Tag Archives | twin cities

Water for our future

By on June 13, 2013 in Infrastructure, Land use

Streets.mn has me on assignment in mostly sunnier San Diego, and besides seeing a lot of cool animals, this trip has me thinking about water (ok, not on assignment, but on vacation).  San Diego is classified as semi-arid to arid, receiving less than 12 inches of rain per year.  Typical suburban yards look a lot [...]

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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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2012 Best Late 20th/Early 21st Century New Urbanist Simulacrum of Main Street: Excelsior and Grand

By on December 20, 2012 in Best of, Featured

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 [...]

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Thrive MSP 2040 listening sessions begin tomorrow

By on September 12, 2012 in Infrastructure, Land use, Plans, Transportation

As I’ve mentioned before, now is the time to get involved in regional planning.  On Thursday, the Metropolitan Council will begin a series of “listening sessions” to collect ideas from the general public about what should go in to the document-formerly-know-as the Regional Development Framework.  What is the RDF (now Thrive MSP 2040)?  I’ll quote [...]

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Vibrancy Is For People

By on July 18, 2012 in Streets

Thomas Frank has been making the rounds. Not only has he assumed Lapham’s editor’s chair at Harper’s and re-ignited The Baffler, he lately published a characteristic diatribe that wickedly skewers how the term “vibrancy” is used by non-profit funders, civic boosters, and artists as a façade for economic stability. Don’t get me wrong, I love [...]

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Accessibility Futures

By on May 31, 2012 in Accessibility

Paul Anderson, Pavithra Parthasarathi, and I recently completed a study looking at the accessibility impact of alternative land use and network scenarios for the Twin Cities. The full report is 767 pages! Most is Appendix, with maps of each scenario. The text is only 25 pages, including main figures. This post, drawn from the report, [...]

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Transit-oriented political developments

By on March 30, 2012 in Governance, Infrastructure, Plans, Transportation

The session’s not quite over, but probably all the bills that will pass this year at the MN Legislature have been introduced.  I thought streets.mn readers might be interested in those bills that affect the state’s transit landscape, so here is a bowdlerized version of a summary from my personal blog.  Warning: I am not [...]

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From Vacant Places to Growing Spaces: Making the Twin Cities a leader in the local food movement

By on March 1, 2012 in Environment, Land use

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 [...]

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Get involved in regional planning

By on February 22, 2012 in Environment, Governance, Land use, Plans, Transportation

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the Metropolitan Council, the Twin Cities regional planning agency, is stirring.  They’re getting ready to update the Regional Development Framework.  The RDF provides the basis for pretty much everything the Metropolitan Council does around four “systems”: transportation, aviation, water resources (including wastewater collection and treatment) and regional parks and open [...]

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(Greater) Minnesota Transit Index

By on February 3, 2012 in Transportation, Trends

From the Minnesota Legislature’s Session Weekly, an index of Minnesota transit statistics.  Here is a sample: 62% of Greater Minnesota transit users have household incomes of $20,000 or less. 51% of Greater Minnesota transit users do not have a driver’s license 86% of Greater Minnesota transit users ride at least twice a week 50% of [...]

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