"Area of Concentrated Attack": The Visual Rhetoric of Planning for the Minneapolis "Ghetto"

Abstract

When Minneapolis established its first planning department in 1921, city planners immediately targeted an area centered on the intersection of 6th Avenue and Lyndale Avenue North. At the time, most African Americans and Jews in Minneapolis lived near 6th and Lyndale and the area was called a ghetto. In the hundred years since, city planners have used maps, photographs, and other visuals to consistently argue that the area around 6th and Lyndale is a problem that can be solved through redevelopment. This paper examines the visual rhetorics that planners have used to represent 6th and Lyndale as a ghetto. As represented by planners in Minneapolis, the ghetto is a threat, it requires massive intervention, it is a testing ground, and it is a source of land for downtown expansion.