Last week, Minnesota House representative Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) issued a news release touting a compromise between him and supporters of the Zip Rail line being planned between the Twin Cities and Rochester. Oh good! Compromise! Our representatives must have done their job and avoided petty politics! That’s what we always want our representatives to do, […]
The Twin Cities region sits at the edge of the populous eastern third of the United States. There aren’t big million-plus metropolitan areas for long distances to the west, so when looking at plans for passenger rail expansion, there aren’t many obvious destinations. However, the lone intercity train to pass through Minnesota, the Empire Builder, is […]
In November, I joined an overflow crowd at the Walker Arts Center to hear a panel discussion entitled Midwest? The Past, Present, and Future of Minnesota’s Identity. The discussion stemmed from common questions of identity, and proposed that Minnesota and the Twin Cities secede from the “Midwest” and claim ownership of a new region: the North. […]
Strong Towns recently highlighted this video from the Tennessee DOT which is worth 4 minutes for anyone who thinks about land use and transportation issues. In the video, Tennessee DOT Commissioner John Schroer says: “A lot of cities did a poor job of long-range planning in how they did zoning and how they approved projects […]
St. Peter, Minnesota is the county seat of Nicollet County, and home to over 11,000 people. While a bit less than twice the size of Glencoe, more than twice the size of Le Sueur and five times as large as Gaylord, that understates its significance. Unlike Le Sueur, Highway 169, which north of town is […]
Streets.mn occasionally profiles small towns and cities throughout Minnesota, case studies that show that urbanism is not a war between the metro and Greater Minnesota. On the contrary, it is often from the Main Streets of small towns that urbanists gain valuable insight. For example, streets.mn has previously profiled New Ulm because of a battle […]
Le Sueur, Minnesota is not a county seat. But it is town that looms large in my mind as the home of the Minnesota Valley Canning Company, originally based in Le Sueur, which became Green Giant – now a subsidiary, like all Minnesota food innovators (Pillsbury, Totino’s, Jeno’s, etc. of General Mills). Unfortunately it appears the Green Giant […]
These maps show the 10-year traffic trends from 2003 to 2013 at MnDOT’s automatic traffic recorders (or ATR’s). The ATR’s, also called Continuous Traffic Recorders, are permanently installed at select locations on Minnesota highways (a mix of interstate, state highway, county highway, and local roads) and continuously measure traffic volumes 24/7. There are 91 locations […]
Our second stop on the 2014 Minnesota County Seats tour, after Glencoe, is the nearby town of Gaylord, county seat of Sibley County. It won the prize of County Seat after a dispute with Henderson, near the eastern edge of the County. With a population of 2300, it is just under half the same size […]
David Montgomery at the Pioneer Press has a great piece up today demonstrating the difference between a “regular” map projection and a cartogram when it comes to representing population and political balance. Here are his two maps of the state’s legislative senate districts, along with one that I added showing the core city senate districts: […]