National Links: Lessons from the Pandemic
In this week’s National Links: pandemic-era changes to work and commutes, designing with autism in mind and the gradual death of the “starter car.”
Category: Downtowns
17 Mental Maps of St. Paul
Our perceptions of a city are formed through “mental maps” we create — and those shift depending on the travel mode we use.
Chart of the Day: Where Is the Orange Line Attracting Riders?
Eighteen months after the METRO Orange Line’s opening, Eoin Roux examines what the data tell us about ridership. The upshot: more riders, but fewer of them downtown.
National Links: Community Feedback Needs Reform
Links from The Overhead Wire to urbanist news from around the country/world. This week: reforming the community engagement process, the shrinking urban drugstore market, and the unfolding ecological collapse of the Great Salt Lake.
National Links: How to Have a Happy Commute
Sahan Journal’s story about how multimodalism produces happier commutes made national news, plus how humans created Hurricane Ian.
Commuting to Downtown Minneapolis Is Both Easier and More Complex Since COVID
How have commuting patterns and multimodal transportation habits changed in downtown Minneapolis since COVID?
National Links: Why the British Hate Bicyclists
Planting trees to store carbon, converting downtown offices to residential space and more climate-protecting ideas from around the world.
No Use for a Name: The Untold Story of Alley Identity and Utility in Minneapolis’ Palace Court
(The photograph above, showing the Metropolitan Opera House and Palace Court, was taken by C.J. Hubbard in 1914, Minnesota Historical Society) Historical and contemporary Minneapolis is not particularly known for its public alleys. They have served a more discreet role in the lives of Minneapolitans, unsung for getting private vehicles off city streets. Of course, […]
National Links: Selling Omaha
How Boomers get the housing crisis wrong, why a poor sense of direction could be an early sign of dementia and more “old news.”
National Links: Road Design’s Role in Crashes
Human error gets blamed for deadly crashes, but road and vehicle design more often is the culprit. The first half of 2021 recorded 20,000 deaths on U.S. roads.