Why is Minnesota stagnating?

Minnesota officials are perplexed. Why are more people leaving than coming here? Why is Minnesota personal income growth one of the worst in the nation? Why is job growth low and getting lower? State job researchers don't know. The state's chief economist is asking "Why? Has something fundamentally changed?"

Let me voice an answer... not surprisingly, an answer that is apparent to a lot of ordinary Minnesotans but seemingly escapes those in government.

The simple smart-ass answer, most appropriate for this religious region, is "As ye sow, so shall ye reap".

Minnesota, especially the concentrated greater Twin Cities area, has been oh so busy sowing...

URBAN PLANNING

Look around. Everywhere you go in Minnesota cities, you find the same thing. Local governments have become tax base conscious... giving deliberate advantage to chain stores at the expense of innovative small businesses. Excessive use of eminent domain and tax-increment financing to support planned development at the expense of uniqueness. Catering to the well-to-do and elderly at the expense of all others. Is it any wonder that eldercare and health-care positions dominate our job market? You don't want to take care of sick and elderly people? Don't want to work retail, selling stuff you can't afford to buy yourself? Move somewhere else.

Richfield is a good example. What's new here? What has been pushed on us by city planners and developers? Best Buy headquarters, that erased dozens of businesses and 50+ affordable homes, is now filled with people who live and shop somewhere else. Several large developments that are primarily big senior condos with a couple of chain stores on the street level. Each of these coerced developments wiped out unique and interesting stores and/or affordable dwellings... places that used to be shopping destinations, replaced by big unappealing slugs that are, for anyone who doesn't live in them, nothing but places to drive by on the way to somewhere else.

Minnesota has developed a trend of local government controlling everything under their thumb... restricting and zoning to build to grand planned scale, safety, and tidiness... defined by the stodgy, play-it-safe people who get elected to city councils. It's not the kind of people elected to office that defines the problem... it's what they do once they get there. It has become "normal" for Minnesota cities to compete for tax base with each other, leading them to fall for large sanitized developments, presented to them with elaborate proposals that promise to raise their tax base... and they FORCE it on the community.

Not only do such planned developments kill off small businesses, they typically eliminate low-cost housing (usually smeared by declaring it "blighted"), replacing it with more new expensive places that only more affluent people will frequent. All that may sound good from a purely bottom-line economic view, but it has an inevitable effect of driving out innovation, uniqueness, and diversity, leaving an equally inevitable BOREDOM.

I've watched as innumerable small, unique businesses failed to survive in this smothering climate of burdensome regulation and zoning, forced out by the advantages given to chain stores and developers. I've watched young people leave the area in search of something unique and interesting... in search of a home with character.

This area has become smotheringly controlled by middle-class boomers who are building a retirement community for themselves. Anyone who is not well off, in or near retirement, is just going to find this area increasingly dull and stifling. As if all that wasn't enough to drive people away, add in the fact that we're forced to pay high taxes to PAY to be bored silly.

What has been eliminated in this area is what once made this area exciting... anything different, anything a little off-beat, or controversial, or risque. All that has been replaced by governments who have bought into URBAN PLANNING... the forced, controlled reshaping of our communities to fit an image that destroys everything truly interesting or exciting. Is it any wonder that people who don't fit into the prim and stodgy well-to-do mold are likely to just abandon the area?

Light rail development is a great example of what is wrong here. Wherever that line is forced upon us, places of interest and diversity are going to be replaced by planned developments designed for those who can afford it. The University avenue line will price thousands of small businesses out of the market, to be replaced by pretty developments that only a few can afford. The unique immigrant character of the current avenue will be completely gone. Like everywhere else that planned development is forced upon us by government, low-income residents will be priced out of the area, small businesses will be forced to find another home or just give up and close. The current community will be devastated, as so many others have been.

What attracts and keeps people is simply freedom... the chance to build and improve a life through ones ingenuity, frugality, and hard work. As long as governments continue to drive up the cost of doing that, many people are going to be forced to look elsewhere. As long as this area continues to forcibly shape itself into what the few well-off individuals and corporations want, many of the other people are going to leave.

The solution is equally simple... stop using governmental force to mold communities the way a few people think is best, back off on restrictions and zoning, and let the community develop naturally. No, it won't be as tidy and pasteurized, but it will be a hell of a lot more fun, and it may actually attract new people here.