Minneapolis in the context of "General Mills"

A popular assembly (or people's assembly) is a gathering called to address issues of importance to participants. Popular assemblies tend to be freely open to participation, in contrast to elected assemblies and randomly-selected citizens' assemblies, and are a form of direct democracy. Some popular assemblies consist of people invited from a location, while others invite them from a workplace, industry, educational establishment or protest movement. Some are called to address a specific issue, while others have a wider scope.

The term is often used to describe gatherings that address, what participants feel are, the effects of a democratic deficit in representative democratic systems. Sometimes assemblies are created to form an alternative power structure, other times they work with other forms of government.

A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in Commonwealth English (see spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza, or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof.

The first known collections of retailers under one roof are public markets, dating back to ancient times, and Middle Eastern covered markets, bazaars and souqs. In Paris, about 150 covered passages were built between the late 18th century and 1850, and a wealth of shopping arcades were built across Europe in the 19th century. In the United States, the widespread use of the automobile in the 1920s led to the first shopping centers consisting of a few dozen shops that included parking for cars. Starting in 1946, larger, open air centers anchored by department stores were built (sometimes as a collection of adjacent retail properties with different owners), and then enclosed shopping malls starting with Victor Gruen's Southdale Center near Minneapolis in 1956.

Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in status and size, though not necessarily equal; a city and a substantially smaller suburb would not typically qualify, even if they were once separate. Tri-cities and quad cities are similar groups of three or four municipalities.

A common – but not universal – scenario is two cities that developed concurrently on opposite sides of a river. For example, Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota – one of the most widely known pairs of "Twin Cities" – were founded several miles apart on opposite sides of the Mississippi River, and competed for prominence as they grew.

Hennepin County (/ˈhɛnəpɪn/ HEN-ə-pin) is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,281,565, and was estimated to be 1,273,334 in 2024, making it the most populous county in Minnesota and the 34th-most populous county in the United States. Its county seat is Minneapolis, the most populous city in Minnesota and the 46th-most populous city in the United States. The county is named for the 17th-century explorer Louis Hennepin. It extends from Minneapolis to the suburbs and outlying cities in the western part of the county. Its natural areas are covered by extensive woods, hills, and lakes. It contains over 21.98% of the state's population. It is included in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul–Bloomington metropolitan statistical area.

Minnesota is a state situated in the Midwestern United States. According to the 2020 United States census, Minnesota is the 22nd most populous state with 5,706,494 inhabitants but the 14th largest by land area, spanning 79,626.74 square miles (206,232.3 km) of land. Minnesota is divided into 87 counties and contains 855 incorporated cities, with populations ranging from 428,579 (Minneapolis) to 10 (Kinbrae) in 2024. Minnesota cities are classified by population as a first class city, a second class city, a third class city, or a fourth class city; this is done for legislative purposes.

Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 311,527, making it Minnesota's second-most populous city and the 63rd-most populous in the United States. Saint Paul and neighboring Minneapolis form the core of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, the third most populous in the Midwest with around 3.7 million residents.

The Minnesota State Capitol and the state government offices sit on a hill next to downtown Saint Paul overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River. Local cultural offerings include the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, and the Minnesota History Center. Three of the region's professional sports teams play in Saint Paul: the Minnesota Wild and Frost (at the Grand Casino Arena) and Minnesota United FC (at Allianz Field). The minor-league baseball team the St. Paul Saints play at CHS Field, 10 miles (16 km) from their major-league affiliate the Minnesota Twins in downtown Minneapolis.

Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota, and St. Croix rivers in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is commonly known as the Twin Cities after the area's two largest cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Minneapolis sits mostly on the west side of the Mississippi River on lake-covered terrain. Although most of the city is residential neighborhoods, it has a business-dominated downtown area with some historic industrial areas, the Mill District and the North Loop area. Saint Paul, which is mostly on the east side of the river, has a smaller business district, many tree-lined neighborhoods, and a large collection of late-Victorian architecture. Both cities, and the surrounding smaller cities, feature lakes, hills, and creeks.

There are 13 lakes of at least five acres (two hectares) within the borders of Minneapolis in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Of these, Bde Maka Ska is the largest and deepest, covering 421 acres (170.37 ha) with a maximum depth of 89.9 feet (27.4 m). Lake Hiawatha, through which Minnehaha Creek flows, has a watershed of 115,840 acres (468.79 km), two orders of magnitude larger than the next largest watershed in the city. Ryan Lake, in the city's north, sits partially in Minneapolis and partially in neighboring Robbinsdale. Certain other bodies of water are counted on some lists of Minneapolitan lakes, though they may fall outside the city limits or cover fewer than five acres.

Many of Minneapolis's lakes formed in the depressions left by large blocks of ice after the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet at the end of the last glacial period and now overlie sandy or loamy soils. Before the appearance of white settlers, the Dakota harvested wild rice from the lakes. In the early 1800s, the lakes' shorelines were marshy, deterring large-scale settlement and development by white residents though an experimental Dakota agricultural community, Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, was founded on the banks of Bde Maka Ska by Maḣpiya Wic̣aṡṭa in 1829. In the 1880s, landscape architect Horace Cleveland foresaw Minneapolis's growth and made a series of recommendations to the city's Board of Park Commissioners to acquire land along Minnehaha Creek, near Minnehaha Falls, and around several lakes in the southwest portion of the city in order to form a robust, interconnected park system that would aesthetically and morally benefit the city's residents. Board president Charles M. Loring heeded Cleveland's advice and bought the land, later developed into a robust system of parks by Theodore Wirth. During this time, many of the lakes were reformed by the Board of Park Commissioners through draining, dredging, shoreline stabilization, and the construction of parkways around their perimeters. Property in neighborhoods surrounding the lakes grew desirable, especially by the "Chain of Lakes", five lakes in the southwestern portion of the city (Maka Ska, Harriet, Isles, Cedar, and Brownie) that were joined by artificial channels.

The Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway is a linked series of park areas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, that takes a roughly circular path through the city. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board developed the system over many years. The corridors include roads for automobile traffic plus separate paths for pedestrians and bicycles, and extend slightly into neighboring cities. About 50 miles (80 km) of roadway and paths are in the system, and much of it was built in the 1930s as part of Civilian Conservation Corps projects.