I am a product of inner city schools. Frankly, I have mostly fond memories of the Minneapolis Public Schools, particularly South High. Since I again live in Minneapolis and now have an 8-month old, I am concerned about today’s choices in schools. Minneapolis, like many cities, is a pretty cool place to be, but the public school system, although still very good in many ways, is suffering from declining enrollment and bad publicity. I have written about schools in the past, and I will again. I will give one quick story from a recent visit I made to New York…

Placemaking is hard work, as I was reminded in an article called “Placemaking for the Creative Class” that appears in the February 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture magazine. James Richards makes a very good point that there is just so much that goes into it. Yes, as the article discusses, we need a compact urban grid, green space, “third places” like coffee shops, etc., and good public transportation. Mr. Richards is right to point out that placemaking is not programmatic. He interviews people who want all the right amenities, but also want just the right amount of grit and decay. And then you can attract…

Three influential studies were released in the past year that I think are worth a mention. I attended the release of “One-Fifth of America: A Comprehensive Guide to America’s First Suburbs” last February at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. It was quite an event. Hillary Clinton spoke. There was talk of a national agenda on urban policy. The main idea of the report is first suburbs are aging (both people and buildings) and pose a major challenge with regard to urban policy. What struck me is here we were listening to members of Congress talk about how to deal…

On a recent trip to Austin, Texas, I decided to check out the partially completed Second Street District redevelopment. It encompasees several blocks between the downtown core and Town Lake, and includes the new city hall and a seven-story apartment complex with ground floor retail. I had most recently read about it in Big-Box Swindle, which I recommend, by the way. It discussed the redevelopment, and the fact that 17 of the 24 businesses are locally-owned. Anyone that pays attention to shiny new downtown development will notice that retail is often chain dominated. Not that chains are evil, but some cities…