Greenspace, White Space

Minneapolis ranks 99th of 100 largest U.S. metros in the gap between Black and White median income;  97th of 100 in the gap between Black and White residents in home ownership.

These racial disparities are also reflected in the physical environment of the city. Neighborhoods in which more than 90% of the residents are White (located around the Chain of Lakes, Minnehaha Creek, and in the southeast corner of the city along the Mississippi River) have significantly lower levels of air pollution, more tree cover, experience less extreme summer temperatures, and have far greater park acreage.

In short, Minneapolis's predominantly White neighborhoods are spaces of environmental privilege.

Focusing specifically on the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, we look at how segregationist real estate developers shaped where the City made investments in its parks, embedding the racist ideologies of the day in our greenspaces.

During the summer of 2020, in the northeastern corner of the Brackett Field, the same land originally transferred to the Park Board from Mary Greer, sat 25 tents, serving as a home and sanctuary for unsheltered women and children. That corner of the park was transformed from a space of recreation to a space of refuge as organizers reclaimed the space as a Sanctuary for nearly 40 unhoused women and children in the midst of a global pandemic and national racial uprisings and a police abolition movement in which Minneapolis was the epicenter. The majority of the residents of the Brackett Field Park Sanctuary were Black or Indigenous, reclaiming the space as their home that a century prior had been legally designated as White space. 

Despite residents’ and activists’ work to reclaim the space marred by its legacy of racial exclusion, the presence of the 40 unhoused Black and Indigenous women and children reflects the long-lasting impact of a real estate market predicated on the production of value via racial exclusion. According to a 2018 report by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, as of 2016 there are currently no neighborhoods in Minneapolis in which a Black household with the median income for Black renters ($17,355/year) could afford a median-priced rental unit ($854/month). The economic inequality and housing exclusion at the root of Minneapolis’s homelessness crisis that is disproportionately impacting Black and Indigenous people has its origins in the racialization of residential space via racially restrictive covenants.

What if the Park Board had not bolstered and perpetuated White supremacy in its decision-making? 

What if, in the cases in which segregationist developers offered them land, the Park Board had said no? What if it had asserted that its mission was to create parks for the benefit of all Minneapolis citizens? How would that have changed Minneapolis if the resources of the Park Board, instead of being disproportionately directed to White affluent neighborhoods, were disproportionately directed to low-income neighborhoods and to neighborhoods that accepted non-White neighbors? If the Park Board had refused to invest in neighborhoods in which covenants were in use, would that have been the end of restrictive covenants?

In the past and today, the Park Board could choose to refuse to enact policies that would disproportionately harm Minneapolis’s Black, Brown, and Indigenous residents to the benefit of White residents. The Park Board has that choice right now.

Currently, the Upper Harbor Terminal (UHT) site—48 acres of publicly owned land along the Mississippi River in North Minneapolis — is slated by the City for redevelopment. The neighborhoods of North Minneapolis adjacent to the UHT site are among the lowest income in the city and home to the majority of Minneapolis’s Black residents. Gentrification is already creeping around the edges of North Minneapolis, and  residents have been vocal about their opposition to the proposed UHT redevelopment plan . With only paltry nods toward “affordable housing” and designs aimed at attracting a high-income, White demographic to the space, the plan as it stands is poised to drive the gentrification and displacement of Black Northsiders. 

The Park Board’s decision to accept the city’s offer to develop a portion of the UHT site into a park is eerily reminiscent of the acceptance of Walton’s offer of the land for Cedar Canal or Thorpe’s donation of land along Minnehaha Creek. Then and now, it isn’t ambiguous who benefits from and who is harmed by these deals. The question is, then, this time, will things be different?