And stop calling me Shirley! This week’s response to last Sunday’s Strib article about skyways suggests that we look to Venice for ideas about our skyway system is creative at best, loopy at worst, I cannot decide. What I do know is it would be horrendously expensive and legally impossible to achieve, so let’s just move on. But before I dismiss the entire idea, there are some nuggets of good ideas here. I love the idea of naming the skyways. Why not? Even if I were in charge, the skyways will be here for a while and they are hard…

While my post on this website and at Streets.mn suggesting that we gradually remove the skyways from downtown Minneapolis over a 50-year timeline got a couple compliments and a rebuke by Streets.mn’s own David Levinson, it was also picked up by the Star Tribune. In that piece, Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak was quoted as saying “I don’t think we need any more skyways…I don’t think they don’t help at all.” Well, there are 68 comments and counting on the Star Tribune website, most of them over-my-dead-body defenses of skyways. Many are outright angry at the mayor for suggesting they aren’t…

It is a common rule of thumb that stores and malls achieve maximum parking usage on the last Saturday before Christmas. If this is true, then take a look at this photo, taken at 1:30PM on Saturday, December 17th, 2011, of the Target store parking lot in Midtown, at Lake and Hiawatha. It sure seems like we don’t need this much parking. This particular Target, which was renovated recently, is located in an area of the city that allows for a lower percentage of trips to be made by car. For one, I suspect the automobile ownership rate is lower…

The following post shares a similar argument as an article I wrote four years ago for the Downtown Journal (in Minneapolis). I was chastised at the time and suppose I will be again. However, with the recent opening of a new, $3 million skyway link to better connect the Accenture tower to adjacent blocks, as well as the new Downtown 2025 Plan taking on the “Skyway Paradox,” I was persuaded to bring it up again. So here goes: Isn’t it about time to start removing our skyways? A few years ago, Jen Gehl, a notable and well-respected Danish urbanist, was…