Progress on my series of posts about Midwestern cities has been severely delayed. The reason is that, after reflecting on the visits I had in the latter half of 2025, I don’t believe I saw enough.
It’s well known that Minneapolis and St. Paul are the Twin Cities. But in the Midwest there’s actually several more metropolitan areas that are notoriously split jurisdictionally. (Up to and including the Quad Cities that straddle the border between Illinois and Iowa.) And I could not bring myself to write posts that I feel ultimately call for a ‘Pt. 2’.
But the march of time is dulling my recollection of events, so here’s my disjointed thoughts on Duluth, Minnesota and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The Twin Ports of Duluth, MN and Superior, WI sit at the western end of (unsurprisingly) Lake Superior. These cities are culturally and economically Rust Belt, but don’t let that fool you; this is an extremely active shipping port. Nonetheless the types of things that are shipping through here have changed over the last few decades, and that’s created vacancies in the industrial park that runs along the lake front. Online, the unavailability of jobs is all anyone talks about.
Duluth is a narrow and steep city. A ring of hills hugs the coast, and beyond them is a mess of marsh and dense forest. This leaves very little land for the city to work with, but Duluth does not shy away from the challenge. I can only imagine that living in this city is a nightmare 5 months of the year. Even the thinnest layer of snow or ice would make driving tangent to the lake impossible. Which, in retrospect, may be another reason the city spread so narrowly along the lake instead…
Duluth’s ‘downtown’ is central only by a stretch of the imagination, although where else would you place the center on such a strangely shaped municipality? The commercial hub is called Canal Park and it’s definitely an enjoyable area. Walkable, but you will need a car to get there in the first place. I’ll note that DECC Arena is adjacent but I can’t speak for what it’s like myself. The star of the show is Park Point, which is actually an island/sandbar that reaches out almost the entire way to Wisconsin. The only access is a bridge at the end of Canal Park. As far as I can tell, this island is half public parks and beaches and half an enclave for the extremely rich.
This is a good segue into the elephant in the room. I have it on good authority that a large portion of those working in Wisconsin’s university system, i.e. UW-Superior, live on this side of the state line. UMN Duluth is a larger school, Minnesota’s tax rate is generally better (but Your Mileage May Vary), Minnesota’s public services are generally better (again YMMV), but above all: Minnesota’s politics are better. I could say YMMV on this as well, but especially when discussing the subpopulation that works for a university… fair to say this is an objective statement.
I believe I would be missing the picture on Duluth if I didn’t also write about Superior. But I can’t write about Superior, because I didn’t actually go there myself.
Only other thing I’ll note that I may have missed about Duluth: the Skywalk. I have heard mixed things about it. Maybe I didn’t miss anything?
Ann Arbor is obviously in the sphere of influence of Detroit. (There’s a bus service connecting them, cleverly called D2A2.) It isn’t just a suburb however. Almost all of the land here is owned by UMich, and I am talking about a lot of land. The Arb and Matthaei Botanical Gardens together encapsulate much of it. It’s a stunning place to be. It’s also a locale in transition. Rents and land values are skyrocketing, forcing many to look elsewhere for housing. There are people who want to develop new highrises and apartment complexes, and there are people who want developers to stay away from their neighborhoods, and these two sets of people do not see eye to eye.
I expect that I would see the same sort of modernist turmoil in Detroit. Probably, I would see a much more pessimistic version of that turmoil. Detroit is well known as the city that suffered the hardest fall following White Flight. But that’s not what is keeping me from writing about Ann Arbor.
Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor go hand in hand as far as the locals are concerned. If anything, Ypsilanti is actually the more down-to-earth and less whitewashed part. Some people say that it’s more affordable to visit. Those people must own a car. It’s really not accessible at all for a pedestrian. Few places in this country are, to be sure, but Ann Arbor does have an Amtrak station.
There have been several cities that I quite enjoyed visiting where my takeaway has been, I would come back in a heartbeat, but I could never live here. Take Madison, WI for a Midwest example. Or take Virginia Beach, VA for a national one. Then there have been cities that I didn’t necessarily love but I can realistically see myself living in. Ann Arbor was an example of this. But how can I possibly write about my experience there if I’ve never seen the ‘good’ part?
On the subject, I have also not yet written about the Twin Cities themselves. That will come much later. If there is one Midwestern metropolis that can seriously challenge Chicago, there it is. I’ve visited several times and need several more before I can formulate my opinions.