This podcast this week is a conversation with Jacob Frey, who is running for City Council minneapolis’s Ward 3, which covers a large part of downtown and Northeast Minneapolis along the Mississippi River. Jacob is an attorney and community activist who got his start in local politics through long-distance running, and moved to Minneapolis because he loved the Twin Cities’ marathon.
Jacob’s platform focuses on housing issues, how to make downtown fit for families, and increasing the appeal of walking near the Minneapolis riverfront.
Jacob and I sat down a little while back at the Wilde Roast Café on Saint Anthony Main, and we talked about the race, his key issues, and how Jane Jacobs inspired his approach to the city.
Link to the audio is here. Subscribe to everything and more via the feed.
I liked that Frey actually seemed concerned with the sorts of things a councilperson could actually achieve, rather than larger issues that have nothing to do with the job (I’m looking at you Global Warming).
I was excited when he put forward the idea of a city where you can put your kid on the bus to go to school. There’s a whole constellation of issues that fall under that one criteria. Then I got a little disappointed when it came to streetcars. It just felt like, yeah, no one gives a shit about buses. No one cares to make them better, and so no one likes to use buses. We make the floors a little lower, introduced a few quieter buses. We don’t make them faster. We don’t make them more pleasant. And we don’t address the low standards we have for how the people on the bus act – which I think is one of the main detractions of a bus. The “eyes on the street” somehow don’t work for buses. Or maybe it works for safety, but not for civil behavior.
But I still liked him, I was just struck both by the optimistic soundbite in the beginning and the fatalism when it got around to streetcars.