An official website of the Guiding growth and development in the region
In the late 1960s, community leaders saw value in collaborating to solve the issues facing the region. At that time, the Twin Cities region was facing challenges resulting from rapid population growth and uncoordinated and disconnected urban sprawl:
- Rapid growth was threatening ecosystems and natural areas better suited for preservation as parks and open space.
- Inadequately treated wastewater was emptying into lakes, rivers, and waterways.
- The Twin Cities’ privately owned bus company was rapidly deteriorating, a victim of rising fares, declining ridership, and an aging bus fleet.
- Growing fiscal disparities were making it difficult for communities with inadequate tax capacity to fund essential services.
The Minnesota Legislature took unprecedented action to address these challenges. In 1967, the Legislature created the Metropolitan Council and gave it responsibilities for planning and coordinating the region’s growth and setting policies to deal with regional issues. On signing the bill, then-Governor Harold LeVander observed that the Met Council “was conceived with the idea that we will be faced with more and more problems that will pay no heed to the boundary lines which mark the end of one community and the beginning of another.”
In 1976, through the passage of the Metropolitan Land Planning Act, the legislature took further steps to connect the Met Council’s efforts around regional infrastructure planning with local comprehensive planning. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the passage of the land planning act, the region has decades of experience of working together to solve regional issues. As we look toward 2050, we are faced with new challenges:
- Post-COVID economic recovery
- Changes in the way we travel and work
- Water supply contamination and shortages, particularly in the east metro
- Impacts from climate change, including increasing rainfall intensity and increasing heat
- Continued racial disparities across many factors
As a regional plan, Imagine 2050 addresses issues greater than any one neighborhood, city, or single county can tackle alone to build and maintain a prosperous region.
At the same time, the future’s increasingly complex challenges demand that we tap into our imaginations to develop new strategies and greater collaboration. Building on our region’s past planning successes, the Met Council took an integrated approach to developing Imagine 2050 across all of its planning areas in an effort to seek strategies and solutions that have co-benefits across multiple dimensions. And it will take all of us in our continued and new partnerships to effectively address the demanding challenges facing the region.
Imagine 2050 guides the growth and development, both public and private, in the region. The Met Council sets the framework for land use patterns and guides the orderly and economical development of the region, as directed by the Metropolitan Land Planning Act (Minn. Stat. 473.145). To be fiscally responsible, the Met Council works collaboratively with local units of government to guide land uses and development patterns that leverage the region’s infrastructure investments and private development to the benefit of all. Directing growth where infrastructure already exists also reduces the need to add roads and expand the regional wastewater system to support the same growth elsewhere.
Looking ahead to a growing and changing region
The seven-county Twin Cities region will continue to grow, but at a slower pace than in previous decades. Our region will gain 657,000 residents between 2020 and 2050, bringing the region’s total population to 3,820,000. Though the region’s population grew 11% between 2010 and 2020, growth rates of 6% to 7.5% per decade are expected through 2050. Our region’s population will continue to age, and the share of the region’s population age 65 and older will nearly double by 2050 to comprise 22% of the region’s population.
Further, the region’s population will become more racially and ethnically diverse, a shift that we already see today in schools and workplaces. The share of the Black population, American Indian population, and populations of color will nearly double between 2020 and 2050, going from 29% to 45% of the region’s population. Together, both these demographic trends will fuel a transformation of the region's schools and workplaces.1 These demographic trends also drive the plans we make across all aspects of the built environment including housing needs, transportation choices, recreational needs, and the design of our neighborhoods and cities.
The Twin Cities region added 238,000 jobs between 2010 and 2019, before temporarily losing these gains in 2020 due to the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Employment has since rebounded, mostly.) Participation rates (the share of the population working or seeking work) are expected to reach a ceiling around 2024, as employers struggle to replace aging workers. This results in an employment slowdown between 2025 and 2040, before employment accelerates again in the 2040s. The total number of jobs is forecasted to reach over two million by 2050.
| |
2010 |
2020 |
2030 |
2040 |
2050 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Population |
2,850,000 |
3,163,000 |
3,364,000 |
3,555,000 |
3,820,000 |
| Employment |
1,541,000 |
1,581,000 |
1,802,000 |
1,895,000 |
2,074,000 |
Recent land use and development trends
The seven-county metro contains about 1.9 million acres of land, with just over half of the region’s acres in agriculture or undeveloped land uses. Residential development, primarily single-family homes, take up about one-quarter of the region’s acres, while parks, recreation, and natural preserves account for 10% of the region’s land uses (Figure 1).2 This distinction between the developed portion of the region and the rural portion of the region is reflected and advanced through the decades of regional planning that has distinguished between the urban and rural service areas.
In this last decade, the region has accommodated growth in a more compact fashion, consuming 290 acres per 1,000 households, down from 490 acres per 1,000 new households from 2000-2010. Single-family detached housing remains the main driver of land consumption, accounting for nearly two thirds of the growth in developed acres from 2016-2020 (approximately 12,500 acres) and constituting nearly two-thirds of all developed land in the region. At the same time, the region has also seen an increase in the acreage of land dedicated to parks, open space, and natural preserves, as formalizing those land uses often accompanies land development.3
This growth in more compact development has also been buoyed and furthered by local comprehensive plans. During the 2010-2020 decade, local governments amended their plans frequently to accommodate new development on land that had been previously guided for non-residential uses or to accommodate development at higher densities than had been previously planned.
Figure 1.1: Generalized land use composition, 2020
About 25% of the total housing units constructed during this period were facilitated through a comprehensive plan amendment.4
At the same time, local governments were developing their 2040 comprehensive plans, which on the whole planned for densities well above the minimum densities required in Thrive MSP 2040, particularly in the more urbanized portions of the region. Cities planned to accommodate growth on fewer acres, while at the same time increasing the allowable densities. These planning efforts resulted in increased land capacity to support forecasted growth.5 As the rate of projected population and employment growth slows, recent Met Council analysis of the existing capacity within the Metropolitan Urban Service Area shows that the region has more than adequate land supply to accommodate growth through 2050.
Housing development was relatively slow during the early 2010s as the region recovered from the Great Recession. But the latter half of the decade was marked by rapid development, particularly multifamily. On average, 12,900 housing units were added per year from 2010 to 2020.6 Strong housing development has continued into the 2020s, with over 20,000 housing units added in both 2021 and 2022.7
1 Metropolitan Council. (2023). The regional forecast: Population and employment in the Twin Cities region in 2050. https://metrocouncil.org/Data-and-Maps/Publications-And-Resources/MetroStats/Land-Use-and-Development/The-Regional-Forecast-Update-2023.aspx
2 Metropolitan Council. (2021). 2020 generalized land use inventory. https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetings/Committees/Committee-of-the-Whole/2021/08-04-21/Info-Item-Release-of-Land-Use-Inventory-PPT.aspx
3 Ibid.
4 Metropolitan Council. (2018). Trends in comprehensive plan amendments, 2010-2017. https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetings/Committees/Community-Development-Committee/2018/February-5,-2018/Trends-ppt.aspx
5 Metropolitan Council. (2021). 2040 comprehensive plan composite. https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetings/Committees/Committee-of-the-Whole/2021/04-07-21/Info-Item-Comp-Plan-Composite-PPT.aspx
6 Metropolitan Council. (2021). Residential development trends. Residential Development Trends (metrocouncil.org)
7 Metropolitan Council. (2021). Lessons from 2023 population estimates. https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetings/Committees/Committee-of-the-Whole/2024/7-17-2024/INFO-1-Presentation.aspx
8 For additional details about the methodology and further discussion on the analysis, see Metropolitan Council (2024). Scenario planning consolidated findings and connections to policy. https://metrocouncil.org/Council-Meetings/Committees/Land-Use-Advisory-Committee/2024/03-21-2024/Info-Scenario-Planning.aspx
