The Missing Ingredient – [ St. Paul, Minnesota ]
The photo below was taken at about 6pm on a beautiful weekday in Highland Park, St. Paul, Minnesota [Google Maps]. Trees? Check. Decorative lighting? Check. On-street parking buffer? Check. Building that addresses the sidewalk? Check. Health food cafe with outdoor seating? Check. Bricked sidewalk design enhancement? Check. Nice weather? Check. People? … If you were … Read more
The Benefits of High Speed Rail [Parts 1 & 2]
[V150 train, modified TGV, conventional World speed record holder at 357.2 mph from WikiCommons] Over at Streets.MN, guest writer Matt Sindt has written two solid pieces on high speed rail and its potential in the United States. I recommend heading over there and checking out both [Part 1] and [Part 2]. Here’s a sample: For over … Read more
Urban entertainment districts @ Salon.com
You can read a few quotes from myself over at Salon.com in a great piece by Will Doig. Will writes about cities in Salon and has some really stellar pieces (e.g.: Rust Belt chic: Declining Midwest cities make a comeback and Whole Foods is coming? Time to buy). Here are a few excerpts from the … Read more
Answering a few comments on “Entertainment Districts”
My last Strong Towns post was cross-posted in Better! Cities and Towns (formerly New Urban News). This is great, and I’m happy that I was able to get the article out there. There were a few comments on both sites and I wanted to take some time to respond. The first comment: “this article had … Read more
Retro Post: Small towns and ugly schools
[___ Original Link ____] Here’s the frontage of a newly built high school in a small town (pop. 3,800) in the south-central Minnesota River Valley. It’s a suburban-style high school placed on a cornfield outside town. This particular building was probably built to “accommodate growth”. New construction, sub-divisions and empty lots leap-frog around the sprawling … Read more
Open space as wasted space?
Note: You can read a slightly more updated version of this post over @ Twin Cities Streets for People [Here's the link]. ___ I follow a lot of development proposals in my local area and the most common concern (other than parking) is that of open space. The phrase evokes images of rolling prairie lands, … Read more
Re-realizing 1st Ring American Suburbs
1st ring suburbs can be hard to define. They’re a little bit city. They’re a little bit suburb. Here’s my teaser line: I pose the thought that, maybe, just maybe, first-ring suburbs aren’t actually as bad as we urbanists frequently make them out to be. On one hand, these places are comprised nearly exclusively of single-family … Read more
Outsourcing Parking
Mackinac Island has no cars. You walk and bike everywhere or take the odd horse-drawn taxi. This is great, and the whole place feels like you’re living in one big modern buzzword, whether that be green, sustainable, eco-viable, etc.. But, the island’s dirty little secret is that it outsources parking (and other negative externalities) at … Read more
The Nostalgia Trap? (Heritage v2.0)
The Atlantic Monthly ran an article (May 2011) by Wayne Curtis titled, “The Nostalgia Trap”. It can be read here. The article covers contemporary historic preservation efforts in New York and London. In both cities, governments and architects are dealing with preservation issues that are not likely to have arisen in the past two decades. … Read more
