Last month I attended the Urban Land Institute’s Fall Meeting in Denver. It was a very good conference. But I must say, what amazed me most about the whole experience was the 16th Street Mall Shuttle. It is everything good transit service should be – frequent, cheap (or free, which it is), convenient to a lot of places one might want to visit, and linked to other forms of transit. It impressed me, and no doubt did for a good number of the 6,000 other attendees of the ULI conference as well. I have been to Denver many times, so the shuttle wasn’t new to me.…

Even urbanists agree that certain improvements need to be made in suburban development, especially since suburbs will absorb most of the 100 million new Americans in the next four or so decades. We have to start to get it right more often. For those of you involved at some level with suburban development, this will be of interest to you. Last week The Planning Center, based in Orange County, California, released a report entitled “Five Steps Toward a New Suburbia.” Download it here - Five Steps Towards a New Suburbia. The report is a follow-up to last year’s “The New Suburbanism: A Realist’s…

I have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity on and off for over half of my life. I took annual work trips around the country with my church youth group in high school, was Vice President of the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus chapter one year, and most recently, worked up the street from Jimmy Carter in Puebla, Mexico in 2004. Needless to say, I was fascinated to learn more about Habitat’s Urban Programs, which, due to the complexity of working in urban areas, seeks alternatives to the single-family style of Habitat home that we all know. An article written by me about the Urban Programs and the efforts on the…

About a month ago I ventured to Charleston, South Carolina on business. I had been there years ago, but not since I heard the mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley, give his inspiring slide show about placemaking. I was on a mission to see one of the places he helped make in Charleston. If you have not heard Mayor Riley speak, you are missing out. The man is quotable and very inspiring. He says things like “most Americans don’t want density or sprawl.” I suppose he is right. “There’s no reason to build anything that won’t add to the beauty of the city.”…

The September issue of Urban Land magazine carries a ULX feature on transit-oriented development (TOD) in Denver, written by yours truly. View it online at www.uli.org or use the link below. Of course, if you are a ULI member, as you should be, you can simply pick up your copy of the September issue and read it there (or at least look at the pictures). Denver TOD Article Denver is adding dozens of rail stations in the coming years, which means a huge opportunity for development around those stations. I faced the difficult task of narrowing it down to just 10 of those…

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. It seems as though a piece of mail from the Urban Land Institute intended for me was returned to ULI by our friendly US Postal Service with the message “Cannot Deliver – Deceased.” The membership department of ULI had to call our Minnesota coordinator to sort the whole mess out. She in turn had to call me to verify my whereabouts, so you can imagine the relief when she heard my voice! I’m not dead yet, but I have been a bit AWOL lately. I suppose that has something to do with parenthood.…

No. I won’t deny the condo glut right now, in the Twin Cities and nationwide. With a few exceptions, though, I have found in the Twin Cities that condos continue to sell better (although not always well) in the downtown, core cities and even select inner ring suburban locations, whereas outer suburban areas don’t do as well.   I have surmised for a long time that condo buyers want to be near the action. They generally want something in return for having to park underground, share a hallway, and have people living above, below and next to them. They want to be closer to amenities and conveniences,…

“The New Suburbanism: A Realist’s Guide to the American Future,” written by Joel Kotkin and The Planning Center and released in November 2005, is a publication that at its core seeks to elevate the discussion of how to improve suburban development. After all, most new housing and employment is occurring in the suburbs. I am fortunate enough to be contributing to the sequel, or update of The New Suburbanism this year. Our biggest issue is community. What is it, really, and how do we encourage it through design, funding, or other measures? Or does it just naturally happen? A good question indeed. A recent article in one of the…

Trader Joe’s opened its highly-anticipated first store in the Twin Cities this spring. It happens to be located at Excelsior and Grand, a much-heralded suburban town center in St. Louis Park; the one example in the Twin Cities that planners and developers look to as they contemplate a mixed-use town center elsewhere. I recently paid a visit to Trader Joe’s to see whether it lives up to its hype. The store itself is fine, but what struck me was the parking lot. It is small, with narrow stalls, hemmed in on two sides by an imposing mixed-use building, difficult for a large vehicle…

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,…