The ultimate third place is not only a wonderful place besides home and work in which to hang out and meet neighbors, but also one in which you have a vested, financial interest. So allow me to introduce the Smokehouse Brewpub , a restaurant and microbrew pub planned for the old Oak Furniture space at 28th Avenue and 38th Street in Minneapolis. The Smokehouse is not unlike other restaurants popping up around this and other cities that make and serve their own beer. What makes it unusual is the ownership is allowing people who put cash down now to get free beer for life. $1,000 does just that, or you can put multiples of $1,000 down in return for fractional silent ownership shares. I chose the free beer, and hopefully a brick with my name on it on the patio as well! Community Supported Agriculture gets you a share of farm produce each week, and cooperative grocers offer discounts for owners, so why wouldn't it work for a pub? We'll see, but the owners have already raised more than two-thirds of the $160,000 they need for the financing to work. I look forward to its opening, not just for a watering hole within walking distance (one block from my home!), but I really love the idea of my neighbors being able to join me in investing in our community. A successful restaurant at this location will stabilize an attractive but aging mixed-use brick building, anchor a corner struggling with vacancy, provide more eyes on a street a little too dominated by vehicle traffic, and give the neighborhood a third place for neighbors to meet, interact and form community bonds. The Smokehouse has generated a lot of press, including this article in the Star Tribune, this feature on Kare 11 News and in Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine online. The Smokehouse is planned to open in Spring 2012. There is still time to invest and be a founding member. Let's hope it works and that ours and other neighborhoods may be provided with a template to invest in more sustainable communities.

Why do so few kids walk to school? I pondered this after returning home from biking my kid to school and reading this article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about why kids don't walk to school. As the article points out, there are myriad reasons why we don't walk to school. In my opinion, and the article acutely indicates this, it all begins with urban design. A school built in today's standard issue suburban setting is exceedingly difficult (and not fun) to access on foot or by bicycle. Let me start with why we can walk or bike to school. First, we live in a house with a sidewalk in front (novel idea!). That sidewalk is part of a network of sidewalks from the classic city-building era - they line both sides of a grid of streets, making walking from any home or building easy and intuitive. Biking that grid of street is equally intuitive. My son just started kindergarten, and most days we bike via bicycle/tagalong/trailer, but some days we walk. Second, the grid of streets itself is built to primarily accomodate traffic going 20 to 25 MPH. The speed limit is actually 30 MPH (much too fast), but with the high use of on-street parking, most drivers feel compelled to slow down. We must cross one busier, two-lane 30 MPH street (42nd Street), but we do so at a four-way stop sign, and aside from the occasional driver who ignores the stop sign, it is safe. At slow speeds, I can make eye contact with drivers, and that is important. My kids are quickly learning to trust no car, but at least pedestrian conditions are shown to be safer with cars moving less than 30 MPH. My point is the grid of streets along the route to school are safe, comfortable and pleasant to walk or bike. Third, the school itself is pedestrian-friendly, having been built when it was assumed that most kids (and staff!) would walk (at that time, most families owned one or no cars). It fits nicely on a city block, snug in the neighborhood, with doors a mere 15 feet off the sidewalk. The only asphalt at Northrop (originally Ericsson) School is the playground (OK, there is a small parking lot behind the school, added much more recently in the life of the school). Most states today require outlandishly large sites for new schools to be built upon, making it difficult for any city or suburb to choose to locate one anywhere but the edge of the existing developed area - rarely inside the neighborhood. Large sites on the edge of towns are less walkable. States should set maximum school site sizes rather than minimum. This brings me to my fourth point - our walkable neighborhood was built with a mix of uses in mind, including a range of housing, commercial, parks and schools. And it was built at a density that is (barely) enough to support walking - our 660 by 330 foot blocks (exactly five acres) contain a minimum average of 26 homes, or 5.2 units per acre. Throw in duplexes and four-plexes, etc., and the density increases. The school is nestled right in to the fabric of the neighborhood as well. This combination of density and design allow a very large number of households to be located within an easy walk of the school. The Pioneer Press article indicates that Bailey Elementary in Woodbury is located along a 50 MPH arterial, across from existing neighborhoods. As a result, nobody walks. Well, duh! We've created an urban design monster and we are the only ones that can defeat it. No amount of programmed money targeted at walking to school will make kids walk in that sort of environment. Fifth - we are lucky. The Minneapolis Public Schools have good schools - not always the case in urban districts. Ours is one-half mile away, and we are fortunate it is no longer a magnet but rather a community school - we automatically get in. Test scores are good, and more importantly, so are its teachers. We are also fortunate the school didn't get closed down as has been the case in recent years of budget cuts and low enrollment (the most aggregious example of this is Howe School, located in the neighborhood east of me. It closed the very same year that the coffee shop a block away was rated the best place for parents with young children. An example of silo thinking - if the city was really trying to attract and retain families, it would have done more to stop the school district from closing the school in that affordable, family-friendly neighborhood. But I digress....). Lastly, the principal of the school believes in walking and biking to strengthen community ties. Speaking to us parents, he said "we'll provide the education, you provide the community." The existing urban design of the neighborhood, the physical location of the school within it, and the ability to walk or bike to school, all help with creating that better sense of community. My son and I have all sorts of informal contact with neighbors at and on our route to school, helping build those bonds. There is much work to do. Parents need to understand abduction is a low risk, compared to obesity (a difficult thing given this country's math scores and the fact that our kids are our most prized possessions). And we just need to get back in to the midset that walking and biking is a normal part of life. Strong community ties cannot be made from behind a windshield. In spite of all those issues, urban deisgn is the biggest. Start with that, and at least the table is then set for walking to school. Make it possible, encourage it, and only then will it happen. I don't have much advice for the Woodbury's of the world except to say for your next neighborhood, make it walkable, denser, and not bifurcated with fast arterials. Oh, and get your state to change its school site density requirements. We know how, we just need to do it. Why do we need to do this? To quote Reverend Lovejoy's wife from The Simpsons - "won't somebody think of the children!?"

I disagree, of course, but this excellent article in The Economist lays out the physical and institutional challenges bikers in America face. Despite progress in many cities, including Portland and my own Minneapolis, bicycling is still not given the respect it deserves. And it is more dangerous than it should be. Like Seattle, as The Economist explains, there are too many bicyclist deaths in Minneapolis. Much of this comes down to speed - a car traveling 40 MPH that hits a bicyclist is far more likely to kill him/her than a car traveling 20 or less. It really comes down to sharing the road, providing better lanes and facilities for bikes, teaching bicyclists to ride safely, and more strictly enforce penalties against car drivers that endanger bicyclists. But we're getting there. My bicycle route to drop my kids at daycare and kindergarten is laden with obstacles but also two very nice bike lanes (one of which was added just this year), not to mention zero emissions. Keep up the good work, bicycle advocates.

The City of Minneapolis has been getting flak for laying off firefighters while hiring for a new position - a citywide pedestrian and bicycle coordinator. Whatever comes of this mini-controversy, the first task for this new hire should be to ensure that all traffic lights citywide automatically give a walk signal when the light turns green. Cars don't have to push a button for the light to turn green - walkers and bikers shouldn't have to, either! This isn't too much to ask. A recent post of mine lauded the baby steps the city was taking to make the crossing of Hiawatha at 38th Street more palatable to those in the crosswalk. Well, it is broken again, and one must push the button to get a walk signal. I have increasingly noticed that numerous traffic signals around the city stubbornly remain in Don't Walk mode while the traffic signal is green. Especially galling is along the pedestrian and bicycle-intensive Minnehaha Parkway, where it occurs at the crossing of Bloomington and Cedar Avenue. (At Bloomington, the Walk automatically appears for those in the minority who are crossing the Parkway, but not for the majority on the trail). There shouldn't be a crosswalk in the city where the Walk sign doesn't automatically come on when (or a couple seconds before!) the light turns green. The city doesn't even need to hire a pedestrian/bicycle coordinator to do that!

Justin Townes Earle has done what nobody has accomplished prior (at least to my knowledge) - write an urban train song. On his excellent new album, "Harlem River Blues," Justin Townes Earle writes about running the 6 train in New York City, which runs from the Brooklyn Bridge to Pelham Bay Park in Manhattan. At first I didn't notice - the song starts out discussing it being cold in the tunnels, so I figured it was about mining. And the pedal steel makes it sound country/folk, not urban in any way, much less New York. Historically, our great train songs are set in rural, not urban, places. The City of New Orleans is about the name of a train on the Illinois Central line. Although the destination is the crescent city, the song really takes place between Kankakee and Memphis, passing freight yards and graveyards of rusted automobiles (best line: "ride their father's magic carpets made of steel"). Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy is entirely rural, predating most Canadian cities - "and the green dark forest was too silent to be real." The Orange Blossom Special is about criss-crossing thecountry on a train. Even in The Gambler, Kenny Rogers sings about staring out the window in to the darkness, which could hardly mean they were in the city. And I'm not really sure what "Rock Island Line" is actually about, although I'm sure it isn't about the Rock Island District Metra line in Chicago! So thank you, Justin Townes Earle for giving us urbanites a train song (and an excellent album)! The lyrics for Working For the MTA (as I could find them online) are as follows: Well, it's cold in them tunnels today Well, it's cold in them tunnels today It's cold down in those tunnels today, mama, workin' for the MTA I run that six-line train I run a six-line train I run a six-line train clear from Brooklyn Bridge to Pelham Bay I'm the son of a railroad man I'm the son of a railroad man I'm the son of a railroad man, born and raised back in south Louisian' This ain't my daddy's train This ain't my daddy's train This ain't my daddy's train, mama, I ain't seen the sun in days Yeah, them hard times are goin' around Hard times are goin' around Hard times are goin' around, bringin' hard luck on New York town But I'm bankin' on the ATE Bankin' on the ATE I'm bankin' on the ATE, brother, Georgie's gonna see me free So, it's cold in them tunnels today Well, it's cold in them tunnels today It's cold down in those tunnels today, mama, workin' for the MTA Yeah, I'm workin' for the MTA Anybody know what ATE stands for? Happy listening!