Tag Archives | city planning

Streets.mn Podcast #10 – The Future of Student Housing with Andrew Hasek

The next Streets.mn podcast is here. Just in time for back-to-school classes, Nate Hood and I sat down and chatted with Andrew Hasek, who is a student organizer trying to fight the recently approved St Paul student housing ordinance. We met up at the Blue Door pub last week, early enough in the afternoon to [...]

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The Limits of Pop-Up Urbanism

Over at my blog, I wrote today about some of the problems that both Minneapolis and St Paul have had in constructing bike infrastructure in over the past few years. In both cases (a cycle track and a bike boulevard), the city had drawn up a decent plan but had botched the implementation. Instead of [...]

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What the Trader Joe’s proposal says about us

The events that unfolded during the Uptown Trader Joe’s debate tell us a lot about ourselves. It uniquely touched on many facets of Minneapolis life, and interestingly enough, these were cultural mêlées as much as they were land use battles. Trader Joe’s wants a liquor store. Wine and beer are essential to its business model. [...]

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Experimental Cities: DIY, Pop-Up, and Temporary Design

Anyone who hasn’t been to New York City in the last few years will immediately notice a few changes to the urban landscape. Most obviously, Broadway Avenue, New York’s “main street,” has a whole new look and feel around Midtown Manhattan. The Bloomberg Administration, let by his transportation Commissioner, has transformed Broadway into a decent [...]

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Anti-Anti-Light Rail: A Response to David Osmek

An op-ed is an op-ed, and I should know better than to respond to an anti-transit rural libertarian.* But the anti-light rail argument in the Star Tribune this week annoyed me all the same. It’s an argument that I’ve seen many many times, and no matter how many times you put it to bed, it’s a [...]

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What Does Your Ideal Neighborhood Look Like?

Last summer, I spent a significant amount of time traversing the Twin Cities on a mission to purchase a house. I made a point to bike to most of the locations because I wanted to get a feel for the neighborhood. What was the transportation access? Where was the nearest park? Would my neighbors mind [...]

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