Best of 2012

From the network

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  The Hassle of Airport Security is Not a Reason to Build High Speed Rail: A group of students in California have created a new high speed rail advocacy group called "I Will Ride." One of the members wrote an op-ed in support of the California high speed rail project in the...
  
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  2012 Nice Ride flows revisited: For the last two years, I’ve mapped the flows of the Nice Ride bikes.  I’ve always been slightly dissatisfied with the results, since bikes were obviously shown taking routes that any san...
  
• Signifying Nothing: My way was blocked by a sign signifying nothing. Same site as last fall, at The Commons hotel on Harvard.- dml...
  
• What is the Constituency of a Local Land-Use Decision?: cross-posted at Streets.mn In the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis, a local entrepreneur put together a proposal to develop a surface parking lot into a 5-story condo building with retail s...
  
• Minnesota Vikings Stadium FAIL – We need better urban design: The architecture of the Minnesota Vikings Stadium: take it or leave it? Personally, I think it looks like a cross between a laser jet printer, a drunk Frank Gehry and something out of 2001: A Space Od...
  
• Tuesday Network Update: There is a lot happening at the Strong Towns Network. Here's a sample: Andrew Price shares an idea from Australia called Thinkers in Residence. Is this a concept we could adopt here in the United St...
  
• Today on Streets.mn: Comparing SABR to Critical Urbanism: Baseball is one of my favorite things, and I wrote a post for Streets.mn today about the lessons that SABRmetrics can teach critical urbanists.Lots of good stuff:First, baseball statheads rigorously t...
  
• A Bold Vision for a Downtown Park and a More Beautiful City: The great mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley, likes to say “there is no reason to build anything that won’t add to the beauty of the city.” Inspiring words. It behooves the Mayor of Minneapolis, R.T...
  
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  Washington Ave Public Meeting Recap: The Washington Avenue public meeting was held on May 14 from 5-7pm. It was an "open house," which means that people could drop in anytime in that two hour window to see the four different op...
  
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  Pedestrians prohibited on streets.mn: Today on streets.mn I examine Bloomington’s latest bungle. Bloomington is the suburb I lived in the longest, it has some really nice topography for the Twin Cities that great parks like Hyland,...
  
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  Jobs, economic development and housing budget bill makes important investments in our state: Minnesota Budget Bites As the 2013 Legislative Session closes, the final budget bills have been passed by the House and Senate. Last week the omnibus jobs, economic development and h...
  
• Bikeway Functional Class: I’ve been reading a lot of bike plans lately, and there seems to be a pretty wide variety of frameworks used by agencies to categorize bikeways. In particular, I’m intrigued by the variet...