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. [...]
Tag Archives | land-use
Nicollet, the Greenway and K-Mart: A Vision for Discussion
We’ve all seen it, and by-in-large, we all loathe it: the K-Mart on Lake Street between Blaisdell and 1st Ave S. You know, that place where Minneapolis’ main street used to come through. Last spring I had the opportunity to analyze this site in-depth as my landscape architecture and urban planning capstone project. At this [...]
Twin Cities Ten Million!
Planning (and executing plans) is really about liking your future “self”. If you plan well, and do things in advance of their ultimate need, you are being good to your future self. You do things now (burying nuts, saving for retirement, filing paperwork, washing the dishes, forming habits about where you put your keys, etc.) [...]
From Vacant Places to Growing Spaces: Making the Twin Cities a leader in the local food movement
Urban farming is a hot topic right now. From figuring out the policies and politics around backyard beekeeping or chicken rearing, to full-on community garden spaces, there is no denying that urban agriculture is being rediscovered. So where is this push coming from? And what resources exist for newbies to the urban farming trend? I sat down [...]
Not on My Bike Path!
Midtown Greenway Coalition email subscribers, twitter followers, or website visitors will have seen this notice at some point today: Let the Sun Shine In The Midtown Greenway Coalition fights excessive shadowing on the Greenway. What the Coalition is fighting is the shadowing of the Greenway that would result from the proposed development of a 6-story mixed-use [...]
Lake Elmo and the Misconceptions of “Growth”
Critics say Lake Elmo’s anti-growth bias is obvious when you look at what’s happened in neighboring cities. Those neighbors have eagerly welcomed malls, factories, offices. – from the Pioneer Press, Jan. 29, 2012, Lake Elmo: Small, and shrinking To those unfamiliar, Lake Elmo is a quaint, little town east of St. Paul. Lake Elmo provides [...]
Edina Promenade and Centennial Lakes
This past weekend, I took advantage of the 30-something degree weather to go on a walk with my wife and infant daughter. We decided to check out the Edina Promenade and Centennial Lakes area in Edina because I’d never been there and it just seemed like something every respectable Twin Cities urbanist should be aware [...]
What is the Constituency of a Local Land-Use Decision?
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 space on the ground floor. The location is a commercial node in an affluent Minneapolis neighborhood that was first developed along a streetcar line in the early 20th [...]
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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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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
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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,...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
