July 22, 2017 Macalester-Groveland, Summit Hill, Downtown, Lexington-Hamline (Union Park) 16.7 miles The very unconventional home at 1523 Sargent Avenue prompted my first pause, shortly after jumping on the bike. There are so many shapes, colors, angles and materials to take in. Summit Hill Downtown Pleasant Avenue became home to new townhomes in 2017 dubbed […]
October 1, 2016 Highland Park, West End (West 7th) 16 miles Rather than ride the Samuel Morgan Trail that parallels Shepard Road, I slipped into the tranquil Crosby Farm Regional Park for the scenery. I had no plans to stop until I spotted a gaggle of geese along the south shore of Upper Lake. The […]
In cities where buying a house is increasingly expensive (read: Minneapolis), renting an apartment may not be the “first step.”
Recently, I met with Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board District 4 Commissioner Jono Cowgill across the street from Gateway Park to chat about the current state and future of the park. Welcome to Gateway Park 🦖 Gateway Park is a plaza located at the intersection of Hennepin Ave and S 1st St and is bordered […]
As Saint Paul debates its 2040 plan, it is revealing to look back at one of the city’s first zoning maps from the early 1920s. A little inspection of the map reveals some of the origins of the city’s current social geography and social divides, but also some elements worthy of resurrection. The dominance of […]
The book “A People’s History of the Seward Neighborhood,” though well intentioned, leaves out some of the people and stories it claims to represent.
This is Part Two of a phototour of Old Highway 61 to Duluth. Previously we covered St. Paul to White Bear Lake, now we continue north at Forest Lake. Forest Lake Early on the cutoff to where the road from Minneapolis met the road from St. Paul to Duluth moved from White Bear Lake to […]
Here’s a fun chart (if blurry and too small) that shows historic trends around density and population growth in US cities, Minneapolis included. It’s from a 2001 paper by the Transportation Research Board that I found online about transit and land use, comparing the US and other countries around the world. Here’s the chart, with […]
Here’s a cool map I recently found from a 1939 Federal FHA report called The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities. It’s very old-school urban geography, but has a bunch of cool maps including this one: Here’s part of the text, describing the rent trends in 30s Minneapolis vs. New York City: […]