(the following is a speech I gave as part of the Public Speaking Rock Stars course I took earlier this year at CBRE) I find it funny that one of my favorite memories from my college years is about affordable housing. I was at the Jimmy Carter Work Project, in Berea, Kentucky, standing in the kitchen of a nearly finished new Habitat for Humanity house watching Lewis Coffey turn on his kitchen tap for the first time. I was one of 25 volunteers that arrived on a Monday to a concrete slab and we built a house in 5 days.…

I met Neal Peirce at the American Planning Association conference in 2009. He was a speaker at the conference, and according to my notes he commented that we need another 1 million person city to be built every five days for the next 45 years to accommodate forecast global population growth. Immediately after that panel discussion I introduced myself, and what I don’t need notes to remember is that he knew who I was. I had been writing and blogging as Joe Urban for half a decade at that point and apparently he had read something of mine because we…

Hands-down my favorite part of downtown Minneapolis this past summer was the pianos on Nicollet Avenue. Not necessarily a new idea, to be sure, but I was struck by the talent of seemingly random players and the joy it gave passers-by. Any given morning on my walk from the train to the office I’d pass the piano in the City Center doorway to hear someone pounding out some excellent blues. Most striking was the day I passed a homeless man camped out under his usual spot below a skyway on 7th Street one morning only to find him playing an…

Last week I met a colleague at Munkabeans Cafe & Coffeehouse on the beautiful Mainstreet in Hopkins, Minnesota. Of all the Main Streets in America, the Hopkins version is unique because they smash the two words together. Mainstreet. And a fine street it is, better than before, having been recently rebuilt and with some new businesses drawing me there. But there is just one problem. You have to apply to cross the street. After my meeting I was keen to visit Mill City Sound, so I set off on the four block walk. As it was bright but brisk, I…

I write about cities. I’ve done so for 20 years, having gotten my start by writing a series of articles about urban planning in Madison for the Badger Herald while attending the University of Wisconsin. 2016 marked 10 years since I began writing for this website and working for myself. I’ve written about a wide range of topics in that time. They can all be found here. I’ve also assisted in the task of bringing two children in to the world, bought a boat. But it all comes back to the topic of my first post on this site describing…

My favorite place in all of New York City is a front stoop on St. Marks Avenue in Brooklyn. On a vacation last spring, I’d sit on the stoop every morning and sip my coffee, watching the sun come up and the world go by. Alas, we saw and did much on that all too brief vacation, and my wife and I discovered many potential favorite places across the city, but I’ll take the front stoop. Contending for favorite place was the first restaurant we visited: Pork Slope, located along 5th Avenue in the Park Slope neighborhood. The beauty of airbnb is…

The City of Minneapolis can salvage the Hiawatha Crosswalk “Improvement” project. All they have to do is send out a traffic engineer to reprogram the signals so the Walk signals automatically appear. Pedestrians deserve the right to an automatic Walk signal, particularly in a city-designated Pedestrian Overlay Zone near the Blue Line, a nearly $800 million transit investment that is approached on foot by every single rider. Hundreds of pedestrians cross Hiawatha Avenue every day, and not just to access light rail. We deserve automatic Walk signals. An early review of the pedestrian “improvement” project appeared on this site in July. As you can see, the results of the…

The Hiawatha Avenue crosswalk improvements at 38th, 42nd and 46th Streets are largely complete. For a reported cost of $850,000, curb bumpouts have been created in most places to reduce crossing distance, pork chop islands have been enlarged and center refuge islands widened, curb cuts are now ADA compliant, the crosswalk along the south side of 46th Street has been restored, and new crosswalk activation buttons (“beg buttons”) are in the process of being installed. As well, new trees have been planted along both sides and in the median of Hiawatha. I’ve been active for several years with the Standish-Ericsson Neighborhood…

Well, here we are. Another contentious City Council vote on a development. Tomorrow the Minneapolis City Council will vote on whether or not to authorize the demolition of a building located at 2320 Colfax Avenue South. Rather, they will be voting to uphold a decision by the Zoning & Planning Committee. Much has been written about this, at streets.mn, the Star Tribune and the Twitter-verse (it has its own hashtag – #2320colfax), even extensive fodder for a Facebook parody site. Kare 11 and Fox Twin Cities also provided TV coverage. There have been candlelight vigils led by Nicole Curtis, the Rehab Addict. One piece of coverage has escaped…

Yesterday I presented at Cuningham Group’s “Urban Currents” series. The theme was “What if I Were Mayor?” Keep in mind the following ideas don’t represent a platform for getting elected, but rather to try and implement once in office (there’s a big difference). So here goes…. If I were mayor, I would: 1. Create a more beautiful, equitable city. As part of that, I’d push the idea that zoning is part of creating beauty, and advocate for both a Form-Based Code and Design Review Commission (to be chosen by developers as parallel alternatives to the existing zoning and the Planning…