Land Use & Open Space
Over the next 30 years, the Twin Cities will grow by over one million new residents. This growth, if poorly planned, will lead to increased traffic, pollution, and loss of wetlands, parklands and open spaces. We have an opportunity to plan now for a better future. This campaign is helping communities protect the region's valuable open space assets, and make better decisions about what, where and how to build next.
We pursue a broad range of land use issues through public education, community organization and community research including:
- The Citizens' Guide to Local Land Use Planning
- Open the doors to your local planning process. The Guide is a tool for everyone: residents, researchers, and communities.
- What is planning, anyway? Take a walk through Anytown, USA to learn more about community development and to view a glossary of common planning terms.
- Search the metro area for your city to find out how your community development process works.
- Then, check out The Activists' Guide to Land Use Planning (pdf, 611k) to learn how you can get involved.
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Conversations: Interviews with Open Space Activists
Read the stories of six citizens with first-hand experiences in successfully protecting threatened open spaces from destruction. - An Activist's Guide to Land Use Planning (pdf, 611k)
- Building Better: A Guide to America's Best New Development Projects
This report highlights many sound alternatives to the seemingly endless proliferation of strip malls and sprawling subdivisions that have come to dominate the American landscape. A redevelopment in Hopkins, MN is featured. - The Tour de Sprawl
- Transportation Choices and Transit-Oriented Development
- Twin Cities Open Space Preservation Workshops
The Open Space Campaign runs FREE open space preservation workshops across the Twin Cities metropolitan area. These workshops are 2-4 hours in duration and can be designed to meet the needs of any local community, open space organization or citizens group in the seven-county area.
Workshops include:
- Suburban Sprawl - how development patterns affect your community
- Environmental Review - how environmental review works in Minnesota
- Working with local/metro media outlets - how to make yourself heard
- Working with elected officials - how to make the most of your representation
- Land Conservation Tools - preserving open space
- Planning & Zoning 101 - how your community development process works
- Community Organizing - how to build effective community organizations
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Hard copies of this resource are available by contacting
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or calling 612-659-9124.
The North Star Chapter is a partner organization involved in the Embrace Open Space campaign.
The Land Use and Open Space campaign is funded in part by a generous grant from The McKnight Foundation.