Land Use & Built Form

The Minneapolis 2040 goals describe a future for Minneapolis that is equitable, healthy, and sustainable. The policies of this plan are intended to provide an overarching structure for achieving those goals as they relate to the built, natural, and economic environment of our city.

Among the goals of this plan is to ensure that all Minneapolis residents will be able to afford and access quality housing throughout the city, that all Minneapolis residents will have access to a living wage job, and that all Minneapolis residents will have access to daily needs via walking, biking, and public transit. Policies associated with the topics of Housing, Economic Competitiveness, and Transportation describe proactive steps the City will take to achieve these goals.

This section, Land Use and Built Form, describes where new housing, workplaces, and retail establishments may locate in the city in order to achieve the plan goals. This guidance is communicated through a combination of policies and maps. The first four policies that appear below – Access to Housing, Access to Employment, Production and Processing, and Access to Commercial Goods and Services – form the basis for the Future Land Use Map and the Built Form Map that guide the location and characteristics of new buildings.

The Access to Housing policy outlines the role of the Future Land Use and Built Form maps in increasing housing choice throughout the city, acknowledging the contribution of zoning to racially-restrictive housing practices of the first half of the 20^th century, and the lasting effect those actions had on people of color and indigenous people. The policy also reinforces the practice of developing multifamily housing on transit routes, providing people the opportunity to live without a car, or with fewer cars in each household, helping to work toward the City's greenhouse gas reduction goal. This policy, and the resultant housing guidance on the future land use and built form maps, ensures that we have places throughout the city to increase housing supply and choice. The remaining Housing policies of the plan communicate a commitment to proactively meeting the housing needs of Minneapolis residents, including through the production and preservation of affordable housing and expansion of the City’s inclusionary housing policies and tools.

Together, the Access to Employment and Production and Processing policies outline the role of the Future Land Use and Built Form maps in supporting employment growth and ensuring that land is available for living-wage jobs in areas close to where people live. These policies work in conjunction with the Economic Competitiveness policies of this plan, which communicate a commitment to ensuring that Minneapolis residents have job training and skills necessary to participate in the economy, and will have access to living-wage jobs.

The Access to Commercial Goods and Services policy outlines the role of the Future Land Use and Built Form maps in providing the opportunity for Minneapolis residents to access daily needs without using a car. This is especially important because achieving the City’s goals of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions requires reducing the number of car trips in Minneapolis by 37%. People take more trips running errands than going to work, so it is critical to give people the opportunity to meet their daily needs closer to home.

The remaining policies inform the design of buildings and the spaces in between, and support the goals of a high-quality and distinctive environment, a clean environment, and a city that is resilient to climate change.