Mark your calendars, the streets.mn Summer Picnic is July 15! You can come to Boom Island Park just for the fun or come early for an informal meeting with streets.mn board members to learn what the board has been working on over the last year and to give streets.mn your input on future directions (and maybe volunteer to get more involved, too).
Also from streets.mn, there are two new additions to the streets.mn 2017 Voter Guide. From the Saint Paul mayoral race (where the DFL did not endorse a candidate), read Dai Thao‘s responses. In Minneapolis, read mayoral candidate Jacob Frey‘s answers (and the 20+ comments asking some further questions). For those looking for longer term views of candidates, you can also listen to the 2014 podcast with Jacob Frey when he ran for the Ward 3 Council seat.
Particular places
Alex Tsatsoulis reports on Progress at Cedar/Franklin/Minnehaha in a post which itemizes what features are included in the project (and which were not) for rebuilding this intersection which is “the second most dangerous intersection in Minneapolis, with the second most bicycle crashes. It is also one of the most dangerous intersections in Hennepin County, with vehicle crash rates more than two and a half times the ‘critical rate.'” You can read an earlier post on this project are here with some background on the various options.
Northeastern Columbia Park, Including Architect Avenue is the latest walk by Max Hailperin in his quest to walk all 87 Minneapolis neighborhoods in alphabetical order. In this walk, Architect Avenue is noteworthy because “Twelve leading architects were invited to submit plans for houses to be built on the new Architect Avenue. In the first round of the contest, six of the twelve were selected for construction. The plans were judged not only based on their provisions for comfortable living but also their suitability to a limited construction budget. Moreover, the architects needed to plan for the housewife to do the housework without domestic servants. In other words, the elite world of architect-designed housing was to meet the realities of an emerging middle class.”
3510 Architect Ave, Designed by Lowell Lamoreaux
Big ideas
Monte Castleman writes, in The Suburb to City Retail Subsidy, “this post is about a more subtle kind of subsidy: how the suburbs bear the burden of hosting subjectively undesirable land uses for the cities, things like guns shops, big box retail, and car dealerships” and asks readers to “acknowledge that we all live together in an intertwined society full of subsidies, ‘stroads,’ and ‘sprawl.’ Let’s try to acknowledge that sharing goes around in all directions; people have wanted and expected space and privacy since the beginning of the nation even though it’s only in the post-war years we’ve been in a position to provide it to the masses. Using ‘s-words’ to describe lifestyle choices, as well as over-simplistic, over-idealistic solutions to real problems like congestion such as ‘live near where you work’ or ‘ride a bicycle’ only anger people rather than contributing to discussion.” The many commenters discuss how they shop (big box, local stores, other large stores not included in the post), some concerns the post oversimplified the issues, some policy and zoning issues and more.
The Richfield South Minneapolis Home Depot
Continuing series
The latest podcast from Minneapolis-based think/do tank Apparatus in partnership with Transit for Livable Communities/St. Paul Smart Trips is Here to There Podcast Episode 5: EMPLOYMENT | drivers: this installment “looks at the rapidly changing transportation economy and the opportunities and challenges it presents for the over 5 million professional drivers (which include truck, taxi, school bus, and transit bus) in the United States. Au courant services like ride-hailing (Uber, Lyft) and car-sharing services (Car2Go, ZipCar) are already disrupting traditional labor markets for drivers, and emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles stand to further disrupt, if not eliminate, more of these jobs.”
