A federal judge’s decision on a Wisconsin road project has shined a spotlight on the distorted ways people view “their” roads. On May 22, the U.S. Eastern District Court ruled that WisDOT didn’t adequately explain traffic projections or account for updated demographic data when deciding to expand Highway 23 to four lanes between Fond du […]
This weekend, I awoke early to grab some time-lapse sunrise photos on the Minnesota River banks across from the Port Cargill-West Elevator. I hiked the Minnesota River Bottoms Trail to a nice clearing then let my cameras click away as I listened to ducks quack and watched a beaver and muskrat paddle around. The morning […]
Hopkins has been the model of cooperation for the past few years. The city collaborated with Hennepin County on a Shady Oak Road expansion despite harms to longstanding businesses. It accepted the Southwest LRT’s operations and maintenance facility even though the city suffered the biggest hit to tax base of any community along the line. […]
[This is the first in a series of posts about “homelessness”.] I start quite deliberately with the scare quotes above because it is one of my primary objectives here to articulate my discomfort with the way the term “homelessness” is conventionally used. I will argue that it is a crude and inadequately descriptive piece of shorthand that […]
$21 billion is a meaningless number. That’s how much more the 2012 Transportation Finance Advisory Committee estimated Minnesota needs just to maintain all modes in the current system. The total is certainly big, but all government figures are. There are so many billions tossed around in the realm of public finance that voters’ eyes glaze […]
After David Levinson posted his article–Roll with Us Transit Challenge: March 1-7, 2015—about the campaign to get state legislators to ride transit for a week, I e-mailed a few legislators to encourage them to participate in the challenge. Although I knew the House members I contacted were likely supporters of building out and maintaining a robust […]
In the span of just a few months, the Mall of America (MOA) became the center of two debates regarding peoples’ rights in quasi-public spaces. On December 20th, 2014 the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization staged a protest in the MOA rotunda: If you’re unaware of the whole issue, bone up here. Specious allegations that […]
Minneapolis city budget negotiations this year sparked a public conversation about city finances and the details of budgeting. There was one piece missing, however, from the public conversation. It is the difference between the tax levy and the taxes levied. The former is the targeted budget set by the city. The latter is the method […]
Some of the many conflicts currently wracking the state of Minnesota Metro vs. Outstate Urban vs. Suburban vs. Rural J. Crew vs. Hollister vs. Carhartt Peel-and-stick brick vs. Beige vinyl siding Cars vs. All else Who in the metro is paying to repave roads in Koochiching County, or, to phrase it incorrectly, where specifically do […]
In an effort to increase transparency, the City of Minneapolis has started publishing data that it routinely collects during the course of day-to-day activities. This concept of “open data” has picked up steam as the utility of this data is discovered. By freely publishing this data, institutions create a tool for citizens to piece together […]