I just need to tell someone that the contrast between my YouTube Shorts feed when staying in Downtown Minneapolis and when back at home is wild. Lots of videos of armed confrontations between people, racially charged conversations, viral videos of police acting stupid etc.. You can't convince me that this doesn't have something to do with Google using my location to adjust its algorithm.
I also have to say, after exploring a bit last night, that this is one of the least walkable places I've ever stayed in and I don't know how I never noticed that before when I lived in the Twin Cities 15 years ago. It seems to have been emptied out by the pandemic in a particularly dystopian and sad way. The poor streetscaping was always there, but now it's laid bare because so few downtown workers are moving about.
I can't imagine what it's like to try to live in this neighborhood. We talk about revitalizing downtowns by converting the tall buildings to housing but there has to be some drastic changes to almost everything else around them before enough people will want to reside here for that to be a viable solution. Honestly the best case scenario I can think of might be to convert large portions of downtowns like these to hydroponic vertical farms (for food not weed).
Before someone whatabouts the skyways let me remind you that they close at 8pm and are lined with empty storefronts. Many restaurants are only open from 11am to 2pm. The sushi bar I ate in last night had started closing its doors at 7pm. This is not a substitute for streetfront retail.