Alex Schieferdecker • December 28, 2020 • 16 By one count, there are over 7,600 streets named “Main Street” in the United States. But there is only one that became the title of Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis’ 1920 classic “Main Street”, and that’s the one in Sauk Centre, MN (alias “Gopher Prairie”), the writer’s hometown. Main Street—the novel—is about a progressive and […]
Andy Singer • November 23, 2020 This fall, Saint Paul completed five major new bikeways, the most in the city’s history. We’ll look at all five of them and discuss some of the political and design work that enabled each of them to happen. Como Avenue First up is a multi-use, off-street trail on Como Avenue between Raymond Avenue and Hamline […]
Pat Thompson • October 5, 2020 Like many transit riders, I have been riding much less since the pandemic, mostly because I have been sticking closer to my home and neighborhood. (Though note: there is starting to be evidence that transit-riding is not a big contributor to COVID-19 rates.) That decrease is a personal sadness because of the lost human connections […]
Jenny Werness • September 30, 2020 “We eventually made our way back home after accomplishing our goal, braving the complex gauntlet of signs, barricades, broken pavement, noisy machines, and dangerous drivers.”
The Old ShakopeeRoad/98th Street Corridor is one of the east-west thoroughfares of Bloomington. It’s also an outdated roadway. Several segments are a four-lane death road, the sidewalks are narrow and buckling, and traffic typically goes 5 to 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. The route has several high-traffic destinations, including the Mall of […]
The Covid-19 pandemic has given many of America’s governments—local, state, and federal—an opportunity to fail spectacularly at basic governing. A virus which has been contained in many European, Asian, and South Pacific countries within a couple of months rages on in the United States. One government that has done a decent (not perfect) job with […]
Much has changed since initiating Stepping Up MN, a virtual cleanup launched at the end of April to mobilize eager volunteers for community betterment. COVID-19 had us cloistered and adhering pretty religiously to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines against viral transmission. Litter accumulated in the streets, with city workers reassigned or […]
One of the things that I discovered when I moved into my apartment was that the tennis courts across the street were a bit loud. People drove from other parts of the city to use them and would play tennis until sundown. So from my apartment, I could hear the sound of a tennis ball […]
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 […]
Jake Nath • May 14, 2020 Since Minneapolis and St. Paul have closed some of its parkways to motor vehicles to assist with social distancing due to COVID-19, I have been enjoying the extra room it has been supplying to pedestrians and bicyclists. Even before the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) and the city of St. Paul implemented these measures, […]