Author: Alex Schieferdecker

Alex Schieferdecker

About Alex Schieferdecker

Alex Schieferdecker is a transportation planner. He grew up in New York City, lived in Philadelphia for seven years, and now lives in Minneapolis. His twitter handle is @alexschief. He is on Mastodon at @alexschief@masto.ai

The reality and myth of the Minneapolis 2040 plan

The Minneapolis 2040 plan is back in the news, but not for fun reasons. Last week, a Hennepin County district court judge ordered the City of Minneapolis to stop implementing that groundbreaking comprehensive plan until the city could demonstrate that it complied with state environmental legislation. The plan, which was adopted over three years ago, […]

Minneapolis skyline in fog, black and white

Five Takeaways from 41 Years of Twin Cities Housing Development

Everybody knows the Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) metropolitan area is building new housing. It’s been evident for years in the disappearing parking lots of the Mill District and the North Loop, the new windows on old Lowertown warehouses, and the profusion of mid-rises that increasingly characterize Uptown and Dinkytown. But almost nobody has the free time […]

Preserve The Future, Not Just The Past

Because I have a lot of important things to fill my time, I recently tuned in to a meeting of the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission. There was just one item on the agenda: the proposed demolition of a low-slung downtown office building at 17 N Washington Avenue, which would then be replaced by a 27 […]

What MnDOT Can Learn from Main Street

By one count, there are over 7,600 streets named “Main Street” in the United States. But there is only one that became the title of Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis’ 1920 classic “Main Street”, and that’s the one in Sauk Centre, MN (alias “Gopher Prairie”), the writer’s hometown. Main Street—the novel—is about a progressive and […]

A Transit Planning Order of Operations

On Monday, August 3rd, the Metropolitan Council and a coalition of groups supporting the METRO Blue Line Extension (also known as Bottineau LRT) made a major announcement. After years of fruitless negotiations with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad over an agreement to run light-rail trains in their right-of-way, the public partners announced that […]