Secrets of the City

Producing energy for industry, homes and transportation has to be planned and executed reasonably

Gimme a break… This list is B.S. I lived in Munich for a year and it was about three times as clean on the streets there as here, public transportation 30 times better than MSP and Germans make much stronger efforts than Americans to keep their industrial activities cleaner. And Munich isn’t even in the top 10, but Minneapolis is? Please…

I second herman. Every German city, except Berlin, is many times cleaner than Minneapolis. Same goes for most big Canadian cities.

I’ll be the first to remind everyone that this magazine also named Kevin McHale the best GM sports.n

there’s no explanation of the methodology of the study from which this list came. at least we could spot the fatal flaws in the laughable McHale ranking.

Well, it was fine until they said Pittsburgh. They are obviously on drugs.

I don’t think they mean clean streets. I think it’s more of a Green City sorta list.

Same goes for most big Canadian cities.

Everyone points to Vancouver. Nice in the postcards. Three blocks in, it’s a rough port town. Montreal is the nicest, but it’s not as clean as Minneapolis. Toronto?—no.

That said, I think all those cities have other qualities that are superior to Minneapolis, but cleanliness isn’t among them.

Gimme a break… This list is B.S.

Wanna lay odds herman lives in St. Paul?

Must be the E85….

As a pittsburgh resident I’m able to say that if Pittsburgh really is one of the 10 cleanest cities in the world, the world is a uglier, dirtier place than I thought.

You’re not coming to that realizaton at 65 years old are you JC?

Hay guysssss, top tech citayy!

lolz!

All over the world, people are reading that article and saying, “yeah, but I wouldn’t live there.”

How could it not be clean? After all, it is under 12 feet of snow until July right? Isn’t that how most outsiders picture our fair city? Under a wonderful white blanket of snow. How could anything be cleaner than that?

Minneapolis is not that clean. There is tons of air pollution!

What is with Forbes and these stupid lists anyway?

They have one list where Minneapolis is the worst place for singles, another list where Minneapolis is the best place to find a mate… all these lists are meaningless and contradict each other.

The reasons magazines do lists is that they sell magazines, and more particularly, advertisers. The lists need not have any basis in reality: best doctors, best lawyers, best real estate agents, best bed and breakfasts, best of the Twin Cities. It’s all crap, served up in tiny bites, for people who can’t be bothered to digest complicated truth and advertisers who don’t want people to know the difference.

Magazine newsstand selling 101: put a number on the cover. 10 best; 15 things you ought to do; 5 ways to drive your man wild. Look at a newsstand sometime. Fast food journalism.

So I could be wrong because I don’t read it, but isn’t Forbes kinda a libertarian/business-oriented magazine? It seems weird to have them singing praises of public transportation and “clean-ness”.

I’m not really up on the hip-hop lingo, but is this study explaining what rappers refer to as the “derrty south”?

Conservatives are notorious slobs. And their yards are riddled with old cars and furniture.

“The lists need not have any basis in reality: best doctors, best lawyers, best real estate agents, best bed and breakfasts, best of the Twin Cities.“

Yeah, for $XX, I, too, can be listed as one of the best lawyers in the state. (Well, for me, it would probably be more than $XX – they do have some standards.)

But, here (Forbes) we have a list where its constituent listees would not have been approached to purchase such a ranking. All of your examples are of the type that would be sold the high ranking: docs, lawyers, agents, individual busniesses – all want that ranking to frame and put in their lobby. Minneapolis has no lobby.

So, how does this apply?

“Conservatives are notorious slobs. And their yards are riddled with old cars and furniture.“

Mine is littered with brand-new cars. As for the slobbiness, I’ll get after the maids about that.

Calgary is the best city in the world. End of story.

Calgary is the best city in the world

let’s go Red Wings.

gasp!

let’s go Red Wings

Yeah, the Wings start round two tonight and look! No Flames. Although our regular season record against San Jose is 1-3. I’m nervous!

Bobby, I’ve been in the lobby of Meet Minneapolis. This is just the sort of thing that they have there, and in their promotional materials that they send to prospective convention organizers.

That said, I’m going to presume that there is no direct connection to Forbes listings and their ad sales. That is not to say that there is with the other mags either. The idea is to create an easily explainable editorial package that can be sold to advertisers…and for potential advertisers to say, “My city is the cleanest” or “I’m the best lawyer.” It’s not so overt as “Buy and ad, be a best doctor,” but you get the idea, no? Feel the heft of this week’s City Pages and compare it to last week, or next week for that matter.

Meet Minneapolis is a horrible name for a CVB. sounds like a dating service or a butcher with a typo. That name change isn’t going to reverse our annual downward spiral of lower & lower convention attendance. We need global warming to turn this trend around.

and g rote, it’s baseball season now. I hate to say it, but I think the Tigers are going to put a whuppin’ on the Twinks this weekend.

Watching the bullpens of both teams lately has been like spending an afternoon on Steel Venom @ Valley Fair. I wish Leyland would just make Zumaya the Tigers’ closer already.

BTW, Sunday’s game is going to be a classic…Cy Young showdown between Santana & Bonderman…80F & sunny here….gonna set-up the backyard TV lounge with a cold six pack of bells, & spark up the grill.

“We need global warming to turn this trend around.“

Workin’ on it now. Expedition or Suburban? It’s just a tough call . . .

Ya, put in Zumaya this weekend. I love all those consecutive walks. Even our lame hitters wouldn’t swing at the crap that turd throws up there.

I guess no one from forbes has seen:

1) the mississippi in the summertime
2) the streets after the snow melts but before street sweeping (like roundabout now, although they’re making their way around)
3) dinkytown

I live in Montreal and was shocked to see that Forbes rated it the tenth cleanest city. The undeserved high rating leads me to wonder where else the surveyors looked.

Truth of the matter is that Montreal is in a state of steady decline with the filth being just one of the many problems plaguing the city. I can’t go anywhere without seeing remnants of old torn up sofas, discarded appliances, old dishes, food leftovers and whatnot left lying everywhere. Streets are littered with broken glass and other debris. It is the job of our trash collectors to pick up the garbage, but they are so careless when they throw the bags into the truck that they break and leave trails of refuse on the roads. In the summer many areas of the city literally stink.

In addition to the filth we have to put up with icy sidewalks left unsalted in winter, gaping potholes, water main breaks and days without water, poorly constructed buildings that fall apart just months after they’re completed and everything from traffic lights to mall entrances broken and left that way.

Marla Comm
Montreal, Quebec

If anyone thinks that Minneapolis is the cleanest in the world, that according to Forbes magazine, then the whole idea is laughable. The Mississippi River between the two cities is drench with dead fish and floating trash during the summer months; trash or plastic bags can be found occasionally in city parks, wrapped around tree branches and other forms of shrubs; the people here still use their old 80s cars out on the streets, kicking up bad soot and gasoline smells during the rush hour, not to mention the motorcycle club; the train yards in North Minneapolis still considers to be a pollutant environment; Lake Calhoun in south Minneapolis is the dumping ground of all toxic chemicals by 3M company, located in Maplewood on the east side of Saint Paul; the students at the UofMN continue to dump beer bottles and other forms of trash out on the street with the exception of rioting during a sporting event; and the yuppie liberals in town throw plastic water bottles in trash bins along the lake walkways as if recycle is not part of their word vocabulary.

And, oh yes Forbes, there is still a trash burning felicity, located in downtown Minneapolis next to the new Twins Ballpark site, paid by state taxpayers and local residents…..

What a bunch of media B.S.!

Response to Marla Comm:

You must be a French hater to make such stupid comments. I lived in many cities around the world (including, Brussels, Toronto, New York and Istanbul and Montreal). I could definitely state that Montreal is the cleanest of all that I have lived in and almost all that I have traveled to. I am now living in London but look forward to returning one day to the fabulous and sexy city of Montreal.