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…

At CNU 22 in Buffalo last month, I met an Englishman during a pub crawl. He was a pleasant enough chap, but kept wandering in to the quiet streets of downtown Buffalo, as if to demonstrate how much space we waste in our cities by giving it over solely to cars. Little did I know this Englishman was Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a traffic and urban design consultant, and that he’d be giving the keynote lunch address the following day at lunch. Well, Hamilton-Baillie, shown below lying on Bank Street in Ashford (he does this everywhere), knocked it out of the park. Among the many provocative and relevant…

Here’s a riddle. How do you calm traffic legally but without having to go through city hall? You have two options: have a road reconstruction project; or a major storm that knocks trees down and blocks streets. Standish-Ericsson got both this summer at the same time, causing undue stress and disruption. But alas, there is a silver lining and maybe some instructive ideas about better urbanism. While it is true that the summer-long closure of 28th Avenue near my home has caused me and my neighbors some inconvenience, and certainly the storm ravaged yards and homes, I suspect I will…