Sunday Summary – October 14, 2018

It is hard not to enjoy Fall here in Minnesota when the sun comes out. While it’s looking pretty beautifully orange, yellow, and red (against that clear blue sky and, even better, reflected in one of the lakes), Minneapolis has not yet reached “peak leaf” according to the DNR and our Bonus Friday Map: Minnesota Fall Foliage – Take a walk (mmm, swirling leaves, crunchy leaves), then read last week’s posts:

Where the wild things are

Leslie MacKenzie has been working on Sharing Our Streets with Other Living Beings. She finds wildlife (opossum, raccoons, squirrels, turkeys, raptors, and lots of insects) around her Longfellow neighborhood. She’s also actively working to bring more, “We’ve turned a portion of our back yard into a wild rain garden and a sumac forest. We don’t grow grass here. The area includes brush and twigs, tall native plants, bare dirt with no mulch, logs, and rocks. After we let this 20% revert to wild, we began to see some new creatures.”

Redevelopment

Upper Harbor Terminal Amphitheater and a North Minneapolis Riverfront looks at redevelopment opportunity and/or challenge created by the closing of the Upper Saint Anthony lock. Paul Jahn takes us on a tour of the planned improvements (and some of the likely issues like traffic), “Couple these with the wants of the city, Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB), and proposed features from Master Developer United Properties, and you have plans for the North Minneapolis Riverfront. The Community Performing Arts Center (CPAC) would be a key element and operated by First Avenue Productions. This destination site includes the amphitheater, 15+ acres of public green space, riverfront park, parkway, mixed-use buildings, retail, and possibly hotel(s).”

Housing

A Few Notes From YIMBYtown are Anton Schieffer’s notes from sessions at the recent Boston housing conference. Highlighted here are a talk by Ed Glaeser (“To move forward, cities should find ways to help people access opportunities without requiring car ownership. Current housing and tax policies tend to redistribute wealth to older, established residents.”), workshop led by Andrea Park (“Park’s workshop focused on group identity and how activists must use clear, specific language to be more inclusive.”), and a panel on gentrification(“One of the more controversial sessions I attended was bluntly titled “Anti-Gentrification Activists Aren’t NIMBYs.” The message was clear: YIMBYs should take a backseat when advocating for new housing in gentrifying neighborhoods.”).

Not cars

The Quarterly Transit Report – October 2018 is out. Aaron Isaacs reports few route changes, but reports on a planned new bus garage, how Metro Transit is addressing homelessness, and some insight into the transit police. Commenters discuss the location of the new garage and alternative ways to put more value on downtown land, plus considering how Minneapolis (not the transit police) can help alleviate homelessness.

How You, and All of Us, Can Escape Car Dependency — WITH KIDS! is Jeremy Hop’s followup to the earlier post “How You, and All of Us, Can Escape Car Dependency” Jeremy describes the transportation tools his family uses from bikes to Lyft to Metro Transit saying, “For a family to have the kind of flexibility as we do, you have to make some real deliberate choices in where you live, work and have childcare. We happen to already live in a transit rich neighborhood. One that is walkable, bikeable and has daily needs within reach.”

Walk to School Day 2018: Our Streets Are Broken says Julie Kosbab. “Walk to School Day is a cute idea. But it just highlights how unusual letting kids walk is, and how hard we make it to walk anywhere, regardless of age,” and this post supplies maps, stats, and additional information showing how the way we’ve built our communities and designed out streets makes it difficult or impossible for kids to walk or bike to school. There’s a rich discussion in the comments about other factors affecting kids ability to walk to school.

Pine Salica asks for you to Help Improve Bikeways on 9th and 10th Street in Downtown Minneapolis where “Currently, the infrastructure afforded to me and my fellow cyclists on these streets is a stripe of paint and some well-wishes. I believe we need more than that, and I’m asking Minneapolis Public Works to put these streets on the list for improvement by 2020.” Click through to take a survey, find out about meetings and get involved.

Chip Jenne calls the Vision Zero policy in Minneapolis 2040: Zero Vision. Although “We too have a policy called Vision Zero in the most recent draft of our 2040 plan, but ours makes no mention of a 20 mph limit. While the 2040 plan’s Vision Zero policy does have a goal of zero traffic fatalities, unlike the upzoning portion of the 2040 plan it lacks teeth, specifics, and adherence to the one policy that undergirds the international standard of Vision Zero,” and “Vision Zero should be wholly abandoned in the final version of Minneapolis 2040 in favor of the other varied policies already in the plan because without a full-throated Vision Zero it doesn’t mean anything more than a bogarted trade name for goals that our other transportation safety policies have already covered in past plans and rehash in 2040.”  Commenters consider the call for the speed limit as well as how to enforce it, such as speed cameras.

Look, link, walk

Look: Map Monday: US Brewery Openings by Month via Twitter, and the Chief Economist of the Brewer’s Association comes this animated map. Unless you live in central North Dakota, you probably have a brewery very nearby.

Link: More National Links: Collecting Transport Data Could Help Planning from Jeff Wood and The Overhead Wire.

Walk: Keep Walking All the Streets of Southwestern Howe with Max Hailperin.