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Minnesota's largest city, Minneapolis, is much smaller than cities elsewhere in the country that it considers peers — like Seattle and Denver. This is partly because the city did not annex its surrounding suburbs. (It is also because Minneapolis and St. Paul never merged, a topic for a future podcast episode.)

Eric Roper, who wrote an article on this topic, joined host Ash Miller on the Curious Minnesota podcast to discuss why the greater Minneapolis area fragmented into a web of smaller cities — instead of consolidating.

Further reading:

Why didn't Minneapolis gobble up its suburbs? (March 2023 Curious Minnesota article)