Zoning Constraints and Mixed-Use Corridors: A Conversation With Spencer Miller-Johnson
A St. Paul city planner helps us unpack the East Grand Avenue Overlay District Study!
Tag Archives: planning
How Our Urban Form Confines Our Transit
Why do some cities have so much better transit than others? The distribution of people in those cities plays a key role, as our reporter explains in a dispatch from Milan.
The Cedar-Isles Master Plan Needs Your Voice!
As Minneapolis Parks & Recreation works on the Cedar-Isles Master Plan, it’s important to get engagement from a broader group of park users.
More Smart Land Use Reform in Saint Paul
St. Paul planning staff have been doing great work to reform the planning process. The latest change proposes to fix a broken petition requirement for certain developments.
Hennepin Ave Reconstruction Should Prioritize People, Not Cars
The city claims to prioritize people over cars. Let’s make sure that happens along Hennepin Ave.
Addition by Subtraction — Six Anti-Equity Items to Remove from the Saint Paul City Code
I still remember the first time I looked at a city zoning code, in a planning class at the Humphrey School. I both recommend it and, at the same time, would not wish the experience on anyone. City codes are interminable documents written in technical legalese. They go into painstaking detail about things like how […]
National Links: The Origins of Beer Gardens
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 D.C. region. […]
The Problem with the Oakland Street Closures
A while back. I wrote about the importance of streets and sidewalks during the pandemic, and how I thought the Oakland Slow Streets project was a great model for cities to follow. As you’ve probably heard, in Oakland, California the city has installed small barriers on over 74 miles of mostly residential streets, creating a […]
A Lukewarm Defense of Lakeville
Your author has spent a good deal of time in Lakeville. My wife grew up there, and it’s where my in-laws still live. In fact, our family of four lived there for a summer in between selling and buying a house. My father-in-law runs a small business there, and I’ve even spent a number of […]
The Edina Public Works Site is a Once in a Generation Opportunity
On my bus ride home each day the bus takes me by the vacant former Edina Public Works site in the Grandview district. I’m not the first to write about this topic – there’s an entire section of the city website dedicated to this parcel of land. Dating back to 2014, the Star Tribune did […]