Joe Urban | Sam Newberg, Urbanist


How to Improve the Urbanism of the New Vikings Stadium

Dateline: 5:04 pm July 17, 2013 Filed under:

The Stadium Implementation Committee meets July 18 and several more times in to September to advise on key design decisions related to the new Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis. This post is primarily concerned about the relationship of the stadium to its surrounding urban environment. In late May Oslund & Associates presented the landscape plan for the stadium, and the following are my questions, concerns and recommendations about this plan. I hope the Stadium Implementation Committee considers the following. Pedestrian access. A common complaint about the Metrodome is for 30 years it has been a pedestrian barrier in downtown East. The design for…

How to Get Good Development in Downtown East? Get the Streets Right

Dateline: 3:38 pm March 27, 2013 Filed under:

If we get the streets right, good things will follow in downtown east. Much hand-wringing is occurring over whether or not there will be good development around the new Minnesota Vikings football stadium in downtown Minneapolis. When we look backwards 30 years at why development hasn’t happened since the current Metrodome stadium was built, we find three main reasons. One reason is some property that remained zoned industrial until very recently. A second obvious reason is five entire blocks of land owned by the Star Tribune blocks didn’t get developed in part because the newspaper was using them and didn’t want to…