Lies in City Planning
In April, Minneapois Public Works released the results of a survey showing strong community support for reopening 38th & Chicago to vehicle traffic. Just one problem: it wasn’t true.
Author: Ian Young
Food and Permanence
Since buying a house in 2017, I’ve been planting trees. As of today, I have added 12 trees and about 37 woody shrubs, many of which are fruit- or nut-bearing. In a few years, these should provide a cornucopia of fresh food for both us and the wildlife. Right now, though, they produce almost nothing. […]
Fun Weeds You Can Eat
Why eat weeds? A weed is just a plant in the wrong spot, the saying goes. It might also just be a plant we haven’t sufficiently appreciated yet. Eating weeds fundamentally changes our relationship to the world around us. It requires a shift of perspective that is a quiet revolt against the 20th-century ideals of […]
Fremont Bridge Closure Caps off Crappy Season for Minneapolis Bike Trails
If you’ve ridden the Midtown Greenway through Uptown in the past month, you’ve probably noticed that it’s closed for reconstruction of the Fremont Ave Bridge. The closure began August 28th and is predicted to last 10 or 11 weeks, which if you’re counting, takes it through the end of the fair-weather biking season. The Fremont […]
Why did Centerpoint Energy Close the Greenway for 10 Days?
On July 23rd, Centerpoint Energy closed the Midtown Greenway without providing any advance notice to the users of the trail. No signage was put in place in advance of the closure, and they did not notify the Midtown Greenway Coalition. They simply erected barricades and ripped up the trail. The detour provisions provided were wholly […]
Everyone Walks at the State Fair
“People will walk a lot more than they say they will”—that’s the final observation in Bill Lindeke’s list from the State Fair. I was curious how much I do walk at the State Fair, so this year I took my GPS along. How much did I walk? About seven and a half miles. For most […]
How to Bike to Work: A Beginner’s Guide
May in Minnesota is when bike season kicks into high gear. The weather is finally nice enough that everyone wants to be outside riding in it, and May is also the month where bike advocacy efforts bloom. Locally we celebrate Mpls Bike Month, headlined by Twin Cities Bike to Work Day on May 18th. Bike […]
Winter is When We Need Alternative Transit the Most
The first blizzard this winter hit squarely over the entire workday, timing that was bad news for the plow crews trying to clear the streets in time for the city’s commuters to get home. My partner and I took a walk in the early evening and without ever making it more than four blocks from […]
Local Business is a Two-Way Street (with Bike Lanes)
The experience of living in a city is all about learning to share a small space with a lot of people. Nobody gets exactly the city they would prefer. The very nature of diversity means that everyone’s perfect city would be a little different than their neighbor’s perfect city. So instead we compromise. Much of […]