One of my earliest memories is riding the bus downtown with my grandfather. We’d leave my grandparents house on Burton Lane in Minneapolis, and walk a short block to the bus stop to catch the Route 20 to head downtown. Mass transit and tall buildings – urbanism at an early age. Why take the bus downtown? Actually, my grandfather didn’t want his Oldsmobile scratched or dented in a parking ramp. I must confess to a mixed family history with regard to mass transit. My great grandfather slipped and fell on a trolley track in the 1930s, breaking his hip and developing pneumonia,…

Sometimes a real estate development project opens and seems to have the hopes of an entire city wrapped in its prospects for success.  The new Midtown Exchange in Minneapolis is one such project, and how do I put this…it is fantastic!  Besides being such a big and impressive public/private project, I have high hopes that all goes well with it, so that years from now we can look back and say it was worth it. I hope it works because it is a great project.  By that I mean 1.2 million square feet of renovated art deco greatness, with 88…

I often ask myself why I am in the real estate planning and development industry. Everyone asks it of his or her particular profession. What do I hope to achieve at the end of the day? I am not always sure. It isn’t the money (well, not only the money). It isn’t the ego, either. So what is it? I trace it back to 1994 in Madison, Wisconsin. Finals were over, and my first year of college was complete. After a celebratory dinner, I walked out on to State Street as dusk descended over the city. The lights of the…

Happy New (Urban) Year! I have high hopes for urbanism in 2006. Among the many things I will be watching in the development world this year will be the evolution of the town center at San Elijo Hills. This is the year the last major piece of the town center (or as they call it, the “Towncenter”) will be built. San Elijo Hills is no ordinary town center, as I found on a recent visit. Like many of my colleagues in the industry, I visit a lot of mixed-use developments that are pleasant, attractive and internally walkable. Too often, however,…

Jay and I talk about how making a place distinct takes a hundred years. This conversation was recorded at Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis by Garrick Van Buren with two Radio Shack lapel mics going into an iPod running Podzilla. Listen to the Long Term Commitment of Placemaking [12 min]