Bill Lindeke is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He is the author of multiple books on Twin Cities culture and history, most recently St. Paul: an Urban Biography. Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillLindeke.
This week, the City Council moved forward with a strict rent control policy. But with an election looming in the fall, and no sign of flexibility from Mayor Jacob Frey, there’s little chance for passage.
Nobody argues that the brick gates are inherently valuable, but it’s easy to see how their symbolic importance carries weight. That’s exactly what schoolteacher Mark Westphal has been saying for a year, teaching 12-year-olds about their city’s history by examining a pair of otherwise-mundane towers.
It’s a mix of things, from historical accident to competitive urges, that makes the Selby Patio District unparalleled in the seven-county metro. It wasn’t always this way.
The nine-hole disc golf course, which officially opened last August, is sure to make 2023 a banner year in Hillcrest Knoll Park’s fascinating history.
Because commercial property is taxed at a higher rate than residential, for a city like Eagan, the loss of two large corporate headquarters is a hit to its bottom line.
“Oldest Twin Cities,” is a fun guidebook to the Twin Cities’ quirky history. “I like to say ‘Oldest Twin Cities’ is old-world history meets modern-day relevance,” author Julie Jo Severson said. “I don’t think of myself as a local expert or a local historian, I’m just somebody who’s extremely curious.”
For a normally transparent Public Works department to make up plans on the fly represents a big departure for Minneapolis’ approach to transportation. Even if you like the changes, which water down safety on the new street, the process is a red flag.
It would be nice if the changes to the State Office Building improved, rather than harmed, the already sub-par public space around the state’s historic Capitol building.
When bumping along a city street, it’s easy to get mad at the mayor or public works staff, and plenty of people on social media are doing just that. The truth behind how Minnesota’s roads are built, maintained, and reconstructed is more complicated.
The barriers between a central business districts for 9 to 5 office workers and residential neighborhoods for domestic quietude are breaking down, and zoning should reflect that.
Passenger rail service between the Twin Cities and Duluth, once the state’s big railroad rivals, operated for over a century until it died, ignominiously, in 1986. Since then, Minnesota intercity train travel has been largely dormant, despite the boom in tourism and travel between the metro and North Shore.
The seal itself, a complex messy affair, dates back to 1858, when it was created by Alexander Ramsey, Henry Sibley and Seth Eastman.
Connie Fortin, long-time chloride expert, is focusing upstream on low-salt infrastructure design to reduce saline pollution.
There needs to be another way, and luckily there is. Automated camera enforcement is used in cities around the world, and is proven to reduce speeding and death. It’s the kind of technological fix often embraced in other areas of public policy, but for some reason has been anathema to American driving culture.
LISC has been working for over a year to cultivate cohorts of people of color interested in becoming developers. It’s intended to change who’s included in the local real estate conversation.
Every winter, pavement conditions deteriorate. Each spring, drivers anxiously wait for temperatures to rise, so that the city’s asphalt plant can start filling the potholes. And each year it gets worse.
Riverside Plaza, the 1,300-unit modernist apartments that dominate the eastern Minneapolis skyline, quietly turned 50 years old last year.
A recent study looking at cell-phone data from millions of people around the world found that the U.S. ranks poorly when it comes to everyday walking. The average American takes just about 4,700 steps each day, a count that has surely declined since the pandemic and its work-from-home revolution.
“People downtown, their mood is different,” explained Calgar Kisa, working the week before Christmas at his downtown Minneapolis boutique. “It’s depressive. They don’t have a shopping mood; they have a working mood. They’re just busy, and say ‘I need to go home for the kids.’ I feel nobody can survive downtown in the retail business.”
After a century on 2nd Avenue hosting weddings, funerals, and the best basement bar in the metro, the Cro (as it’s universally known) is why half of South St. Paul counts themselves honorary Croatians.
