I don’t know how to write this post to ask you to join the streets.mn board. This is supposed to be my rousing invitation, and every time I start typing, I find myself writing about the IPCC instead. But that’s not actually all that far off. Climate change–our role in causing it, the consequences we […]
Walking in my Longfellow neighborhood just after dusk last summer, I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see two beady eyes shining out at me from a creature frozen in its horizontal climb across a cyclone fence. What is that, I wondered. My husband Peter recognized […]
Saturday, September 22 is World Car-Free Day! OurStreets Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Downtown Council and a few local groups are celebrating it on Friday, September 21st. In honor of this blessed event, I’m posting a few car-toons. The U.S.A. (including Minnesota) remain “The Land of the Cars!” Here’s a new American flag proposal so outsiders will […]
We constantly hear that driverless cars are just around the corner. We’re told they will revolutionize transportation and enable us to continue using our car-based transport and land-use system. If they’re made by Tesla, they’ll be powered by magic, solar-powered, super efficient batteries and we’ll all be able to keep living our hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive lifestyles […]
I first visited Hall’s Island first before it was and island, for the 2nd time. To me it was a big parcel of land that Wilco played at a couple years ago. Why was it an island over 50 years ago, why not in 2016, and why again today? A brief history. The first known survey of […]
With more cities developing Vision Zero initiatives to eliminate road traffic fatalities, more people are seeing the way streets that are designed as a life-and-death issue. That entails seeing things that used to look fairly benign – a 13′ lane width, for example – as hazardous. We should start seeing the absence of mature street […]
The world is getting hotter, so central air-conditioning is becoming standard — but that pressures our electrical grid, and so the world keeps getting hotter.
[This post originally appeared on the Our Streets Minneapolis blog.] Many bike commuters cite reducing carbon emissions as their reason for biking. Does switching from a car or bus to a bike reduce one’s carbon footprint and by how much? Japan, China, the Netherlands, and Denmark collect the most data on carbon emissions and bikeable […]
Minneapolis residents may be wondering who is digging holes in their neighborhoods and dropping little trees in them. It’s the Forestry Division of the Minneapolis Park Board. Trees are great for the environment. They’re good for public health. They can calm car traffic. Maybe they reduce crime? They definitely make streets vastly more pleasant places […]
I’m sitting in a cafe, sipping a cup of tea and enjoying the tastiest crème brulee I’ve ever had. Or maybe I just think it’s the tastiest. It could be the atmosphere, the tropical flowers in bloom, the sound of trickling water from the fountain, or that intoxicating euphoria that comes with being surrounded by […]