The development patterns in metropolitan areas across the nation are separating working families and low-income individuals from economic opportunities. In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, economic opportunities for low-income families and minorities are increasingly limited because job growth is occurring on the metropolitan fringe, away from residences and communities.
Creating and preserving jobs where people live is one strategy for expanding economic opportunities. Building on the existing GIS infrastructure, Minnesota 3-D is an Internet-accessible and integrated system of employment, housing, and development information and analysis tools for neighborhoods, community development corporations, employment trainers, businesses, central cities, suburbs, counties of the Twin Cities metropolitan region, and the State of Minnesota. By combining new statewide data on employment and demographics through an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Social Security Administration, and the Census Bureau with the existing region-wide parcel-level housing data, Minnesota 3-D will be a "first-of-its-kind" system.
The centerpiece of this approach is the creation of an online mapping application. With emerging Internet-based mapping technologies, this is the most cost-effective way to maximize access, analytical capacity and user-to-user information sharing. Minnesota 3-D is a scalable, standards-based system that can accommodate expanded data layers and geographic coverage.
Minnesota 3-D will be utilized to support the next generation of community economic development, in which jobs are located near housing and vice versa. Minnesota 3-D is a suite of Internet-based GIS applications that will: provide geographic analysis of the current development patterns; encourage job creation near areas with underutilized workforce assets; promote housing production and reinvestment near job growth areas; and support community economic development activities at the local level. The project has a community capacity-building program to offer training and technical support.
Minnesota 3-D will result in a range of outcomes related to job creation and workforce housing opportunities across the region. One key indicator is to find the twelve most important development opportunities available to close the gap between housing and jobs and to stimulate new development projects in each of the six key partners' target communities.
