Minneapolis: Great Architecture, Clean Streets

"The nation's 47th-largest city is known for the Twins baseball team, Mary Tyler Moore -- and an intricate web of skyways, second-floor connections that link more than 50 downtown blocks.

...There's a down-home feel to recent buildings as well. Yes, some of the newish loft apartments are as wallpaper thin as anything in the Bay Area. But the better ones are cloaked in Kasota Stone, a local limestone that adds indigenous warmth to the downtown terrain.

...When a city feels safe enough that a woman jogs along, alone, at dusk... somebody is doing something right."