By the end of its meeting next week, the Minneapolis City Planning Commission will have approved an astonishing 7,187 units of new housing. That's the most it has approved in any year of this past decade. In the last three years, the CPC has approved nearly 20k new units.

This flood of new housing does not represent the impact of a couple mega-projects. I've counted 71 unique housing projects that have been approved by the city this year, beating the record of 65 which was set in 2018.

683 of the approved units come in buildings of 1-50 units.

Downtown saw a fairly normal amount of new housing approvals. The biggest gains came everywhere else.

Over 5,000 new housing units were approved outside of downtown. Wards 3, 5, 8, and 10 set decade highs in new housing approvals.

At the same time, the city's proposed growth has rarely been more uneven. I didn't count a single new housing project in Ward 13 (the city's wealthiest) this year, and for the eighth consecutive year, I didn't count any new housing approved in Ward 4.

Good news is that in 2020, the ratio of parking spaces to housing units was 0.76. That's the second lowest of the decade, just behind 2015, when a lot of new student housing was proposed.

But the *total* amount of approved units without parking spaces was 1,745—much higher.

More good news is that in 2020, the ratio of dedicated bicycle parking to housing units was 1.02. That's far from the highest ratio of the decade, but again, because the raw numbers of proposed housing units (w/ fewer for students) is so much higher, it's really meaningful.

Coda to this thread: Here's a part of a letter attached to a submission for next Monday's meeting (a triplex and fourplex are on the agenda).

I think it speaks to the impact that something like Mpls 2040 can have as a *signal*, quite apart from changing the formal zoning rules.