Sunday Summary - October 28, 2018

Thinking of Joining streets.mn? Just Do It! Yes, streets.mn is looking for new board members. Board member Angelina McDowell says, “I am especially calling out those similar to myself – those with limited experience of being on a board. I got into this very “wet behind the ears” and unsure if I was doing things right. I am glad to have cut my teeth here. You will be joining an amazing group of dedicated people with depths of experience that will guide you. Finally, I am strongly encouraging people from underrepresented backgrounds, locations, perspectives, etc. to join and bring your voice to the table here at streets.mn.” The deadline to submit an application is 8 am, Monday, November 12.

Current events, Halloween edition

Julie Kosbab provides some inspiration in case you have not yet imagined and/or constructed a Halloween costume with Top Twin Cities Urbanist Halloween Costumes for 2018! (and for more inspiration, here’s the list from last year). You can, for instance, go as a Public Meeting: “Get two big pieces of posterboard. Create big headers. Then, cover them with post-it note comments. This is quick and easy, and will cost you ~$4 at a dollar store (where posterboard costs LESS than $1). Easy.”

Also go back to a Halloween classic, Bill Lindeke’s Halloween is the Sidewalk Holiday because “Halloween flies in the face of everything about our modern era of paranoid parents, media hysterics, over-protected children, and privatized communities. Somehow, through the magic of Halloween, parents actually want their kids to wander the city, approach random homes, and take candy from strangers. People are encouraged to dress in creepy ways and be weird.”

The view from the Halloween sidewalk

Good News

The world is ok, at least in small ways. Tamara Jorell tells us about her neighbors and neighborhood in Angels and Bananas saying ‘“I drive around the block every night before I head to work,” Edward says, forearms resting on his back gate. “I check on your house too. Make sure everything’s okay over there.” I try to think of what we did to deserve our own nightshift-working guardian angel who happens to live down the alley and monitors our block while we sleep, but I come up empty.”

Backyard pizza ovens can build community and feed angels.

What happened here?

Sustainable Saint Paul? asks Melissa Wenzel saying, “Once upon a time, sometime in 1989, the city of Saint Paul drafted a sustainable take-out container ordinance. It wasn’t called that, as the terms “sustainable” and “sustainability” weren’t widely used yet. It was written to help achieve city, county and state recycling and waste reduction goals through increasing the types of take out containers that were recyclable or reusable.” However, that ordinance was never enacted and other attempts have failed, too, and you can follow the timeline of efforts in Saint Paul (and more successful ones in other metro area cities).

Biodegradable takeout containers

Neighborhoods

Paul Jahn heads to the Motley neighborhood (named for Mr. Motley, although it is mixed use) near the University of Minnesota in Destination Motley – A New Type of Minneapolis Neighborhood and gives us a tour of

Max Hailperin keeps walking by Walking All the Streets of North Central Howe as he perambulates around all the Minneaplis neighborhoods.

In the Motley neighborhood: U of M Clinic and Surgery Center

Streetscapes and curbscapes

Queering the Streetscape by Pine Salica aims to reimagine Lake Street by taking the current, normative, auto-centricity of this street and queering it including removing private vehicles from the street entirely: “You’ll notice that while there are no personal automobile lanes listed, there’s still trucks and buses using the road. This vision for Lake St still allows for businesses to receive large deliveries by truck if needed, though ideally they’d transition to getting the majority of deliveries other ways. And, it preserves existing infrastructure, upgrading it at minimal cost. A future version of this might put rail here, or it might be a better plan to restore rail uses on the Greenway.”

The Curb is Everything says Katie Emory, and “The curbside is valuable precisely because of its status as a portal between the pedestrian and vehicle worlds, conferring with it the safety and efficiency of not having to move people and goods across lanes of moving traffic. Motor vehicle parking has been the near-ubiquitous king of the curbside for a long time. But as cycling, rideshare use and package delivery are on the rise, cities are starting to take a hard look at who exactly should get to use the curbside, and when (not to mention – how to commoditize it).”