Editorial counterpoint: Minneapolis 2040 Plan is not salvageable

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The Star Tribune Editorial Board once again endorsed the Minneapolis 2040 Plan ("2040 is coming," Sept. 11). While the goals of the Minneapolis 2040 are commendable, the city's stubborn refusal to take account of the plan's potential adverse environmental impacts is not only flawed planning, but multiple courts have concluded it violates Minnesota environmental laws.

The city's new long-range plan is based on a planning fad called "densification," which argues that urban sprawl is bad because it consumes land inefficiently and encourages the use of automobiles. The 2040 Plan's solution to saving the environment is to put more housing on less land at densities high enough to make widespread walking, biking and transit feasible options for most people. The ideal? Manhattan. And single-family homes? Wasteful use of space that should be eliminated.

To hop on this fad, Minneapolis created a long-range plan that assumed the city would add 150,000 new housing units in the next 20 years. It has about 200,000 now (census data). Never mind that Minneapolis's population hardly grew at all from 1970 to 2010, grew only 12% over the last 10 years and lost population last year, and that the Metropolitan Council forecasts 9% growth in the next 20 years. The entire Twin Cities region is projected to grow by only 15%, and the Met Council has been revising this number downward as birthrates decline.

This assumption drove the fine-grain requirements for development of the city. Buildings could now be higher and cover nearly every square foot of a lot because we need to accommodate massive growth. Five-story buildings could be built almost anywhere. In areas with high concentrations of people of color, they can go even higher. Major roadways are rapidly being rebuilt assuming auto travel will decline by 60% in the next seven years because of massive increases in population. Bike lanes are being installed where there is no demand, roads are being narrowed and parking is being removed. New housing is being built with inadequate parking, assuming cars will not be necessary for most people.

These changes are degrading the environment in Minneapolis. There is more concrete and less green space, reduced tree canopy, increased water runoff, increased contaminants in lakes and the river, reduced groundwater recharge, increased wastewater, a hotter heat island and habitat degraded. Loss of green space and trees are removing tools to clean the air and water and provide habitat. Large buildings block access to sunlight, impair conversion to solar and impact birds and other animals. The changes in the roadways are increasing automobile idling, increasing congestion and forcing longer trips. This is increasing carbon emissions, noise pollution and air pollution.

The Minnesota Environmental Rights Act (MERA) provides every person the right to challenge activities that will result in harm to the environment or the health of residents. Minneapolis residents won this lawsuit because the city did not disclose this harm and took no actions to mitigate it. Hennepin County District Judge Joseph Klein understood this and halted the implementation of the city's plan before the harm became substantially worse.

The bargain of sacrificing the health and environment of Minneapolis residents to protect undeveloped land is false dichotomy. The reality is that the majority of new development is infill. The MUSA line, the line of urbanization, is planned to grow less than 1% over the next 20 years. Seventy percent of new housing in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region is multifamily, more efficiently using the tiny amount of virgin land being consumed (Housing First Minnesota, 2022).

The current plan is not salvageable. Growth needs to happen, but it can happen in ways that are not so harmful to the city's environment and health of its residents. This ruling gives us the opportunity to create a new comprehensive plan based on realistic growth assumptions. Hopefully the city takes it.

The Met Council's plan spread the impacts of population growth throughout the region, but the Minneapolis plan was not in conformance with that regional plan. The council should have required the city to produce a plan in conformance with regional growth projections — but it didn't. This is an opportunity for the Met Council to also get it right and only approve a new plan that is in conformance with regional plans. The health of Minneapolis residents depends on it.

Carol Becker and Lisa McDonald were among those who started the group Minneapolis for Everyone, which opposed approval of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan.