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.
Category: Governance
No, We Should Not Abolish the HPC. But It Could Look Different.
Aaron Person • January 25, 2021 An essay posted January 15, 2021 on streets.mn entitled “Preserve The Future, Not Just The Past” is a fairly typical critique of heritage preservation and the role of heritage preservation commissions (HPCs) in American cities. The article points to the frequently absurd minutia and short-sightedness of HPC meetings and staff reports, but does not fully […]
Suburbs of the Month: Excelsior, Deephaven, Shorewood and Tonka Bay
John Wilson • January 18, 2021 It has been a long time since I’ve posted an installment of my “Suburb of the Month” series on transit in the Twin Cities suburbs, mostly due to my limited ability to take pictures at this time. However, I have a picture relevant to the Excelsior area, and even though it wasn’t my planned next […]
Why Minneapolis needs a Land Value Tax
Saumik Narayanan • August 28, 2020 This image shows a mostly undeveloped parking lot, occupying a full block of prime real estate in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. Why does this lot remain underdeveloped? The owner of the land could increase their income drastically if they developed the land to its fullest potential. Additionally, the city as a whole would gain […]
Five Facets of Recovery from COVID-19
“It [the pandemic] is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready […]
Car Subsidy as a Cost-Recovery Measure for St. Paul: Time to CARPe Diem
The Climate Action and Resilience Plan (CARP) recently passed by the St. Paul City Council is an excellent, and necessary, first step to move St. Paul toward a sustainable future. You can read the plan here. Making the plan’s vision a reality will require developing many specifics that the plan does not flesh out. It’s […]
Chart of the Day: Federal HUD Funding for Saint Paul, 1978 – 2019
Here’s a chart that just happens to almost perfectly coincide with my lifespan. It shows the amount of Federal HUD dollars that have been spent in Saint Paul over the last 40 years. As you can see, there is something of a trend. The three lines represent three different pots of money: Community Development Block […]
Parking Validation: What If I Don’t Drive?
You’ve probably been offered parking validation, as I have, at restaurants, grocery stores — even the county Human Services office where I receive benefits (while working three jobs and freelancing on the side). But what if, like me, you don’t have a car? Which of these places will validate your visiting them by riding transit, […]
Manufacturing Consent: A Timeline of Policing and Propaganda in Minneapolis
[content warning/trigger warning: gun violence, police violence, murder, anti-Black and anti-Native abuse, r*pe, assault] 1821 The Metropolitan Police Department, the first municipal police force in the world, is created in London. The first American police force forms in Boston 17 years later. 1867 Minneapolis incorporates and the City Council establishes the Minneapolis Police Department, which […]
What Does Greta Thunberg Want?
If you have a pulse, you can’t have missed the demonstrations that Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg has been organizing around the world. Whether you call it Global Warming, Climate Change, or, lately, the Climate Emergency, our changing climate is what she is organizing schoolchildren globally to protest about on Fridays. Most people have a favorable […]