Context: A Reform That Arrived With Applause Already Attached

In 2018, Minneapolis became the first major U.S. city to eliminate single-family zoning citywide. The reform, embedded in the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan, was heralded as historic. National media framed it as a decisive break from exclusionary land-use policy. Think tanks cited it as proof that supply constraints were the primary driver of housing unaffordability.

The applause arrived quickly. So did the model status.

Minneapolis 2040 became shorthand for enlightened urban governance. It promised density without displacement, growth without inequality, and affordability through rational planning. For technocratic reformers, it was elegant. For developers, it was permissive. For political moderates, it offered progress without confrontation.

What it did not do was fully interrogate the system it was entering.

The Reform, Stated Precisely

Minneapolis 2040 eliminated exclusive single-family zoning and allowed up to triplexes on all residential lots. It also encouraged denser development along transit corridors and removed parking minimums in some areas. The stated goals were to increase housing supply, reduce racial segregation, and slow rent growth.

These changes mattered. Single-family zoning had long functioned as a tool of exclusion. Removing it was necessary.

It was not sufficient.

The plan assumed that unlocking supply would translate, over time, into affordability. It treated zoning as the primary bottleneck and market response as the solution engine.

That assumption is where the problems begin.

What Worked, and Why It Looked Convincing

Minneapolis did see results that advocates point to as success indicators.

Housing construction increased modestly compared to peer cities. Rent growth slowed relative to national averages, especially during the immediate post-reform years. The city avoided the most extreme spikes seen in places like Austin or Phoenix.

From a spreadsheet perspective, these outcomes look defensible.

Zoning barriers fell. Developers responded. Units were built. The city could plausibly claim progress.

This is precisely why Minneapolis 2040 became so influential. It produced just enough positive signal to validate the theory without forcing a deeper examination of what was actually happening on the ground.

What Did Not Work, and Why It Was Predictable

The core failure of Minneapolis 2040 is not that it made things worse. It is that it treated a structural disease as a supply optimization problem.

New units skewed toward higher-end construction. This was not an accident. Market-rate developers respond to return profiles, not civic narratives. Without parallel investment in deeply affordable housing, supply increases clustered where profit margins were highest.

Displacement pressures did not disappear. In some neighborhoods, upzoning increased land values, incentivizing speculative activity. Small landlords sold. Long-term renters faced renovation-driven rent hikes. The formal right to build more units did not translate into tenant stability.

Most critically, the plan lacked ownership intervention. Who owned housing remained unchanged. Financialization dynamics continued uninterrupted. Housing remained an asset class first and shelter second.

These outcomes were not unforeseeable. They have appeared repeatedly in cities that rely on zoning reform without confronting capital structure.

Who Championed This Model, and Why That Matters

Minneapolis 2040 is frequently championed by policy moderates, market-oriented reformers, and conservative commentators seeking a politically palatable alternative to public housing or tenant protections.

The appeal is obvious. Zoning reform allows leaders to claim action without redistributing power. It avoids conflict with investors. It preserves the moral language of inclusion while keeping control mechanisms intact.

This is where donor instinct becomes relevant.

Readers have seen this pattern in other domains. Deregulate first. Let the market respond. Patch the fallout later. The result is a system that appears rational while quietly entrenching advantage.

Calling this approach progressive obscures what it is: a technocratic workaround that avoids confronting root causes.

The Reinvention Problem

Zoning reform is not new. Cities have been upzoning, downzoning, and rezoning for over a century. The idea that eliminating single-family zoning alone would unlock affordability reflects institutional amnesia rather than innovation.

This is the “special snowflake” failure mode.

Each generation of reformers convinces itself that its context is unprecedented. Prior lessons are ignored because they feel outdated. Structural patterns are rediscovered at great expense.

Minneapolis 2040 did not fail because it was bold. It failed because it was incomplete in ways history already warned against.

Comparing Methods, Not Ideologies

Contrast Minneapolis with cases like Chicago’s Treatment Not Trauma or Los Angeles’ Care First framework.

Those efforts began with diagnosis rather than elegance. They asked who holds power, where incentives point, and which systems are misaligned. They accepted messiness in exchange for leverage.

Minneapolis chose clarity over confrontation. It optimized one variable and hoped others would follow.

That difference is not ideological. It is methodological.

Progressivism, when it works, is not about rejecting markets outright. It is about recognizing where markets fail predictably and intervening accordingly. Minneapolis intervened at the surface and left the engine untouched.

Batting Average and the Illusion of Success

Supporters of Minneapolis 2040 often point to slowed rent growth as evidence of success. This is not wrong. It is incomplete.

If the metric is whether rents rose more slowly than elsewhere, the plan passes. If the metric is whether housing insecurity declined meaningfully for working-class residents, the answer is less clear.

Batting average requires asking whether the system is improving over time for the people most exposed to harm. Zoning reform alone cannot deliver that outcome because it does not address tenure, ownership, or income constraints.

This is not a moral failure. It is a design limitation.

What This Case Teaches, If We Let It

Minneapolis 2040 is valuable precisely because it did not collapse. It shows what happens when reform is ambitious but shallow, well-intentioned but underpowered.

It teaches several durable lessons:

• Local problems require local diagnosis, not imported frameworks.
• Solutions that avoid confronting capital will be shaped by capital.
• History is an asset, not a constraint.
• Elegance is not the same as effectiveness.

Most importantly, it demonstrates why progressive governance must be judged by outcomes rather than alignment with fashionable policy tools.