Earlier this month, the Saint Paul Planning Commission approved another drive-thru in the urban core, confirming a conditional use permit (CUP) for a 1,800-square-foot, one-story Taco Bell restaurant on a 16,500-square-foot lot with the vast majority of the remaining land used for parking and a drive-thru lane. The location is just over 1,000 feet from […]
I had a spicy Twitter exchange the other day with Max Nesterak, who has been doing great work at his new website, the MN Reformer. The question he posed rekindled some long-simmering thoughts I’ve been having about the eternal question “are new buildings bad?” Here’s the tweet: Who’s going to write an op-ed for @MNReformer […]
It probably seems like years ago. But, in actual time, it’s only been four months since February 2020. That’s when the Minnesota Legislature began debating a policy to change policing on Metro Transit trains and buses. At the time, the debate centered around a “law and order” narrative. Everyone at the capitol seemed to agree […]
There’s an ongoing and tedious debate about whether or not building new market-rate apartment housing helps or hurts affordability in US cities. The argument is tedious not because it’s an uninteresting question, but because nothing seems to change. “You can’t build your way out of a housing crisis,” on one hand; “we have a housing […]
Nobody makes bus movies. As we all know, buses aren’t sexy, not like streetcars, trains, planes, or cars. Buses are mundane, banal, impersonal, and claustrophobic. If you want to make a sweeping dramatic film, they’re terrible settings, like a submarine without any of the high-pressure stakes. That’s why there are a hundred train films for […]
A while back. I wrote about the importance of streets and sidewalks during the pandemic, and how I thought the Oakland Slow Streets project was a great model for cities to follow. As you’ve probably heard, in Oakland, California the city has installed small barriers on over 74 miles of mostly residential streets, creating a […]
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! We’re hosting another Virtual Happy Hour via Zoom from 3-5pm. Put it on your calendar and drop on by. Our special guest will be Wolfie Browender, a prolific writer, bicyclist, and photographer who has been quietly and consistently putting together wonderful stories via his website Saint Paul By Bike and here on […]
Before the plague hit and people began sheltering in their homes, walking was something most of us took for granted. It was something we did to get to the car or the bus stop. These days, though, walking is a special treat, the highlight of the day. I’ve taken to going on walks with my […]
Hey! We’re hosting another virtual happy hour tonight, from 6 to 8pm. Our special guest tonight will be Adam Froehlig, who is going to share some of his fascinating research on local freeway history around 7. If you like, you can ask all those burning questions you’ve been harboring about Interstate 335, the Midtown Greenway freeway, […]
Today’s homebound pandemic makes it obvious that our sidewalks are inadequate. They are too narrow and often incomplete, and are not giving people safe, comfortable spaces to walk. This matters because our streets and sidewalks are our most important public space. Sure, we have city parks, and they are the gold standards of our public […]