Joined to the western half of Minneapolis (and the United States) by the I-35W Bridge, the Northeast and Southeast quarters of Minneapolis were once the City of St. Anthony. This area includes St. Anthony Main, but not the current City of St. Anthony (St. Anthony Village), or the neighborhood of St. Anthony Park in St. […]
Vacant homes. Drive through certain neighborhoods in either Minneapolis or St. Paul, and you’ll see quite a few of them. No one likes to live next door to a vacant house. A high vacancy rate is not good for any neighborhood. And the cities don’t like it. As a result, they have enacted regulations around vacancies, […]
For the past three years, Minnesota has been visited by a TIGER from the east, who brought bags of cash for us to use on transportationy things. This year, the TIGER skipped over us, saving his magic bags to open over other states. What happened? What did or didn’t we do that displeased the TIGER? […]
Local government cannot be a proxy for a productive economy, just as infrastructure spending cannot be a proxy for real growth. The demand for viable infrastructure needs to emerge from a productive land use pattern, just as a healthy and viable local government can only emerge from a productive place. If we want stability at […]
It seems like you can’t get anything developed in downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul without some sort of tax deal. It’s not difficult to find an example: Pillsbury A-Mill, Izzy’s, Central Corridor development, Vikings Stadium, St. Paul Saints stadium, St. Paul’s Farmer’s Market Lofts, the Pentfield Lund’s, the American Academy of Neurology and that’s just […]
The concept of a special assessment contains little dark secrets that city officials like to keep to themselves. The ability to assess the cost of maintenance — a questionable concept at best — is the only thing allowing many cities to avoid facing their true reality. Elected officials and the public need to understand assessments, […]
The session’s not quite over, but probably all the bills that will pass this year at the MN Legislature have been introduced. I thought streets.mn readers might be interested in those bills that affect the state’s transit landscape, so here is a bowdlerized version of a summary from my personal blog. Warning: I am not […]
The Transportation & Public Works Committee of the Minneapolis City Council discusses a lot of interesting stuff but seems to either use too many or not enough words to describe what they’re talking about. Here is an attempt to add some context to the dry but vital meeting topics. I’ve been summarizing them here at […]
March (thus far!) has been a month of summits — the Minnesota Bicycle Summit happened March 5, the National Bicycle Summit is happening right now, and several Transportation and Tourism Summits occurred in Minnesota. All have focused on various forms of advocacy in various venues. I’ve been to a few of these events this year […]
Recent development debacles and near-debacles in Minneapolis have made me wonder if form-based codes could help the development process here. I’ve been researching form-based codes around the country lately, and I believe they may well have a role in my hometown. At a minimum, they can provide developers, city staff and elected officials, and neighbors […]