Minneapolis 2040 Plan opponents miss the big picture

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Did you know that "pedestrian traffic" harms the environment? Nope, neither did I. But pedestrian traffic is one of a laundry list of "environmental harms" claimed by litigants who continue to sue Minneapolis over its 2040 Plan.

On Sept. 6, Hennepin County District Judge Joseph Klein ordered a halt to "any ongoing implementation of the residential development portions of the city's 2040 comprehensive plan." This is the second time the plan has been put on hold by the courts.

Last year, when the 2040 Plan was first put on hold, I wrote about the environmental attributes of the plan as a whole and about the specific environmental and climate benefits of increased density, including the benefits of allowing up to three homes on every lot. Yet my opinion piece — some of which quoted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most credible font of climate knowledge on Earth — apparently did not inspire the suit's litigants.

Instead, the litigants continued to frame needed climate action as harm and continued to weaponize the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, a law designed to ensure "that present and future generations may enjoy clean air and water, productive land, and other natural resources," against all of us and our environment.

Instead, the litigants continued to shamelessly invent their own science, doubling down on a version of environmental benefits that contradicts the 60 IPCC authors and technical experts hailing from 26 nations who wrote this year that "key [climate] adaptation and mitigation elements in cities include … land use planning to achieve compact urban form, co-location of jobs and housing; [and] supporting public transport and active mobility (e.g., walking and cycling)."

Instead, the litigants continued to consider their environmental knowledge superior to that of 73 authors hailing from 24 countries who wrote that preserving global biodiversity depends in part on "encouraging density and in-filling" by developing "neighborhoods of mixed land use and diverse housing options that pre-empt the need for citizens to travel across the city" in a report described by the United Nations as "the most comprehensive [biodiversity report] ever completed."

Instead, the litigants continued to cling to a status quo conception of a Minneapolis awash in single-family homes protected by single-family zoning.

But the funny thing is, that version of Minneapolis isn't even real.

I grew up in the Lowry Hill neighborhood, one block from Kenwood Park — an area anyone familiar with Minneapolis would describe as a single-family-home neighborhood. My home was about 300 feet from a 1914 three-story condo building. I now live in East Harriet, another part of the city people describe as a single-family-home neighborhood. Yet on my current block there are a half dozen of what a friend called "sneaky duplexes and triplexes."

Multiunit structures don't have to be scary — and in many of our neighborhoods, if you look closely, they are already here.

I played a part in drafting the Minneapolis 2040 Plan and, in my prior role as a Minneapolis planning commissioner, voted for the plan. I believed then what I believe now: that the 2040 Plan was about Minneapolis taking responsibility for our collective future and that the plan, with its vision and its urgency, put us on the right side of history.

There will be more fights about the Minneapolis 2040 Plan in the courts and in elected bodies in the months to come. As these roll out, I ask my fellow Minneapolitans to vocally support the 2040 Plan for our climate and our future, for our biodiversity and our planet, and to strengthen Minneapolis for generations to come.

Sam Rockwell is a nonprofit executive and was formerly president of the Minneapolis Planning Commission.