I’ve had a little cold and it’s been rainy, so after spending the summer months ...
Here’s another photo contest for another Open Streets. If you’re walking around Nicollet Avenue this Sunday, stop by our table and say “hi.” Feel free to chat about sidewalks, urbanism, the nice weather, the future of Minneapolis, or anything else that’s on your mind! Rules for contest: While you’re at Open Streets, walk around, grab […]
I’m coming up on my two-year anniversary of being car-free in Minneapolis. But it didn’t happen at the snap of my fingers. Selling my car was the last step in a gradual, deliberate process that involved becoming aware and making decisions based on how I move around the city (and the world), and no small […]
Here’s a chart from, Aaron Renn, an urban economic consultant who has been critical the Twin Cities for some time now as not being attractive enough to national movers and shakers. In his recent blogpost, he writes about how domestic in-migration to the metro area is up slightly, but why he does not think much […]
I went bikepacking again! That makes Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend, the perfect bookends to summer for bikepacking. Our destination this time was a hike-in site at beautiful Afton State Park. We weighed the pros and cons of taking such a roundabout route, and decided that this route was better than the one […]
Peter Stalland / Tyr Development has proposed building a 140 unit apartment complex in the midst of low density residential in Vadnais Heights. I believe it will have 140 parking spaces below ground and 140 parking spaces above ground so two per unit. This is the second plan submitted by the developer. This 3-story plan […]
Time once again for another update on the big picture of driving in the United States: Vehicle Miles Travelled, per person. Long-time wonks who have been following this key stat might remember that it “peaked” fifteen years ago, and VMT (overall and per capita) had plateaued and was declining… … until gas prices went way […]
One of my first articles for streets.mn was on Bloomington’s Four Lane Death Roads, (four lane undivided roads) written in response to Bill Lindeke’s introductory article on Four-Lane Death Roads. Four years later it’s time to revisit the subject with updates and additional background material. The Problem With Death Roads: Conflict Points Imagine a typical trip […]
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. […]
Minneapolis is a dominating economic presence in Hennepin County and in the state of Minnesota. As the base of the state’s dominant newspaper even Minneapolis’ politics can dominate so many conversations all Minnesotans need to be having about the direction of our whole state. Last week I posted a series of maps produced by Three […]
West Broadway Open Streets is tomorrow, and streets.mn will be there tabling, talking, and hanging out on one of Minneapolis most dynamic, historic, and interesting streets. Please stop by! We’re also putting on the first ever Open Streets scavenger hunt photo contest! We hope to do this for Open Streets event in the future, but […]
We talk a lot about housing costs. For many people who have children, the cost of childcare can be equivalent to another full rent/mortgage payment each month. Hotpads used data from Care.com’s Care Index and the Census Bureau, and found that the average monthly cost of child care in the U.S. – including at-home and in-center care – […]
The strip of the Hiawatha neighborhood between 46th Avenue South and the river is distinctly different from the portions I walked on my first and second days. That’s especially true of the northernmost two sections visible in the route map, each of which was developed later than the main grid of the neighborhood. Between 40th and 42nd Streets East, […]
Insight Brewery. Familia skatepark. Five Watt Coffee. Headflyer Brewing. What do all of these places have in common, besides being almost unbearably hip? They’re all sitting on a death trap street named East Hennepin Avenue. Here’s a fun experiment: Next time you drive down East Hennepin, actually drive at the 30 miles per hour speed limit […]
Minnesota’s most predictable seasons — winter and roadwork — are no joke to the thousands of commuters who travel Interstate 35W through South Minneapolis every weekday. The $240 million construction project, which has reduced lanes and is closing stretches of the freeway altogether some weekends, will last until 2021. Inconvenience means opportunity for Metro Transit, […]
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. […]
Two bridges spanning the Mississippi River — one connecting Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and a similar bridge crossing the river a mile and a half upstream — exhibit design characteristics reflecting significant changes in how people move across bridges throughout our cities. The Saint Paul-Minneapolis structure joining East Lake Street and Marshall Avenue was […]
Three Rivers Park District is a regional park system that is one of the Met Council’s partner park systems. Minneapolis has long had a phenomenal park system rated the best in the country by the Trust for Public Land. Three Rivers Park District is maybe best thought of as Hennepin County’s regional park system excluding Minneapolis. (That’s […]
It’s almost Fall – we’ve passed Labor Day, but for Northfield (where I live) we have to finish up the Defeat of Jesse James Days this weekend before summer really ends. Do not call it “Jesse James Days” because there relevant part is defeating Jesse James and his gang (and stopping them from robbing the First […]
As summer winds down, we here at streets.mn are ramping up for fall with a full slate of events for everyone. Here are the events we have on our calendar for September: streets.mn Happy Hour on Wednesday, September 12th Join your fellow streets.mn comrades for a fall-time happy hour get-together! Let’s gather in a particularly transit- and […]
We constantly hear that driverless cars are just around the corner. We’re told they will revolutionize transportation and enable us to continue using our car-based transport and land-use system. If they’re made by Tesla, they’ll be powered by magic, solar-powered, super efficient batteries and we’ll all be able to keep living our hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive lifestyles […]
