My first brush with transit oriented development – the first time it really dawned on me as to how it worked – was at Kew Gardens station in London. I went looking for a train station, but I found a transit village. I was hooked. Walking from the train platform to the entrance to the Kew Botanical Gardens (more than a quarter mile away-my reason for being there in the first place) is everything urban living should be. There is of course the rail service and train station itself, and outside of that a Tesco Express (small grocery store) and…

Public gathering spaces are fundamental to a city, and Minneapolis needs one. For everyday use, a meeting place, informal strolls, just sitting around and even spontaneous celebrating, every city should have a place that pops in to the collective mind of the populus. London has Trafalgar Square, New York City has Times Square (one could argue New York has several), Chicago has Millennium Park (“meet me at ‘the Bean’”), Cincinnati has Fountain Square, Madison has Library Mall, and the list goes on. My hometown needs one. Just how badly we need a public gathering place became evident last week following…

It’s not everyday you hear someone tell you to visit Columbus, Ohio, but I highly recommend it. Columbus has more examples of progressive urbanism than most cities its size. It deserves a look. True, I was there in January. And yes, I had to deal with an ice storm that sealed my car shut. As I scraped my car with my hotel key card (always ask for two!) on a cold Saturday morning in Columbus, I remarkably was able to roll down the driver’s side window and the ice stayed in place! I knocked it out with my elbow. But…