Saint Paul’s historic Rondo neighborhood is a thriving, diverse community and home to many immigrant families and Black-owned businesses. It’s situated between University Avenue and the METRO Green Line to the north and Selby Avenue to the south. Black churches, businesses, and schools set down roots in the area in the late nineteenth and early […]
Undoing failed zoning by basing new rules on the development that occurred under that failed zoning is a cycle doomed to repeat past failures. If you want to get the diversity of buildings we used to have, you have to work back from what you want.
Until we can change the city charter, we must pay the salaries of about 730 police officers. However, nowhere in there does it specify what is necessary equipment for the officers to have. I will argue here that police cars are not only unnecessary but also actively harmful, and should no longer be funded by […]
Metro Transit staff have penned an open letter to Metropolitan Council leadership demanding action in response to the killing of George Floyd and the series of subsequent protests. The letter, which was signed by 198 current and former Metro Transit employees and sent on June 26, points out that both its riders and its operators […]
This morning biking under helicopters to get to work I practiced the meditation technique I made up where I pretend by pedaling I am the single source generating the happiness all living things feel, the way a bike would light a lightbulb. I avoid the buildings that are on fire, flow past objects graffitied with […]
In my recent streets.mn article, “Want Equitable Cities? We’ll Need More Women in Transportation Planning,” I argued that women’s under-representation in transportation planning and policy making leads to the creation of urban spaces that fail to meet the needs of girls and women. I ended the article with a bold question: What would cities look […]
My longtime home and beloved Silver City is beginning to change. Though St. Paul has often been maligned as “old-timey” by some of the more unsavory residents across the river in Minneapolis, I am proud to have seen St. Paul take tangible steps into the future by passage of the massively important Climate Action & […]
Are you ready to respond to our climate emergency? Are you interested in what this means for land use and transportation in particular? Join streets.mn’s newest committee this coming Sunday afternoon, January 26th, from 3:00-5:00 at CoCreatz on the Green Line. We’ll be talking about the ways streets.mn intersects with climate breakdown and how we […]
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher, but a recent report puts Minneapolis-St. Paul’s walkable urban places fourth among the nation’s 30 biggest cities for social equity. Social Equity Index rankings aren’t the main focus of “Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America’s Largest Metros,” but it’s the subcategory where the Twin Cities shine the […]
Metro Transit has stepped up a previously ill-defined “anti-harassment” initiative to promote “respect, kindness and inclusion among our riders.” This has manifested in station announcements, signage, and scrolling messages on buses that a lot of people probably find innocuous, or even welcome. However, the way it has chosen to go about this campaign is […]