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Models for tackling climate change at the regional level

By on April 18, 2013 in Environment

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the next regional plan (called ThriveMSP 2040) may be one of the most significant pieces of policy that gets made in Minnesota in this decade. Every ten years, the Metropolitan Council looks at how the “systems” of our region are performing (land use, transportation, water, wastewater, [...]

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Reconsidering the Nicollet Mall Redesign

By on April 16, 2013 in Environment, Featured, Infrastructure, Land use, Neighborhoods

There is a $20 million sum of state money that may be dedicated to redesign Nicollet Mall. While $20 million could bring some impressive changes to the pedestrian mall, these funds would represent an unfortunate misapplication of limited resources. We need to reconnect Nicollet Avenue- not redesign Nicollet Mall. Nicollet Mall, the nation’s first pedestrian transit way, [...]

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When Cities Get Serious About Climate Change…

By on March 26, 2013 in Environment

A recent comment on Streets.mn planted a seed in my head. The discussion was about the utility and futility of buses vs. streetcars, and for some reason I was particularly struck by (fellow writer and Minneapolis sustainability program coordinator) Brendon Slotterback’s statement about BRT: If we build A-BRT, we can always go back and put [...]

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Como Park & Conservatory

I Love Gardens

By on February 14, 2013 in children, Environment, Land use, urban agriculture, What I love about Minnesota

As we’ve moved through our week-long streets.mn lovefest, a variety of human made and natural features have been lauded, ranging from the very human parks (Rice Park) and cities (St. Paul), and the very natural features of trees and the Mississippi River. Today, I’d like to laud that intersection of human and nature: the garden. [...]

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Newflash: St. Paul isn’t Minneapolis (and that’s a good thing)

By on January 21, 2013 in Environment, Featured, Governance, Neighborhoods, Walking

If you were to read the City of St. Paul’s legislative wish list, you’d see a list of big projects such as: $14 million to improve the Children’s Museum $7 million for parking and transportation improvements at Como Park $32 million loan forgiveness tied to the Xcel Energy Center (in an effort to not pay [...]

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carter with solar panels

Solar access, land use and 30-year planning

By on January 10, 2013 in Environment, Land use

By law, every community in the seven-county metro is supposed to adopt a comprehensive plan that includes “an element for protection and development of access to direct sunlight for solar energy systems”.  This requirement dates back to 1978, when there was an oil crisis and gasoline was $1.30 per gallon (or, close to what it [...]

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Tax Land, Not Buildings

By on December 10, 2012 in Environment, Featured, Governance, Housing, Infrastructure, Land use, Parking, Smart Growth

Earlier this year, the city of Minneapolis received a grant from Met Council to study possible strategies for doing away with its over-abundance of downtown surface parking. For lots of reasons, the fact that surface parking covers one-third of the entire surface area of downtown is bad news for the city. (You can find an [...]

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Baby steps towards a stronger regional plan

By on November 29, 2012 in Environment, Governance, Plans

Have Metropolitan Council members been reading streets.mn?  Of course, I’d like to think so, and the draft principles and goals the Committee of Whole discussed on November 7th reflect some of the ideas you’ve seen here, and generally represent an improvement from plans of old. While it’s hard to read a lot into a goals [...]

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Tree Coverage

Tree canopy and house size

By on November 19, 2012 in Environment, urban agriculture

I will take a controversial position: trees are good. Given the amount of needless tree destruction we see, I sometimes feel in a minority. The City recently took the elm in front of our house, diminishing our shade. It was nearing end of life, and I assume diseased or at risk of disease. They have [...]

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It Can’t Happen Here

By on November 5, 2012 in Environment

Because we, the righteous, live in the blessed Midwest, we do not face God’s Wrath We are protected against all such natural disasters. CNN can entertain us with Disaster Porn while we comfortably eat popcorn in our homes. The local news can try to frighten us with “Superstorm Sandy, can it happen here?” stories, but [...]

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