National Links: Designing Pedestrian Dignity
Why green space doesn’t make suburbs more environmentally friendly than cities, how Japanese toddlers are more helpful to their parents and more on global urban trends.
Tag Archives: Urbanism
America’s Most Liveable City? A 1-Year Retrospective on St. Paul
Intro I moved to St. Paul last summer for work. Sadly, after just one short year, I am once again relocating for work, so I am leaving St. Paul. I came here from a large East Coast city where I relied on walking, biking, and transit to get everywhere because I don’t own a car. […]
One Centuries-Old Trick Can Solve Your City’s Problems
Cities don’t have to be anonymous, hectic, lonely places.
Are New Buildings Ugly or Beautiful?
I had a spicy Twitter exchange the other day with Max Nesterak, who has been doing great work at his new website, the MN Reformer. The question he posed rekindled some long-simmering thoughts I’ve been having about the eternal question “are new buildings bad?” Here’s the tweet: Who’s going to write an op-ed for @MNReformer […]
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 […]
Pedestrian Hit by Car. Driver OK, Say Authorities
Last weekend, a car driver ran over a man trying to do what should have been the simplest of tasks: crossing the street. On Wednesday, the victim, Theodore J. Ferrara, died from his injuries. Ferrara is far from the first pedestrian seriously injured on Lyndale. The street is designed to accommodate cars to the detriment […]
Bicycle Safety is Totally Rad, Dude!
One of my old roommates used to be in charge of quarterly safety drills at his workplace. He liked to say, “Safety is not just another word here on Friendship Street.” We lived on Friendship Street. When we gave directions to our place, we told people to look for the street where everyone was hugging. […]
Grocery Shopping by Bike
A cargo bike helps. So do panniers and patience, because you’ll need to shop more than once a week. But you can buy groceries without a car.
Arguments Against Minneapolis’s Draft Comprehensive Plan, Addressed (Part II)
This is the second in a series of posts addressing the arguments against Minneapolis’s Draft Comprehensive Plan; the first is here. It Doesn’t Achieve “Affordability” I’m not an economist, or an affordable housing expert. So I want to start with a link to this post by Atrios, who is (or, at least, has been) an […]