This coming Saturday, February 4th is the Saint Paul Winter Carnival’s Torchlight parade. If you have never been, I highly encourage you to go. I brought my friend, Mary, for the first time last year and this was her review: “This is the strangest parade I have ever been to, but it is the best […]
What to do with the empty boxes at the edge of town? The small town of Austin, Minnesota, was faced with this question. They had an answer. The largest employer in town, Hormel Foods, swept-in and transformed an empty K-Mart into something special. The Spam Museum is one-of-a-kind; there are no others. And, for this […]
As someone who follows local development politics pretty closely, I’ve been watching a strange new debate unfold at City Hall. We’re used to hearing concerns about parking and neighborhood “character” from longtime homeowners. Now, that same argument is coming from a cast of comedians in support of Acme Comedy Co’s quest to stop the development […]
Via the Washington Post, here’s a fun map of Minneapolis showing the percentage change in average home prices in Minneapolis (and other cities too). The map supports the basic “return to the city” argument, about how more people are moving into the urban core. Here’s the 15-year trend: The article looks at a few […]
I’ve just returned from a trip abroad (Scotland & Ireland) and am having familiar thoughts: why do other countries seem to get things about urban design that America just doesn’t? Okay, so looking around a bit while on vacation isn’t exactly a scientific way to evaluate the relatively quality of urban planning, but it’s not […]
I’ve written previously about the infinite improvement that the proposed concept for the Hennepin Avenue Reconstruct represents, here. Of course, my hopes for it are as eternal as the empty lot at Block E once felt. I’m leaving out the possibility of lane reductions; the mess of laws and customs governing those is beyond my […]
Last week, I went to the Downtown Public Library for a meeting on the Hennepin Avenue Reconstruct, which encompasses the street from Washington Ave to 12th. As I often do when headed downtown, I walked Hennepin, weaving between slower foot traffic, waiting impatiently at poorly timed lights, and enjoying the pleasure of moving under my own […]
Here’s an important chart for you, showing something that the City Observatory cooked up called the “storefront index.” It measures the number of “customer-facing businesses” along city streets. Here’s the ranking [in absolute, not per capita, terms]: It looks like Minneapolis is punching a bit below its weight, though that might be accounted for by the […]
In my previous post, I compared the city block layouts of the downtowns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. This time, I thought I’d zoom out and compare the whole cities. Above is the map for Saint Paul, a city of about 300,000 residents. Blocks that are green, yellow, and dark red are smaller in size, […]
How hard is it to get around the city block where you live, work, or shop? Does that affect the modes of transportation you choose on a daily basis? Does it impact the choices of city planners, or the areas where businesses choose to locate? Until I started working in downtown Saint Paul, I often […]