I hate cigarette smoke, and I know I’m not alone. My dad used to smoke ...
he Lyndale neighborhood in Minneapolis contains a full healthy stock of small, medium, and large buildings that have been invested in and stabilized over many decades. At the height of 1980s urban decline and until 2007, various civic organizations pressed deadbeat landlords into cleaning up their properties and/or selling them to the neighborhood itself. This […]
Early 20th-century industrial buildings, a convivial neighborhood bar, creekside trails, and a West-Indian grocery were some of the highlights when I returned to the Lind-Bohanon neighborhood for the third and final segment. As on my second visit, I was fortunate enough to catch one of those gloriously blue-skied days that happen with some regularity in winter; […]
The shooting of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, by police officer Mohamed Noor could have happened in many contexts, but the fact that it happened in a car tells us a lot about the problem of car culture in our society. Ruszczyk, an Australian living in a fairly affluent neighborhood in Minneapolis had called the police to […]
Attending Washington High School in Brainerd, Minnesota, my hot rod friends and I used several streets that made good drag racing places. In fact, the street in front of the high school was one of them. The mandatory “Start” location was a fire hydrant near the physics classroom, where several of us hot rodders were […]
Per NACTO’s new study: In 2018, people took 36.5 million trips on station-based bike share systems and 38.5 million trips on shared e-scooters. In 2018, e-scooters overtook bikes as the preferred vehicle for dockless vendors. Dockless pedal (non-electric) bikes, which quickly proliferated across the U.S. in 2017, have largely disappeared from North American cities, with just 3 million trips […]
In case you missed it, streets.mn Events Committee organized a bus trip from Uptown to Hopkins last month. About ten people came out for the trip, and a good time was had by all. We caught the 612 bus on a Saturday afternoon. The 612 (named after the zip code area code, of course) goes […]
[This was passed along by Jerremy Foss, helping to organize CNU 28.] The Congress for the New Urbanism will be hosting the 28th annual Congress in June of 2020 in the Twin Cities, so it is not too early to begin organizing ourselves to prepare for this exciting event. Come join the CNU 28 steering […]
[Part of the Saint Paul Field Guide to Public Spaces, put together by a geography class at Macalester College in fall 2018. See introduction here.] By David Black Phalen Regional Park is located in the northeastern portion of St. Paul, with a small portion extending north into its suburb of Maplewood. The park’s overall area is 494 […]
On March 27, we posted about the numbers surrounding the proposed $600 million investment to bring Amtrak rail service along a corridor between Minneapolis and Duluth. Many of you shared your stories of rail and bus travel, and many expressed a deep appreciation for the comfort and conveniences of travel by rail. To learn more, I created a […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
On April 2, Nice Ride sent an email to members announcing the start of the riding season April 15 (now April 22, Earth Day, due to weather). In the email, the transportation network nonprofit shared that it was leaving the St. Paul market after nearly a decade on the streets of the capital city. St. […]
Here’s a cool “map”, one of the many aerial panoramas from the late 19th century Minneapolis. Here is an 1891 view showing downtown, Bridge Square, Hennepin, Nicollet, and Washington Avenues, the railyards, mill district, St. Anthony falls, and the street grid extending out towards the horizon of progress and real estate development. Link to a […]
On April 10 the St. Paul City Council approved zoning changes requested by Ryan Companies, the future developer of the Ford site. The changes included allowing single-family houses to be built along the river on Mississippi River Boulevard south of Ford Parkway. The city’s Planning Commission twice told the City Council that the city should […]
Final Four? Check. April snowstorm? Check. Taxes filed? Check. Sunday Summary? Yup, here it is: Roads A History of Minnesota’s Interstates, Part Two by Monte Castleman, “is the second part of the history of Interstate Highways in Minnesota. Part One covered the early plans and conceptions of the interstate system, from the 1930s to the Interstate […]
This is the second part of the history of Interstate Highways in Minnesota. Part One covered the early plans and conceptions of the interstate system, from the 1930s to the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. This concludes with the realization of the system. First, here’s some maps showing the completion of the interstates by decade. […]
Scientists estimate up to 1 billion birds meet untimely demise thanks to illuminated buildings. Light pollution of the airspace is a relatively recent but growing threat to nocturnally migrating birds. Minneapolis ranks among the top 10 cities posing the greatest dangers to birds in this most recent study, authored by researchers at Cornell University, along […]
Lime isn’t bringing its bikes back to Saint Paul in 2019 and I think that’s fine. And if I died while riding my bike the cops in Saint Paul would be nonplussed. I tried riding a Lime last year. Not the scooter; those were fine, if a little boring. But the green bikes were heavy, […]
While grocery shopping last week I witnessed a person roughly my age helping her mother shop. I couldn’t immediately identify her mother’s ailment or reason for needing help, and little did I know I’d be doing the same thing for my own mother this week following her eye surgery. The “silver tsunami” is rapidly approaching […]
I consider myself a savvy shopper. I check prices online and in-store and tend to avoid expensive places unless I need a few things I would have to drive to get elsewhere. The year is 2019, and we don’t have to be tied to our neighborhood geography when choosing where to buy groceries. With services […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
