On our way to the ceremony unveiling the plan for the five-block Star Tribune property in Downtown East, my son Shaw and I got off the train at the Downtown East/Metrodome station and I was asked directions by an older couple. They were looking for Periscope, the ad agency, at 10th and Washington. Obliging, I agreed [...]
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The Yard at Downtown East
In a veritable bacchanalia of developments, we have seen three major inter-related activities in Minneapolis’s Downtown East: Washington Avenue has been covered extensively on Streets.MN already, so I won’t go further into that now. The others are the Star Tribune site and the Stadium. The Yard The Ryan proposal for redeveloping the Star Tribune site [...]
Traffic on Washington Avenue – Raw data edition
Prompted by Brendon’s recent post (and a Twitter conversation with Ethan and Janne), I got interested in some of the traffic counts and engineering on Washington Avenue. I looked at the Washington Avenue Traffic Operation Analysis by Alliant Engineering for Hennepin County. On p.11 of this document are traffic “counts” the report said were collected [...]
Minneapolis Should Focus on Data When Selecting Car-Sharing Provider
As a transportation researcher and a student of urban planning at the University of Minnesota, I am interested to learn of the City Council’s current efforts to select a provider for a city-wide on-street car sharing service. On May 1, the Star Tribune reported that city staff had recommended that the Council “authorize staff to negotiate terms [...]
The Metropolitan Council’s anti-urban headquarters
This is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Council, the Twin Cities regional planning agency. It’s located in downtown Saint Paul. Notice anything about how it’s laid out? If you ever walk past, it may take a moment, but you’ll soon realize that the building doesn’t have any entrances onto the street. There are doors [...]
Hoppy Easter from Streets.MN!
In honor of Easter, we bring you classic holiday knock-knocks, examined through an urbanist lens. Knock knock! Who’s there? Ether Ether who? ETHER BUNNY! Depending on the weather and your neighborhood, you are more likely to find a siding salesperson at your door than a bunny. If you are fortunate, you will luck out and [...]
A Public Transit Pope? Don’t Count On It
Yesterday, the Catholic Church selected a new Pope. Even here in quiet Minnesota, this was noted — the bells of the Basilica of St. Mary, the Cathedral of St. Paul, and the University of St. Thomas were quite notable to locals. One of the immediate reactions was for news organizations and transportation nerds to call [...]
Five Rules for Vital Streets
Streets are vital when there is the feeling that there is something going on, of being where the action is. Successful places have vitality. By definition, dead places don’t. We don’t want too much vitality everywhere (I don’t want it on my street after 9 pm) and probably can’t support it. But surely we could [...]
A Glimpse of Biking Network Effects
Recently I’ve become the steward of an amazing and rich set of non-motorized transportation data through work with Bike Walk Twin Cities (BWTC), a local non-profit administering the federal Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP), since 2007 (part of the SAFETEA_LU legislation). This $28M pilot program, awarded to 4 communities around the country and luckily our [...]
Lowertown’s Parking Challenge
This map sparked a few disparaging tweets, including a small #twitterwar with a City Council member. As it turns out, people get riled up about parking. It is as if they feel they are entitled to parking and the benefits thereafter. These blue spaces represent off-street surface parking lots and parking garages; but do not [...]
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Bikes and Businesses Must Unite
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Minnesota Vikings Stadium Needs Better Urban Design
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Washington Avenue proposed layouts are posted
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Why I’m proud to be “offended” by the judgemental map of Minneapolis
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No Parking and De-Signing Streets
From the network
- 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...
- Twin City Street Musicians #11: [Guitar. T station, Somerville MA.] [Chinese instrument. Harvard Square, Cambridge MA.][Bass and guitar, West Bank Campus, Minneapolis.] [Guitar. Santa Monica Pier.] [Guitar. Lyndale Avenue, Minneapol...
- 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,...
- Financial Deformation: I'm in the final quarter of The Great Deformation - The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David Stockman. If the book was not so long I would want to do it twice because I feel like half of...
- Mostly Empty Syndrome: If you have been following this blog, you may have detected a theme, I don't like the public wasting money on un-needed infrastructure. Of course no-one endorses "wasting" money, we just dis...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- Let’s Get the Urban Details Right in Downtown East: On our way to the ceremony unveiling the plan for the five-block Star Tribune property in Downtown East, my son Shaw and I got off the train at the Downtown East/Metrodome station and I was asked dir...
- David Harvey on CIty Monopolies and the Art of Rent: David Harvey is wise and usually has interesting things to say. I'm no Marxist but I agree with many of the things he brings up in this interview with Spiegel. I agree with this especially:SPIEGEL ONL...
- Bank regulation that makes sense: Barataria RKO Pictures“Too Big To Fail” (TBTF) is the standard for socialized risk and privatized profits. The biggest banks enjoy an implied bailout under D...
