Who’s my neighbor? New Twin Cities maps tell the story

Want to know where the rich people are in Minneapolis and St. Paul?

What about the old people?

Foreign born?

Wilder Research has just revamped its Minnesota Compass neighborhood profiles to make it a lot easier to create those snapshots at a glance.

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Minnesota Compass  has compiled census and other information about Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods for the past three years. But the site just got easier to use.

With one click, you can create themed maps like those above. Another click and you can zero in on a specific neighborhood for its profile.

Craig Helmstetter, Wilder Research senior research manager, pointed out some stark contrasts as examples of what you can learn.

In Minneapolis, the North Loop area and the Near North neighborhood lie right next to each other, but their median incomes are on different planets, $70,000 apart.

In St. Paul, 30 percent of the residents of St. Paul's Thomas-Dale neighborhood were born outside the United States, but right next door in Como Park, only 7 percent were.

It's not new that the Twin Cities is a varied mosaic of neighborhoods. But take some time to play around with the data. Who rents and who owns? Who has health insurance? Where are concentrations of poverty?

You might learn something about where you live.