I agree with you on "Greater Minnesota" instead of "outstate". "Greater Minnesota" and "The Metro" seem to both have come into usage by politicians and tv news people while I lived away from Minnesota.Except for 5 years in the 80's (when I lived in EP) I have lived Outstate. None of us Outstate folk think of your fancy suburbs exclusively as the Cities. We consider all of the metro as the Cities.
We also hate the term Greater Minesota.