National Links: Amazon Milks Farms for Profits
The generational wealth lost to freeway development, embedded car culture in Kansas City, highway boondoggles that cost billions and other discouraging national news.
Category: Land Use
Hidden Falls, Hidden No More
This month, with the opening of a new tunnel and walkway under MRB, a new viewing platform, and the partial daylighting of Hidden Falls Creek, Hidden Falls is ready to be discovered by many more visitors.
Envisioning a More Affordable Summit Avenue (and Rest of St. Paul)
What a Chicago boulevard can teach us about improving our land use in St. Paul.
Twin Cities Boulevard Update, July 2022
Our Streets Minneapolis presented a forum on the Twin Cities Boulevard: part background, part status update, and part attempt to hold leaders accountable.
Charts of the Day: Impacts of Land Use on Pandemic-Era Light Rail Station Ridership
Contributor Eoin Roux analyzes light rail station ridership within the context of the previous two years of the pandemic.
More Smart Land Use Reform in Saint Paul
St. Paul planning staff have been doing great work to reform the planning process. The latest change proposes to fix a broken petition requirement for certain developments.
National Links: Rethinking City Sounds
What if we rethought sound in busy cities? In Rotterdam, city officials believe that train bells and other noises are just background noise, but to many, it’s an unbearable hum. Still, some are looking for ways to extract and enhance new sounds to create new and valuable urban experiences.
National Links: Dark Stores and Geographic Gas Taxes
Around the country more dark stores and ghost kitchens are popping up in empty retail spaces. These stores, which promise 15-minute deliveries of food and goods, don’t have a front door and can’t be patronized on foot. Along with e-commerce, they are also wreaking havoc on local businesses and impacting the soul of cities in a way that will be hard to recover.
Early Engagement on St. Paul’s 1-4 Unit Housing Study Looks Pretty Good
St. Paul staff ran a first round of public engagement about ending single-family zoning. The results are promising.
Minneapolis 2040’s First Real Test: 635 Van Buren Street NE
The Minneapolis 2040 Plan was a true accomplishment and vision for more housing, reducing inequity and improving sustainability. It set the stage for many other cities and states across the country to push for and succeed in adopting new, denser zoning laws. For the first time since its 12-1 passage, that Plan is now being […]