Two new apartment buildings are rising in the view from my 3rd floor Whittier apartment. I was often enamored with the landscape I could witness but now the feeling is gone, ruined by these housing units. The building immediately adjacent to mine stands six stories tall, towering over my home by two floors. It has […]
When controversy happens… when tempers flare… we read the comments, so you don’t have to. Having spent the last day reading all the streets.mn article comments (as my job as Head Moderator in Chief), I could not get enough so I headed over to the Star Tribune is Op Ed version. Like I don’t have enough […]
Want to ride the newest form of bus transportation available in the Twin Cities? Want to see a rail validation on your Go-To card transaction history from a bus stop? Want to hear more about #carbucks? Want to hear from Katie Roth, manager of aBRT for Metro Transit, about bus rapid transit? Then streets.mn has […]
Of course, last week was April Fools’ Day, but the Summary preceded the joke. Here’s the streets.mn Foolish offering from Bill Lindeke adding yet another hazard to the SWLRT process: Endangered Kenilworth Shark Another Hurdle for Light Rail Planners. Housing How Many Homes Does Minneapolis Need? asks Anton Schieffer. Looking beyond the discussions of building affordable housing, […]
It’s cold here. Embracing it instills community in very different ways. In this episode we visit the spaces shifting the paradigm of what it means to gather during winter. Music by Enjoy the Cat, the Limozine Group, Zack Baltich, This episode marks the halfway point of Season 1. To hear plans for season 2 and […]
I walk the streets of Minneapolis in order to pay attention. Our city is as segregated in its patterns of attention as of residence. There are the neighborhoods we know, and there are the neighborhoods that we know of. A visit is no substitute for living somewhere, but even a visit, if conducted with deliberately open […]
The draft of Saint Paul’s comprehensive plan has been released. It is not as exciting as Minneapolis, or as ambitious as Red Wing’s. Deep within lies the above slide, noting ‘significant public views’. I had doubts so I went and looked myself. Cap Wigington’s iconic water tower is there, but to get an […]
The 2018 “road construction projects” have been making the news this week, just in time for the last gasp of winter. There was a good comment on Facebook yesterday by a reader who broke down the spending at the state’s Department of Transportation by mode, e.g. over a billion dollars for car projects and a […]
Minneapolis is growing. We’ve heard lots of talk about how Minneapolis is losing affordable housing faster than we can replace it. We say housing should be a human right (and it should!). We hear about rising rents and first-time buyers unable to find starter homes. Whether you want more public housing or you want the market […]
The first blizzard this winter hit squarely over the entire workday, timing that was bad news for the plow crews trying to clear the streets in time for the city’s commuters to get home. My partner and I took a walk in the early evening and without ever making it more than four blocks from […]
Here’s a sobering chart that shows the true depth of inequality in this country. Often you see inequality measured by income, and by that accounting, our racial gaps are very large. But these gaps grow even larger when you factor in overall wealth, which reflects how income is accumulated over time. There the gap reaches […]
My name is Carol Becker and I drive an automobile. I feel like I am coming out of the closet by saying this. I don’t drive a car because I especially like driving. I drive because I don’t have a choice. The proposed Comprehensive Plan does not support a balanced transportation system where the needs […]
Every day at The Overhead Wire we collect news about cities and send the links to our email list. At the end of the week we take some of the most popular stories and post them to Greater Greater Washington, a group blog similar to streets.mn that focuses on urban issues in the DC region. […]
When I heard that Minneapolis’s comprehensive plan would remove restrictions on building two- to four-unit homes in areas previously zoned R1 or R1A (including my neighborhood, Longfellow) I was thrilled. I consider the restrictions on these types of “missing middle” housing a nearly insurmountable threat to achieving Minneapolis’s population growth and sustainability goals. In addition, […]
I’ve been learning about what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires when it comes to our sidewalks. Here, I want to share my single favorite discovery. Hennepin County has an interactive online map with photo images and descriptions of every intersection, curb cut, signal actuation/beg button, and sidewalk obstruction on county streets. That map is […]
To quote law professor and recent mayoral candidate Nekima Levy-Pounds, Minneapolis has “the best parks system for white people.” To some, the implication that Minneapolis parks do not adequately serve people of color may sound like a surprising claim for a city whose identity is based in part around its lakes and green spaces, and […]
The discovery of a rare subspecies of fish in the Lake of the Isles has created yet another challenge for the planners and engineers working on the long-planned extension of the Green Line light rail project into the southwest suburbs. Called the Minnesota lake shark, or selachimorpha calhounus, and once thought to be be extinct, […]
Welcome to April! This is not the April Fool’s edition of the Sunday Summary, but a quick guide to what was really published on streets.mn last week. Saint Paul Candidates for Ward 4: Shirley Erstad on Development in Ward 4 and Community Engagement continues Monica Milsap Rasmussen’s interviews with Ward 4 candidates in advance of the […]
Do you want the bad news or the worse news? The bad news is obvious if you’ve been driving around Saint Paul in the last month or so. I’m sure you’re aware of the potholes. They are bad! We’re talking potholes as big as poodles, ruts the size of the Twinkie from Ghostbusters. We’re talking […]
A few days ago, Adam Miller had a post here on streets.mn debunking the idea that fourplexes mean four stories. The truth is that Minneapolis’ new draft comprehensive plan that proposes allowing up to four-family homes in currently single-family neighborhoods, would limit those homes to 2.5 stories (the “Interior 1” designation). Honestly, I am someone […]
