What you see is only one small fraction of what was intended to be built. It was eventually supposed to be something like this:
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At the end of the 1960s, there were these utopian plans to build new self-contained "modern" cities within existing cities. Minneapolis was supposed to host one of the prototypes. And for various reasons, they decided to build this maybe square mile brutalist nightmare right next to the University of Minnesota replacing an existing neighborhood that was full of students and businesses that catered to students. The people who lived there didn't want any part of it.
They ended up building the first prison-block high-rise building (now known as riverside plaza) and some stuff around it. That first building was so horrific and so failed to live up to its social utopia promises that the rest of the project was eventually stopped.