Jeff Wood • June 24, 2022 • 0 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.
Zak Yudhishthu • May 30, 2022 St. Paul staff ran a first round of public engagement about ending single-family zoning. The results are promising.
Katie Jones • May 2, 2022 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 […]
Ian Gaida • April 14, 2022 Contributor Ian Gaida offers musings on how to make the Northstar a more useful – and utilized – system.
Zak Yudhishthu • March 18, 2022 Here’s one reason we have a housing shortage: New development creates diffuse benefits, but has concentrated costs. Local control over land use ensures we’ll undercount the benefits.
Pat Thompson • March 14, 2022 When you hear anyone say that the Twin Cities Boulevard vision isn’t possible as part of Rethinking I-94 — when we face a climate emergency and the literal loss of a stable, civilization-supporting habitat — remember that you live in a car cult.
Matt Privratsky • March 3, 2022 “We should use these big opportunities to do big things.” The redevelopment of the Hillcrest site on St. Paul’s East Side is a unique opportunity to build homes, create jobs, and connect the neighborhood.
Jeff Wood • February 22, 2022 The American Dream mall in New Jersey is a dreadful reminder of America’s consumer culture. The boondoggle suffered from decades of delay, shady business deals and billions of dollars spent in taxpayer money – its eponymous name certainly seems fitting.
Monte Castleman • February 18, 2022 Fast-food and fast-casual restaurants are surviving the pandemic by emphasizing drive-through or take-out service, a boon for COVID-wary consumers and the auto-focused suburbs.
Matt Privratsky • January 4, 2022 Next Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council will hear first readings of changes to several of its housing policies that, if enacted, promise to expand the housing supply by making it more feasible to build “tiny homes” and cluster developments in the city. These changes are coming forward as part of Phase 1 of the […]