Category: Maps

Dog Nearly Bites Man and Converted Churches on Dayton’s Bluff

September 27, 2021 Downtown, Lowertown, Dayton’s Bluff 20.1 miles The route map of my September 27, 2021 ride. The map is zoomable. A sunny late September day with the temperature in the mid-70s is a day to ride. And so I was winding my way east on Kellogg Boulevard Downtown toward Dayton’s Bluff. At the […]

Metropolitan Opera House and Palace Court, 1914

No Use for a Name: The Untold Story of Alley Identity and Utility in Minneapolis’ Palace Court

(The photograph above, showing the Metropolitan Opera House and Palace Court, was taken by C.J. Hubbard in 1914, Minnesota Historical Society) Historical and contemporary Minneapolis is not particularly known for its public alleys. They have served a more discreet role in the lives of Minneapolitans, unsung for getting private vehicles off city streets. Of course, […]

Map Monday: Minneapolis/Saint Paul Without the River Border

I wrote once before about Peter Gorman’s work, Barely Maps, which was inspired by a cross-country circumnavigating bike ride. I finally got a copy of the book and enjoyed it. Here’s his minimalist map of Minneapolis/Saint Paul, about which Gorman writes: “If you zoom in a few miles south of the headwaters of the Mississippi, […]

Hennepin Avenue: A Parable of Road Design in America

It’s possible you’ve heard this joke before: A motorist, a pedestrian, and a bicyclist are sitting at a table that has a dozen cookies on it. The motorist grabs 11 of the cookies and when the other two are reaching for what they each assumed was their cookie, the motorist exclaims: “Watch out! The bicyclist […]

The Real Highland Bike Map

St. Paul made tremendous strides in connecting and constructing bike infrastructure this year. The Saint Paul Bicycle Coalition recently released its updated 2021 bike map, highlighting the extensive network. And it is impressive. My Strava feed, in a year that saw my highest mileage total in a single calendar year ever, has a lot of […]

Map Monday: New Rental Listings on Zillow

Going around on Twitter, housing advocates are sharing maps of various zipcodes showing new rental listings on Zillow within the last 14 days. While we do expect listings to go up in spring, a key factor in this is airBNB markets melting down during COVID-19 travel restriction, both legal and social. Here is Zillow for […]

Map Monday: US Percent without Health Insurance by Congressional District

Today’s map is a timely one in a time of rapidly spreading virus. This map depicts the number of residents by Congressional District without health insurance. Data is sourced from the ACS 2017 5 year data set, and was assembled by MetricMaps. Minnesota is one of the greener states, showing that more people, percentage-wise, have […]

Map of Hogan's Alley, in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Freeways and Freedmen: A Familiar Story from Canada’s Rondo

Rondo was part of a roadmap which detailed the ways in which black folks across the United States could be removed from their homes and property in order to build the Eisenhower freeways. The Guardian has written about this process, alongside the Atlantic, ThinkProgress, the New York Times, and plenty of other outlets. But these […]

Map excerpt showing the metro area with various municipalities indicated in shades of purple, with the caption "Integrated Resiliance"

Growing Awareness of Climate in Community Planning

I don’t remember how this ended up in my inbox, but the Great Plains Institute (GPI) recently published an article evaluating how Met Council-area communities are using the comprehensive planning process to address climate-related issues. As part of the state laws governing land use in the metro area, metro area municipalities are required to create […]

Map Monday: Population Change in Minnesota, 2017-2018

Here are four interesting maps from Minneapolis map guru and sometime streets.mn writer Scott Shaffer, posted on Twitter the other day. They show population change trends in Minnesota by county over the last year. Check them out:   The takeaway? The metro is growing, and that goes double for the core cities. Anyone see any […]