Minneapolis Neighborhoods - Official Communities and Neighborhoods

Official Communities and Neighborhoods

Minneapolis consists of 11 communities, each of which are subdivided into anywhere between 4 to 13 neighborhoods. The official neighborhoods have a variety of origins; some were formed out of the attendance areas for elementary schools, while others are the areas of coverage of neighborhood associations formed by activists between 1901 and the 1980s. The division of the city into official neighborhoods and communities occurred as part of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) in the early 1990s. They remain associated with this community-based funding program, and are also used for statistical purposes. For purposes of the NRP, some of the 81 official neighborhoods have combined forces, leading to a total of 67 NRP Neighborhood action plans.

Neighborhoods historically defined themselves around schools and commercial hubs, and many trace neighborhood identity back into community organizations formed in the early part of the 20th Century. The oldest, the Prospect Park East River Road Association formed in 1901 to oppose city plans to level Tower Hill. In other neighborhoods, the current official neighborhood association was formed in the 1970s and 1980s; in Linden Hills, the organization was formed in 1972 in response to proposed changes in the park, although there were several social and commercial organizations in the neighborhood dating back to the neighborhood's development at the turn of the 20th Century.