Singers have long sung the praises of cities. Frank Sinatra spread the news about New York, and Art Garfunkel sang wistfully of the same city. John Lennon made New York City cool all over again, even in the 1970s. Bruce Springsteen sang about the backstreets and 10th Avenue. And of course Petula Clark sang about downtown. All these urban tunes, but never has a band directly sang about suburbs and sprawl…until now. Arcade Fire in their wonderful new album “The Suburbs” sing about suburban alienation, and for the first time in rock ‘n’ roll, directly indicate that urban form and…

OK, I am a confessed plane geek. See for yourself in this 2007 post. Those of you out there who also like airplanes (come on, admit it) will appreciate this…. Knowing that Delta Airlines was retiring the oldest of their DC-9s (the series 30 and 40), built in the late 1960s, in April I used frequent flyer miles to fly one last trip on the old birds. I boarded a DC-9, ship number N8928E, built in 1967 for Eastern Airlines, and flew to Sioux Falls and turned right around and flew back. Just for the hell of it. That was…

In a 2005 article I wrote about LEED-ND for Urban Land magazine, Doug Farr, an architect and urban designer and founder of Farr Associates in Chicago, discussed the “hot white line” where walkable urban areas meet the sprawling, auto-dependent world. Now that LEED-ND is “real,” it is worth noting exactly where that “hot white line” can be found. Take for example the work of a colleague of mine, Brendon Slotterback. On his website, he analyses what areas of the Twin Cities would be qualified for the location efficient prerequisites of LEED-ND. Take Brendon’s great work, apply it to your metro…

“Portland is just a street in Minneapolis,” proclaimed Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak. Sure, he was standing next to musician and bicycling advocate David Byrne at a “Policy and a Pint” seminar promoting bicycling. And yes, he was being a bit tongue-in-cheek, primarily to rouse a response from Minneapolis bicycle advocates who are tired of perpetually coming in second to Portland in terms of cycling. Still, and even Mayor Rybak knows this, Minneapolis could learn a thing or two from Portland (the one in Oregon) on urban design, effective creation of complete neighborhoods, and the attention to detail and financing involved…