Here are the week’s posts on streets.mn smartly summarized for your reading convenience. Madness of two kinds this week: April Fools posts and continuing the basketball-inspired, urban-themed madness continues with the outcomes in streets.m(ad)n(ess) Round 3 – The Streets Sixteen and Round 4 – The Urban Elitist Eight. Just as you can play streets.m(ad)n(ess), there’s another opportunity for participation this week (until April 17) in Great Cities – A Science Museum of Minnesota project where you are invited to “take a picture of an object, feature, place or phenomenon in the Twin Cities that you think reveals how some aspect of the future is beginning to appear in the present. Then tell us a very brief story about that future.” If you don’t want to send a picture to the Science Museum, you could write for streets.mn and tell us your story about your present, past or future city.
April Fooling
Yes, Wednesday was April 1st and April Fools with these foolish posts, most of which still offer some useful critique of the transportation and land use landscape in Minnesota:
- Bridge Reconstruction Just April Fools’ Joke, City Says
- Southdale to Rebrand, Establish Stroaddale Preservation District
- TV’s “Real Renters of Minneapolis” to Debut in 2016
- Franchise Threatens to Move to AL
- New Recycling Program Offers Residents a Taste of Their Own Medicine
- In Memoriam: The April 1st Parking Massacre of 2014
- Southwest LRT Planners Resolve Final Lawsuit by Eliminating Last 15 Stations
- Al’s Dinkytown Diner Downsizing
Just fooling
Bigger issues
The Critical Ten (miles per hour) takes a deep look at how reducing speed from 30 to 20 miles per hour can significantly improve safety and then takes a tour of a few Twin Cities locations to consider what design, land use and other features help reduce speed (or not)
Reduce Affordable Housing Need in Three Steps is part 3 in a series on the rental housing market and rents (Here are part 1, “How I Set Apartment Rents,” and part 2, “Housing Markets? Humbug!). This installment makes three recommendations coupled with some policy changes to help increase the supply of affordable housing. This summary can’t do the series justice (and social justice is critical in this series), but politicians as well as advocates should be reading this.
Smaller bites of bigger issues: Muckraking on West River Parkway laments the lack of swift progress in clearing 2014’s mudslide and reopening a 100-yard stretch of the Parkway which carried 10,000 bicycle and car commuters a day. No Outlet: A Review of Twin Cities Premium Outlets takes us to Eagan and Minnesota’s newest outlet mall to critique the design. Finally, A Look at St. Louis Park’s Form Based Code Efforts reviews Saint Louis Park’s form based code development process that is now underway.
Visual perception at different speeds
Audiovisual department
Visual and other senses: Down South In Highland Park is the record of an August bike ride in Saint Paul (see other rides here and think about planning your own during 30 Days of Biking or beyond)
Video: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Infrastructure (HBO) is a funny but serious look at the state of infrastructure in America which takes the issue beyond geeky discussion or political horse-trading.
Charts of the Day: Social vs Individual Mode Costs shows a simple calculator for the complex social costs of difference transportation modes (compare this to the recent Cars as Keurigs post) and Stopping Distance vs Speed provides a graph and a chart to help think about how visualizations help us understand (look at this along with this week’s The Critical Ten about speed and safety more generally).
Graphic Novel: the next episode of Bicyclopolis: Episode Five, The Knights of Metroria is now available.
By next week, perhaps the madness (or m(ad)n(ess)) will have ended, but in the meantime you should all be out on your bikes for#30daysofbiking or otherwise enjoying streets in Minnesota (or beyond). Have a great week!