Thanks to everyone who helped make our first year at Streets.MN a success! Thanks to all our writers and our new logo designer. And, it goes without saying, thanks to each and every reader and commenter. 2012 was great, and we’re looking to make 2013 even better. ‘Best of 2012′ series recap: 2012 Best Pedestrian Shopping [...]
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Best Current Plan: Access Minneapolis Transportation Action Plan
We are almost there, good readers; 2013, and the end of our gilded series on your opinions on where our fair cities are headed in the next year and beyond. Unfortunately, I have the task of reporting on what was least popular subject: the Best Current Plan. Woe is me. Of the 10 subjective and [...]
2012 Best Opportunity to Do Something Useful: Dinkytown Trench
Is usefulness useful? Broadly speaking, the definition of usefulness as applied to transportation was set in stone a zillion years ago as meaning the movement of as many vehicles as possible as quickly as possible. But those of us whose communities all those vehicles are moving quickly through, or who have lost loved ones to [...]
2012 Best Current Muliti-Million Dollar Public Works Project: Central Corridor LRT
Of all the categories included in the Streets.mn “Best of” series, this category was the biggest blowout. With 92.2% of the votes, the winner of the award for the 2012 Best Current Multi-Million Dollar Public Works Project (by a landslide): Central Corridor LRT The eleven mile light rail project linking downtown Minneapolis with downtown St. [...]
2012 Best Farmer’s Market: St. Paul Farmer’s Market
The farmer’s market: Among the oldest forms of direct-to-consumer sales, these truly urban agoras bring the rural to the city, and exist all around the world in some form or another. They bridge the gap between city and country with commerce, and thus, it was inevitable we at streets.mn would ask readers where their favorite [...]
2012 Best Skyway/Undergound System: Downtown Minneapolis
Skyways are often derided by idealistic urbanists. Critics point to barren downtown streetscapes and blame the skyways for lack of activity. In my previous life as a naive urban planning student learning about cities, I criticized them myself. But I now think of skyways in the same way as most people probably do: just another option [...]
2012 Best Trend (Hint: It’s not the Apocalypse)
I put off writing about the 2012 Streets.MN best trend until this morning in case all the raining fire and brimstone would surpass the other “best trend” candidates. But since we dodged that fate, it’s time to unveil the 2012 Best Trend results! Nice Ride Minnesota is the clear winner with 44.2% of the vote. [...]
2012 Best Late 20th/Early 21st Century New Urbanist Simulacrum of Main Street: Excelsior and Grand
St. Louis Park’s Excelsior and Grand wins 2012′s best New Urbanist Simulacrum of Main Street. The Twin Cities doesn’t have a Seaside, Kentlands or even a Celebration. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because we have an Uptown, St. Anthony Main, Warehouse District, Cathedral Hill, etc. Our New Urbanist (NU) town centers are few and [...]
2012 Best Mid-Late 20th Century Enclosed Shopping Mall: Mall of America
When we at Streets.MN were dividing up who would write which “Best of” entry, no one else wanted shopping malls. One said “I’m cool with anything but the best indoor mall, since that doesn’t exist.” What do most urbanists want? A lively, pedestrian realm, clean, free of automobiles, with a variety of activities, the ability [...]
2012 Best Pedestrian Shopping Street: Hennepin Avenue
Welcome to the first annual Street.mn Best of The City Awards. Over the last week, we have over 100 people take our quick vote / survey about the best and worst of planning and urban design in Minnesota, and the results are in! Over the next two weeks, we’ll be sharing with you a delightful [...]
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Bikes and Businesses Must Unite
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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design
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Why I’m proud to be “offended” by the judgemental map of Minneapolis
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Washington Avenue proposed layouts are posted
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SPUD
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Podcast #35 – Twin Cities Greenways with Dacia Durham and Matthew Hendricks
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The Yard at Downtown East
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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design
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Clarifying the Minneapolis Event Rate Meter Parking Debacle
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Podcast #34 – The Future of Car Sharing with Christopher Bineham
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Jeremy Bergerson: What about the fact that cyclists lost a reliable,...
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Bill Lindeke: Incidentally, I spend a lot of time down at the SP...
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Brendon Slotterback: If meters are free (or cheap) you are less likely ...
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Justin Foell: Better ways to go to a Vikings game:
1) Take Pu...
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Bill Lindeke: Everyone (including Justin):
Feel free to comm...
From the network
- 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,...
- 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...
- MN Blog Cabin Roundup, 5/17: If the DFL wants to impress, leave earlyfrom Wry Wing Politics by Joe Loveland…of all the things that DFLers could do to impress Minnesota the swing voters who will determine in 2014 which party rem...
- Friday News Digest: Four days on the road is about the max for me before homesickness becomes overwhelming. At least, if "on the road" is without my wife and kids. I feel really fortunate to have been able to spend the p...
- 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...
- Has There Ever Been a Streetcar Feasibility Study That Found Streetcars Unfeasible?: I ask this as a serious question: Does a streetcar study exist that concludes that a streetcar is unfeasible? Check out the studies that show up from a Google search (link). Without spending too much...
- Why must I travel, why can't I tele-conference: Two times in two days last week I was asked to fly to an east coast city for a half-day meeting. The meeting organizers offered to pay my travel expenses. I asked to save the travel money and tele-con...
- So, You're Addicted to GeoGuessr...: Don't worry. You're not alone....OK, that's a good point. You actually are alone, technically speaking, in the sense that you're sitting in your room staring at your computer, taking a break between r...
- 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...
- We Need Transit and the Urbanism that Surrounds It: Kate Wolford’s Star Tribune commentary calling for more transit was spot on. Our peer cities (Denver, Portland, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, hell, even St. Louis!) are ahead of us in terms of buil...
- Riding Minnehaha with Kids. Or not.: A few days ago, I was out for a ride with Isaiah's dad, Michael. You might remember Isaiah. He's the now 10-year-old who rode 150 miles in two days as a fundraiser for the Coalition. O...
- 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...
