http://joe-urban.com 612-251-4662 3913 29th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55406 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:32:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In January of this year, I participated in an all day charrette as part of the Great City Design Team initiative, the brainchild of Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak. The intention is to take a commercial corridor or node of the city that needs improving and design a solution. We gathered ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/great-city-design-teams/ I recently visited Philadelphia as part of a trip to Washington DC. I flew in to Philly and took Amtrak to DC, which saved quite a bit on airfare despite the train fare. The bonus was getting to explore Philadelphia some more, including their gorgeous 30th Street train station, Rittenhouse ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/the-very-nice-streets-of-philadelphia/ Last week I had the good fortune to travel to Washington D.C. to attend the Blueprint for American Prosperity, an event by the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. The Blueprint was the culmination of significant research and several publications on how our metro areas are the economic engines of the ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/brookings-blueprint-for-american-prosperity/ A recent tour of several public housing redevelopments in the city of Milwaukee opened my eyes to several lessons in good design, development and planning. The city of Milwaukee Department of City Development has made great strides in the past decade in terms of infill, good urban design and ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/urbanism-redefined-in-milwaukee/ It has been nearly one year since the 35W bridge collapse in my beloved Minneapolis, and in that time three major bridges across the Mississippi throughout Minnesota have been closed due to safety concerns. Luckily, those three bridge projects have been fast-tracked, and our state legislature has also bravely approved ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/infrastructure-americas-biggest-challenge/ In May the Urban Land Institute published Creating Great Town Centers and Urban Villages. The book is a coffeetable-style journey through many of America's recent suburban town centers. To browse the book, visit the ULI Bookstore here. I am happy to say that I contributed two of the ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/mixed-use-town-centers/ Check out a recent article of mine in the April issue of Urban Land, entitled Getting Around in the Heart of Texas. It discusses tollways, transit-oriented development, bridges, and even logistics hubs. There is a lot going on in the Dallas/Fort Worth area with regard to transportation. I hope you ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/getting-around-in-the-heart-of-texas/ Last week my son Ellis started daycare at Jardin Magico, a bilingual daycare located near our house in Minneapolis. They teach kids in English and Spanish, serve organic foods, use cloth diapers and make sure kids get time outdoors every day. Perhaps best of all, we can get there by ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/biking-in-indianapolis-and-minneapolis/ Of all the talk lately in the mainstream media about how to be more "green," the discussion is typically about how we live, not where we live. Rising gas prices have "fueled" the discussion of green even more, and thankfully today's New York Times contains an Op-Ed by Paul Krugman ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/paul-krugman-the-urbanist/ Three years ago the talk at dinner parties was how much people made on their condominiums. Now it is the price of gas. We've had it good for so long, and now people are getting nervous when they have to spend upwards of $100 to fill their tank. All of ... http://joe-urban.com/archive/gas-tax-talk/