In October 2008, The McKnight Foundation released the report Re:Focus: Making Decisions for Future Generations, highlighting the Twin Cities' outer-ring suburbs and the possibilities for their zone of growth and development. With the report, McKnight hopes both to spark a call to action for thoughtful planning and to help connect people with tools to improve the way our region grows.

Report Introduction by McKnight President
Kate Wolford

[Note: Re:Focus was produced with a hole running through the report's body, drawing the reader's focus to the important content around its center.]

Doesn't look right, does it?

You can't miss it. There's a hole in the center of this book — starting with its cover, right where Minneapolis and St. Paul should be. We know that any image of the metro area, or even of our state, isn't the full picture without its urban core. Similarly, any image of the Twin Cities without their outer-ring suburbs is no more complete a view. At its heart, this report is about our interconnectedness, and about the importance of making decisions that have long-term implications for our shared future.

The empty spot encourages us to look beyond the known center. Simply put, it isn't about the hole; it's about the whole.

To consider the "whole," with this publication we focus on a part of the region that is often overlooked. We highlight our area's outer-ring suburbs, and their zone of growth and development which — as it continues to widen — has potential to either enhance or diminish the region's overall quality of life. For our part, McKnight embraces the vital interdependence that exists across our region to provide the greatest opportunities for the prosperity of all families, as well as for healthy economic competition with other regions in a changing economy.

Since we began working in what some people refer to as "edge communities," we've seen that external factors are constantly changing the dynamics that shape them. The mortgage crisis has slowed growth pressures. The rise in gas prices has made transportation a central consideration in families' decisions about where to locate within the region. Finally, a full third of the CO2 emissions that cause climate change are believed to come from transportation, which has exposed the inefficiencies of our current land-use patterns, calling for creative solutions. All these external factors further reveal the interdependence of our region, and the growing need for local responses within this larger context.

Between 1986 and 2002, the populations in "urban" areas of the seven-county region developed one-and-a-half times as quickly as Minnesota's general population. That trend is expected to continue. By 2030, the population of our regional metropolis is expected to increase by more than one million; more important, if leaders and citizens cannot find creative new ways to grow, three-quarters of that growth will be spread farther and farther into the countryside.

What, how, and where we grow have crucial implications for all of us. In 2030, will this region be famous for its traffic congestion? Will we have pockets of ever more entrenched poverty? Will we have struggling urban cores, emptied by outer-ring growth? Or will we instead be known, as I believe, for our preservation of the natural beauty that attracts tourism, for our unbounded areas of opportunity, and for central cities that remain the heart of growth and prosperity?

Read McKnight President Kate Wolford's full introduction in the PDF linked at right.