossible.

> Essentially this is just the city of Minneapolis making it harder for people to get to work. This will result in a decrease in companies based in Minneapolis without affecting the overall number of companies in the Metro Area.

Ah yes, much like those transit-friendly, job-deficient cities of NYC, Boston, and SF.

Cities are cities. They shouldn't be suburbs but bigger, and trying to make them that way just causes problems.

Even if what you say is true, a big reason why everyone has to drive is because of policies -- like, say, mandatory parking -- that favor driving at the expensive of transit, biking, and walking. Look at cities where people use transit, and a big part of that is that they usually don't take up enormous swathes of space with parking and huge roads or stroads everywhere. Leaving those policies in place just prolongs the problem.

This in no way affects existing buildings and companies that value parking are still free to provide it.

Don’t all three of those employers you listed have large campuses? Also, aren’t there park and ride stations all over the suburbs? Maybe I just don’t understand because I live in Minneapolis and work downtown, but I also work with a ton of people who don’t and use public transit. I won’t pretend that I understand all of the implications of this change, but it doesn’t seem like it’s a doom-and-gloom as you’re arguing.

I'm not following. How would eliminating parking minimums for housing make it harder to get to work? They're not getting rid of parking or preventing people from building parking. Plus there are plenty of large parking ramps downtown, not to mention all the Metro Transit buses and trains.

not to mention all the metro transit buses and trains?

oh you mean all those non-existent metro transit buses and trains that run out to Plymouth? and the ones that run to Apple Valley? and the ones that go out to Wisconsin? and Roseville? and South St. Paul? and Rodgers? and Orono? and Wayzata? and Edina? and Golden Valley? and the literally dozens of other cities that are in the Metro Area?

the cities that everyone actually lives in all have very limited bus routes (sometimes only 2 trips per day: one in the morning and one in the evening) and the 2 existing train lines and the 1 proposed train line simply do not go there.

Buses and trains are worthless for the majority of people who work in Minneapolis because they don't run any where near where the people are living!

Huh? There are bus routes to almost all those towns. I was a daily rider of the 6 between DT Minneapolis and Edina. And what does public transit to these suburbs/exurbs have to do with Minneapolis eliminating parking minimums for new housing?

> Very few people that work in Minneapolis actually live in Minneapolis.

Then they don't have a say in what happens in Minneapolis. You're literally arguing against yourself.

If you invest in public transit then it will be fine.