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Archive | August, 2013

Dear Hennepin County

By on August 14, 2013 in Bicycling, Streets

Thank you for your response. I’m sure citizens and voters will take these in to consideration and get back to you with additional questions regarding the reconstruction of Minnehaha Avenue. And I see we have our first questions now. You cite five pedestrian crashes from 2010 to 2012 and two pedestrian fatalities in 2009 (Question 26, […]

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Fire Safety vs. Suburban Sprawl

By on August 13, 2013 in Uncategorized

A recent piece in the Star Tribune shows how suburban and rural cities are struggling to recruit fire fighters. The piece started an interesting conversation in an Streets.mn email thread, and I want to share part of it. Apparently, the traditional system set up to run fire stations is beginning to break down, particularly in cities […]

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I-94 Congestion: A Simpler And Safer Solution?

By on August 13, 2013 in Infrastructure, Traffic, Transportation, Uncategorized

The congestion on I-94 heading towards St Cloud, particularly on sunny Friday afternoons, can be infuriating. It’s understandable that a lot of people are calling for ‘something to be done.’. The quick reaction of politicians and others is a call to widen the thing—$30 million for another lane. Certainly that is the solution, they think. […]

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Twin Cities Alignment Madness and the Perfect Network

By on August 13, 2013 in Transit

I just looked at the number of posts I have in the hopper and its depressing.  I’ve started a lot of them but haven’t finished any of them because I’m trying to address too many issues.  So I thought maybe I should try to keep it a bit shorter (didn’t quite work), but not quite […]

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Density and Transit: Some Numbers – Minneapolis St. Paul Edition

By on August 12, 2013 in Land use, Transit

The Old Urbanist has a nice post from last year: Density and Transit: Some Numbers. I steal one of his graphs and quote his words: “While there are a few transit overachievers, notably Portland, Seattle, Boston and Washington D.C., the correlation is overall very strong. No city with an overall density of less than 4,000 […]

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Open Streets – Minnehaha, and some further comments on the Blue Line and environs

By on August 11, 2013 in Streets, Transit, Walking

I went with my family to attend Longfellow neighborhood’s Open Streets on Minnehaha on Sunday August 11, 2013. I hadn’t been to an “Open Streets” before, though I had been to various events where streets were closed, and this was like that, but more spacious and far more bikey. We drove to near the northern […]

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check out the live amphibians and reptiles plus lots of cool hands-on stuff.

Finding Your Inner Caveman: Grog have fun here (grunt)!

By on August 8, 2013 in Parks, What I love about Minnesota

You heard it here first: Cavemen might very well be the next big trend (move over owls!). Of course, I base this on nothing but the whole Paleo-diet craze. But who cares?! Your family will want in on this pretend trend with this weekend’s Finding Your Inner Caveman at the Carl Kroening Interpretive Center at North Mississippi […]

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What if Minneapolis-St. Paul had the London Underground?

By on August 7, 2013 in Transit

Many people have complained that Minneapolis – St. Paul does not have a good transit network, or is not a “real” transit city. Well London does have a good network, and if any place is, London is a real transit city, so it is informative to compare. This map overlays the London Underground network on […]

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Dinkytown: Successional Urbanism

By on August 7, 2013 in Economics, Land use

Great places evolve over time. This is a healthy and historic form of urban growth. Among the constituent elements are a very light hand of government and, often, management genius—as well as normative patterns like the continental survey, the town grid, etc. But the key element is successional urbanism. Start small at the inauguration, and later build […]

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Life in the Margins

By on August 7, 2013 in Environment, Infrastructure, Transportation

Driving down I-94 recently, I noticed a bright orange patch of butterfly milkweed, wild bergamot, and pale purple coneflower growing along the highway embankment.  The plants were in bloom and stood out amongst the surrounding vegetation, even at 75 miles an hour.  The plantings were so vibrant that we were inspired to exit, park, climb […]

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