On Saturday September 20th I’m helping put together a Better Block event at the corner of 42nd Street and 28th Avenue. September 20th is also PARKing Day and Max Musicant at the Musicant Group is planning a large PARKing Day event in southwest Minneapolis. Both events are one day, and use public space on sidewalks and streets in a different way to encourage people to come out, mingle, enjoy themselves, lobby for change, and most of all to see and enjoy their city in a new way. Come and join us! Better Block (sometimes called Tactical Urbanism) is a grassroots effort to demonstrate how…

With the emerging debacle of The Yard prominent in the press (Strib and blogosphere), it is natural to overlook the fact that downtown Minneapolis just opened a brand new public space. It is called Target Field Station (formerly The Interchange), and despite Tom Fisher’s review on MinnPost, people actually use it and it is pretty nice. So considering downtown Minneapolis, with its skyway system, failed parks over the years, largely treeless sidewalks, and overall general inability to produce a good downtown park or public space, Target Field Station is a huge victory for the city. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Target Field Station shouldn’t win any awards…

Last summer I filled my gas tank on June 30th and didn’t have to fill it again until September. I’ll let that sink in a little. This is the only way I have to explain to my relatives about how my “alternate lifestyle” pays off. By alternate lifestyle, of course, I mean “urbanist.” I figure that in conversations with my extended family, they imagine me aspiring to a crunchy, car-less urban hell, going for joyrides on light rail, owning a bike – it’s all very abstract until I toss in the anecdote about filling my tank so infrequently, and they suddenly snap to attention. And…

Where’s Wonder Woman, and what will she do about urbanism in Minneapolis? Several recent reviews have appeared in the press regarding Mayor Betsy Hodges’ first 100 days in office. She has been deliberative in hiring key staff positions, preferring instead to build relationships and simply listen. In the Star Tribune’s coverage, it was noted that she has not yet engaged on density and development issues. I look forward to her doing so. Hodges also likes Wonder Woman. I don’t know a lot about Wonder Woman, except that like most superheroes she fights for peace, love and equality. When it comes to density and development issues, I hope Hodges thinks…

Last year a family on our street outgrew their home. They liked our street, and our kids were friends, but there were no homes for sale nearby at the time. Faced with choosing between a very disruptive remodel/addition or simply moving, they chose the latter. Their current home is a couple miles away. Luckily for Minneapolis, they found another home in the city, but sadly for us, they no longer live on our street. It crossed my mind that a third option for them was to tear down their home and start over. Is their house a teardown? I guess a…

If we really are sincere about making Nicollet Mall a premier must-see destination, and one of the most vibrant public spaces in America, a few things must happen. Whether or not we spend $40-plus million to rebuild the street and then more to route a streetcar down the middle, we should completely overhaul the zoning code for buildings fronting Nicollet – we need a form-based code for the buildings and the street. And we should consider tearing down the four skyways that cross Nicollet between 5th Street and 10th Street. Before you shoot a million holes in this idea, hear me…

Reading Saturday’s op-ed in the Star Tribune written by Senator David Osmek and Representative Linda Runbeck, I resisted the temptation to read this as a partisan anti-transit rant by suburban republican legislators (and this is not the first time I’ve responded to an editorial by Senator Osmek). I daresay that my urban colleagues who write for and read Streets.mn are as concerned about the cost-effectiveness of transportation improvements (although even we don’t agree). Transportation is expensive no matter how you look at it, and as Osmek and Runbeck say, “we need to assess our real transportation and transit needs, while remaining accountable to the taxpayers…