urbanMSP

Sure it wasn't the Parthenon, but demolishing this old brick building and erecting a gigantic parking structure seems to me to be architectural vandalism of the worst sort. Downtown East is drowning in parking, while historic brick buildings are its only irreplaceable asset. It's sad to see a city d...

If there is one design element they could incorporate that would make the street feel very pedestrian friendly, in my opinion it would be to eliminate curbs. The preliminary renderings suggest that they already intend to denote different street functions through the use of different surface material...

architecture, and specifically towers, should be indicative of technological progress and modern design ideas instead of shallow, vapid, regressive, historicism. Why? Historicism gets a bad rep. "Neo" anything is derided as a cheap imitation of some supposedly pure or authentic original. ...

There is a generally helpful summary and defense of the Metropolitan Council's 2040 plan (See: http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2014/05/defense-met-council-s-plan-future-development) at Minnpost. The plan itself is full of laudable goals, such as promoting denser development, conserving resources, ...

I don't really buy the argument that it would just be a tourist trolley. It may be a short route, but that doesn't mean it doesn't connect a lot of destinations. Don't think of it in terms of miles, think of it in terms of numbers of people and businesses along the route. Now, I will say that it wo...

There was a very lucid discussion of public transportation at Strong Towns recently (podcast # 175 - http://www.strongtowns.org/strong-towns-podcast/) that I thought related directly to the Nicollet/Central streetcar project. Note: if you listen to the podcast, skip the first 20 minutes as they are ...

A depressing (yet simultaneously hopeful) reminder of the sorry state of much of the built environment near the Green Line: "Perhaps the most coordinated effort to prevent displacement is underway in the Twin Cities, where trains will soon roll on the $1 billion Central Corridor. The project co...

An analogy might help: it's less than 11 miles from Wall Street to the Bronx. A subway ride will take more than an hour

It takes 35 minutes to get from the Bronx to Wall St on the 2 or the 5 train. http://goog.gl/maps/vI9Kd

Are those express trains, though? Makes a huge difference.

Over one hour to travel only 11 miles. :/ As others have noted, it will not take this long by the time the line opens. More importantly, the shock expressed by the long time required to travel such a seeming short distance betrays, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of how people will use the line. ...

Maybe, but given the recent Dinkytown decision, it looks like it was a prudent choice. I suppose; but presumably the developer isn't totally ignorant of the fact that the incident isn't exactly helpful PR and that it will undoubtably resurface if they again seek favorable treatment from the authori...

A bit obnoxious to demolish the contested historic structure if they weren't really ready to begin, isn't it?

The one section I don't "get" is the right though lane west bound between 4th and 5th. Seems like that should be parking. Agreed. My assumption would be that the problem originates with the bus stop. This raises a criticism of the way bus stops are conceived here generally: the plan calls...

I wonder if “a split second” might be exaggerating a bit. Perhaps. But the implication of your response is that the roadway should be constructed in a manner that best optimizes traffic flow. The old "congestion = bad" philosophy. Aside from the urbanist critiques of this point (for insta...

Please correct me if I am wrong, but there are only 4 possible right turns in the zone to be reconstructed, right? (3rd, 2nd, Marquette, Hennepin) Yet to spare the slight inconvenience of waiting a split second while someone turns right (not into incoming traffic), therefore, the reconstruction is e...

Concerning space, Minneapolis has vast potential to radically increase its population without touching a single single-family house or altering the quaint character of anything. There is so much underutilized land it is painful. Perhaps living day to day in the city inures one to the countless LA-st...

"As Minneapolis grows, so do clashes over parking" http://www.startribune.com/local/west/241222861.html?page=1&c=y If anyone asks incredulously "How are you going to get 100,000 more people without needing a whole lot more parking" or something along those lines, you can rep...

Thanks for the thorough response! It's an interesting contrast with MSP and the Fiscal Disparities Act.

I decided to look the place up on Google Maps. It's considerably more sprawling than other Chicago suburbs. The implication being that it is an isolated instance of under-funding road maintenance, and not indicative of an imminent trend? Note how the nearby suburb of Schaumburg is cited as having m...

[Didn't know where to put this] Evidence of the Strong Towns thesis coming to fruition: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-long-grove-roads-privatization-met-0114-20140113,0,177939,full.story Representative quote: "[f]or many years, residential development helped subsidize Long Grove's...

Just because this is being discussed and such, these are aerial photos of Helsinki's latest underground line being constructed... They have a population of about 600k in a metro of about 1.2mil. A population density of about 7300 per square mile. Thanks for the fotos. Having lived in both Minneapol...