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 […]
The other day, my beloved elder child was looking around on Google for ideas on what we could do on a Friday night that included both his father and I as participants that was not “go to movie” or “bowling.” He used the very sane query “things to do in Blaine MN.” The result? Well, […]
In case you missed the chart debate that broke out on Twitter yesterday, here are two highlights. The first is this chart, shared by Tony Damiano, (allegedly) showing a growing divergence between real wages and rents over the last two decades in the Twin Cities metro: It’s a chart that looks familiar to me, […]
Here are a few maps from the Brookings Institute’s Metro Monitor report, which offer Us maps by metropolitan area showing different economic indicators. At least according to these indices, the MSP metro economy seems not to be growing as quickly as other cities in the country. Here’s one showing growth, defined as a combination of […]
The Urban Planning “S” Words It seems in urban planning there’s no shortage of locker room talk to describe development and infrastructure you personally don’t like. For example, the epithet “sprawl.” Some may say “I know it when I see it,” but too often it’s just an insult with no objective definition; perhaps just a […]
Warning: This post, which is about generalizations, contains many generalizations. — As many people of many different ideological bents will eagerly inform you, we have a big, sprawly metropolitan here in the “Twin Cities.” Our 3.5 million or so residents are spread around a little over 8,000 square miles, compared to, for example, the 13 […]