urbanMSP

They presented final plans for the coffee/bagel shop, with some tweaks to the layout.

City staff recommended against it.

The planning commission voted against it.

It goes to city council next week.

Fences were almost completed around the Shake Shack corner.

Such a weird, low-density use.

One thing that is very unclear to me from the Southdale Area Plan is that if they literally intend streets to follow that grid, or a rough network of driveways, private drives, etc, that sort of form a de-facto grid. I'd love if it the goal were true public streets, but I suspect it will be more li...

I wonder if the fact that LifeTime Fitness is not attached to the mall is part of their grand plan to have a street/woonerf system eventually? The Southdale Area Plan calls for some sort of street system with smaller blocks. Maybe the mall will be replaced in bits & pieces, and an urban street g...

Apple partnered with Ito World to bring to Maps locating nearby bike share stations in 176 services in 179 cities. … St. Paul included, but not Minneapolis. Huh! Payback for St. Paul described as a neighborhood of Mpls in some best-of article, lately? [emoji846] Actually, typing “Bike Sharing” in A...

I was wondering what was up with that seemingly abandoned blue parcel. Maybe by the time a multi-story dealership is built there, they’ll be selling exclusively electric cars. Electric cars don’t need much service, so maybe they’ll have service (for the already-sold gas powered cars) somewhere else ...

Great Twitter thread. Sure, you can find missing middle housing examples just about anywhere, but they are naturally clustered most frequently around transit. I was just reading an article about how the shoreline of Brooklyn developed density around the development of ferry service. Use 3D mode in A...

Density (residential & commercial) follows transportation, so if you’re not on or next to a corridor of some sort, you probably won’t see fourplexes. Just look at how missing middle housing followed the streetcars—or how apartments follow highways nowadays. So if you’re on a little sidestreet, y...

Everything is a foursquare until it's proven that it's not Ha ha! Excellent point. Foursquares and “bungalows” everywhere. Later on, some “tudors” and “cape cods”. These aren’t so much true architectural styles as they were trends that were superimposed on standardized kits and plans. Hence the “qu...

Have you ever thought of yourself as an entrepreneur? [emoji106]

Maybe they’ll monetize it: roaming fees.

Edina is looking to test/pilot a dockless bike share system, and is currently seeking feedback from residents on pros & cons, potential locations, who would use it, etc. (Not sure if it this belongs under Nice Ride Minnesota, or if maybe this should be renamed more generically to Bike Share, or ...

No more lanes ever? Is that the catchphrase?

That’s a good start.

No more lanes.
No more (surface) parking.
No more drive-thru’s.
No more gas stations.

The city leaders do sound rather impressed with what is proposed. They are asking for a moonshot it seems. I don’t know that they understand what can be done when it’s surrounded by parking lots on the south and east with an unpleasant stroad to the west. If only the water tower could be wrapped up...

Sat in the front row, Hi! … I wanted to scream, “If the lanes are too narrow, the lighting too poor, and there are too many parked cars, everybody should slow down their driving. Drive the speed that is safe for conditions. They teach this in drivers ed!” Somebody also complained that there was a b...

Summit is public, but there is a retaining wall; it is not level. So the lot can’t be combined or anything.

So the planning commission was not too happy about the very suburban layout, street reconfiguration, and feel of this. (Thanks heavens.) So, what can be done with this small, triangular lot? 4 microrestaurants with a shared seating area? Pretty cool idea, although I doubt we have the density to supp...

I can see that they would want to connect two fairly close business nodes, so people would have a reason to try it (rather than just being out in the middle of nowhere where people would likely drive there to test it out). In that case, why not use 31st street for the demo, between Hennepin & Ly...

And by affordable housing, we’re probably not talking about single family homes—which is why I think the city council is doing the right thing by pushing for selective density and actual affordable housing (apartments & condos), rather than just taking the penalty from developers who didn’t prov...

Many people will scoff at the “poor rich suburb”, but this just shows that Edina needs affordable housing as much as any place does.