I kid, but only sort of. Not a single candidate at the Mayor’s forum yesterday convinced me Minneapolis is ready to move from good to great urban design. The forum, sponsored by AIA Minnesota and ULI Minnesota and held at International Market Square, was a chance for candidates Cherryhomes, Hodges, Winton, Samuels, Fine, Andrew and Woodruff to offer their opinions on urban design, transportation, the approvals process, sustainability, life-cycle housing and preservation. Despite a lovely setting, very good questions and fine moderation, candidates mostly danced around issues with big generalities and they only rarely reached out to us to indicate they’d value…

A potentially spectacular and game-changing transit-oriented development may be revived in Minneapolis. And man do I mean “may be.” Hennepin County may get involved with the development of 6.5 acres of property adjacent the Lake Street Station of the Blue Line. The county  maybe relocating offices and services to the site, which is owned by the Minneapolis Public Schools, and may be helping set the process in motion to allow development of more than 500 housing units and a permanent home for the Midtown Farmers Market. Maybe. If the school board is actually willing to move forward. I’ve been involved on a pro bono professional basis on this…

When it opened in 2010, Walnut Creek Apartments provided 422 apartment units and 35,000 square feet of street-facing retail immediately adjacent to the Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre Station of the BART system, located in Walnut Creek, California, in the bay area east of San Francisco. What isn’t immediately evident when visiting this attractive transit-oriented development is that it is the culmination of a decade of planning that followed several proposed projects that were rejected by the public prior to that. The key to achieving this successful transit-oriented development (TOD) was the facilitation of an intensive charrette process, followed by the…