Podcast #109: Walking Every Street in Minneapolis with Max Hailperin

Not Max, but rather a statue of Floyd B. Olson taken on one of his recent walks.

The podcast this week is a conversation with Max Hailperin. Max Hailperin is fascinating Minneapolis flaneur who has been quietly walking down every street in Minneapolis over the last few years.

To do it, Hailperin maps neighborhoods, figures out the most mathematically efficient route through the neighborhoods, walks every street, and then writes about it on his website, allofminneapolis.com. Max has also been cross-posting his articles at streets.mn, and if you’ve been on the site in the last year you’ve certainly seen them. It’s a huge and intriguing project to say the very least!

I sat down with Max in Linden Hills the other day to ask him about why and how he’s launched himself on this project, and what kinds of takeaways he’s gotten so far from his many many many hours of work and steps across the Minneapolis’ many diverse sidewalks. I was myself quite surprised by our conversation, and I think you will be too.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Bill Lindeke

About Bill Lindeke

Pronouns: he/him

Bill Lindeke has writing blogging about sidewalks and cities since 2005, ever since he read Jane Jacobs. He is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota Geography Department, the Cityscape columnist at Minnpost, and has written multiple books on local urban history. He was born in Minneapolis, but has spent most of his time in St Paul. Check out Twitter @BillLindeke or on Facebook.