urbanMSP

Anecdotally, I remember Myron Orfield talk about this area and how huge it is for the Edina school district to have it included within its boundaries, as opposed to Richfield right next door. Beyond that, no, I haven't done the computations. But the infrastructure of France Avenue honestly isn't th...

Keep in mind that Edina isn't interested in urbanism, it's interested in property taxes and aesthetics. That's why they can just plop buildings whereever. Isn't good urbanism better for their property tax base than spending money on infrastructure that supports poor land-use, vast parking lots, etc...

We wonder why our cities are dirt poor and can't afford to maintain our streets and infrastructure. Internet historians, take note: February 27th, 2013 was the day that Edina was referred to as being "dirt poor". I was referring to the general case, not specifically Edina.. That the most ...

It's an avenue :) Back to your point about wanting to make it into a boulevard. I would like to see some better street scaping in this area. There are long stretches with no trees, bushes, anything. Part of that is probably the fear of blocking views around parking lots, but there are plenty of pla...

So let me get this straight.. the city is talking about buying and tearing down a building on a parcel. They will pay $2.65M for the parcel, plus demolition costs, plus likely 200-300 parking spots at $17-20k per spot for the ramp construction costs. This will cost the city upwards of $7.5M to do. T...

I tend to agree with mattaudio on the multi-way boulevard... I think we cannot possibly hope to make our spaces better if we continue to fall victim to allowing the number of cars to move through and park in our spaces. Saying we can't turn France in to a multi-way boulevard with 2 lanes of through ...

You're describing the law of induced demand. Induced demand is often touted as the reason that we can't build our way out of congestion, but I never really bought it until I read Jeff Speck's great explanation of it in his otherwise mediocre book, "Walkable City". The book is worth readin...

Agreed. We need to prioritize transit as a way to increase mobility, not as a way to decrease congestion. If we say that we're trying to reduce congestion, we end up with this: http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2013/01/winning-by-default-or-losing-by.html We just need to realize that reducing congest...

The SW LRT thread is like deja vu all over again. And again. And again. OK, you (and by you, I mean a lot of people on the forum) don't like the routing. I guess Yarr has a somewhat more extreme take, in that he apparently feels that the line shouldn't be built at all. But guess what? It is going t...

The suburbs aren't going away any time soon, and not everyone who lives/works there does so by choice (is it really that much better to live in the city and drive out to a suburban job?). People go to where the jobs are. No, we can't provide good transit to the entire sprawly metro area, but we can...

Out of curiosity, are you Alex Cecchini from MinnPost? That whole argument about building Southwest so that North Minneapolis (I ask because he also threw Northeast in there like it was interchangeable, which it is not) has access to jobs in Eden Prairie still just seems super tenuous to me. I am. ...

Yes, for the near term (and probably beyond) places like EP will be car-centric. However, I think that ridership on an LRT would be very good. It's disingenuous to say that other projects should take priority because who cares about suburbs? If you are serious about making a whole metro area use pu...

Actually, the comment about the windows makes me nervous for a different reason - it sounds like she's describing the Metrodome's problem as being because it doesn't have windows on the street. Obviously that's absurd, and that's not really what she means, but the implication behind it seems to be ...

I don't particularly care so much about people with cars needing to either wait a bit to turn left or choose to turn right and head over the bridge (they could then turn around or hop on the freeway at Seven Corners if that was their intent). Car convenience shouldn't matter much for a site like thi...

Couldn't they save some cash by ending it at SW Station rather than Mitchell? One would think so... but then again there is a ton of land on mitchell that is just waiting for development. I'm sure eden prairie would prefer it to end there so that area could be sold off to developers as a more high ...

Wow, who woulda thunk that the Vikings could compromise and still have a modern facility that will bring them millions in extra revenue each year compared to the dome and an improved fan experience. For the money the state and city put in to this I'm glad they compromised. More likely, they came out...

Metrodome razing slated for January or February of 2014. And I'll be there with beer in hand. Let me count the horrible memories there... UMN vs Mich 2003, UMN vs WI 2005, UMN vs Iowa 2008 (although Lois Feldman may be sad to see the place go), any Twins vs Yankees playoff series, I could go on.. F...

The Melrose or University Commons or whatever is about 1400 feet from I-94, while The Bridges will probably be about 150 feet away from I-35W. I believe noise (in terms of pure acoustic pressure) drops off with the square of distance, though I'm not sure how to quantify that for human perception (I...

Shocker. The same people complaining about fare-recovery on transit systems seem to think that gas tax/motor vehicle registration magically pays for 100% of our roads (and that we don't have billions in unfunded liabilities just in the state of MN alone). This project truly makes my blood boil.

Having a conversation will be annoying if even possible. I dunno, whenever I was at my friend's places at University Commons or Melrose (not sure if they're still named the same now) I never had a problem with I-94 noise. Maybe these buildings are that much closer or constructed differently, who kn...