On our way to the ceremony unveiling the plan for the five-block Star Tribune property in Downtown East, my son Shaw and I got off the train at the Downtown East/Metrodome station and I was asked directions by an older couple. They were looking for Periscope, the ad agency, at 10th and Washington. Obliging, I agreed to walk with them from the platform across 4th Street, where I would point the way to Washington and bid them adieu. We stood waiting for the Walk signal to get across 4th Street and I detected a murmur from them as nothing was happening;…

The great mayor of Charleston, Joe Riley, likes to say “there is no reason to build anything that won’t add to the beauty of the city.” Inspiring words. It behooves the Mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak, to take those words to heart. After all, the mayor is the chief planner for the city. So you could imagine my concern last week, at the unveiling of the plan for Downtown East, when the first words out of his mouth were that the key to this plan is the parking. It took Rick Collins of Ryan Companies, speaking after Rybak, to point…

Kate Wolford’s Star Tribune commentary calling for more transit was spot on. Our peer cities (Denver, Portland, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, hell, even St. Louis!) are ahead of us in terms of built rail miles, lines and stations. We must do more than catch up to remain an attractive metro area for all. Rail miles, lines and stations are important, but equally if not more so is the fabric of the city once people step off the platform. That is where we must set ourselves apart, and that requires something much more robust than station area planning. All hands must be…

Like the Streets.mn Voter Guide, the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition has posted answers to bicycling related questions posed to city council and mayoral candidates. Question six asks “when would you vote against or overrule a BAC recommendation?” I read those responses carefully, and as expected, most candidates didn’t really take that one on or provide a concrete example. I have one. If I were running for office, my answer would be “when it removes on-street parking, particularly in commercial zones, and especially when that loss of on-street parking hurts small businesses.” Increased cycling has many benefits to the city and local businesses, and as…

More apologies to Jeff Foxworthy… …If the restaurants post their menus in the window, you might be in a walkable neighborhood If streets are used for more than cars, you might be in a walkable neighborhood If you can walk for blocks without seeing a parking lot, you might be in a walkable neighborhood If you feel comfortable letting your kid walk down the street, you might be in a walkable neighborhood If there are more than 10 doors per 100 meters (300 or so feet), you might be in a walkable neighborhood (thank you Jan Gehl) If you can get…

The winner of the 2013 Urban Land Institute/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition for the downtown east area of Minneapolis has been chosen. But with existing plans in place and potential developments emerging for apartments and offices, what of the winning team’s plan will, or even should, be built? Hopefully a lot of it. A team from the University of Kansas/University of Missouri/Kansas State created a plan for downtown east in Minneapolis that focuses on the Armory as an indoor market and civic space, flanked to the north by two blocks of green space – the first downtown park. Retail, entertainment and…

With all apologies to Jeff Foxworthy (please add your own in the comments section)… …If you choose a slightly longer route to your destination because you know the walk is pleasant, you might be an urbanist (you also might be a rational human being) If your vacation photos have more buildings than people in them, you might be an urbanist If you come home from vacation in a walkable city depressed by your own you might be an urbanist If the first thing you do on vacation is drop your bag in your hotel and set out on a walk,…

If we get the streets right, good things will follow in downtown east. Much hand-wringing is occurring over whether or not there will be good development around the new Minnesota Vikings football stadium in downtown Minneapolis. When we look backwards 30 years at why development hasn’t happened since the current Metrodome stadium was built, we find three main reasons. One reason is some property that remained zoned industrial until very recently. A second obvious reason is five entire blocks of land owned by the Star Tribune blocks didn’t get developed in part because the newspaper was using them and didn’t want to…

With spring coming it’s time to install that on-street bike rack (bike corral) in front of my brewpub, the Northbound. I approached the ownership prior to their fall 2012 opening about whether they would like that, and I was informed that an application was in process. Thrilled, I volunteered on their behalf to follow-up with Minneapolis Public Works on this application. After all, once they opened, a LOT of people found their way to the Northbound by bike so the need was clearly there. And after all, Minneapolis is the number one biking city in America, right? All these months, dozens…

Do cities have a “failure of frontage?” I credit Dan Parolek of Opticos Design for coining the term. When I was researching a post on form-based codes in the Bay Area, Dan explained he believes cities everywhere have a failure of frontage, that we focus so much on other elements of urbanism that we overlook the basics. We worry about shape, height, bulk, ever-evil DENSITY, parking and traffic problems, but we fail to do the simple thing and make the building engaging to the pedestrian. We have a failure of frontage, and it’s not unique to Minneapolis. A recent post of mine at…