Category: Urbanism
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New Orleans: A City of Culture and Density
I do not travel nearly as much as I would like, so when the opportunity arose to visit New Orleans for the National Planning Conference I jumped on it. I was only in the city for about four days, but I covered quite a bit of ground, while still attending sessions during the day. The…
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Historic Bars of Northeast Minneapolis: A Walk Through Time
I’m fascinated by the way cities used to look, with the corner grocery store, hardware store, restaurant, and of course bar, tucked into neighborhoods, spaced about a mile apart. The resident of the 1920’s city could walk to get everything they needed or take a trolley if they needed something just a little bit further. Peppered…
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The Experimental City
A few weeks ago I took advantage of living in a city that has a population to support the routine showing of documentary films. I went to see The Experimental City presented by the Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul that featured a Q&A with director Chad Freidrichs and Todd Lefko, member of the Minnesota Experimental…
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Exploring Gruen’s Vision for Car-Free Downtowns
A recent newspaper article about the ABC parking ramps in downtown Minneapolis made reference to the Gruen Plan in Fort Worth, Texas. The brief description outlined Gruen’s proposed ban on all cars from downtown Fort Worth to provide a better pedestrian experience and revitalize the area. Having lived in Texas for a few years, I…
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The Rich History of Northeast Minneapolis Neighborhoods
The area of Northeast Minneapolis, commonly referred to as Nordeast, comprises 4,564 acres and 12,197 buildings. It has been surveyed a number of times by the City of Minneapolis, the first of which was back in 1981. Within this area, 204 properties are considered to have potential as a local historic landmark. Despite the number…
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Winter Fun: Hollidazzle and Winter Open Streets
I attended Holidazzle for the first time last winter, but missed the excitement and activity because it was early on a Saturday afternoon. This year I went on the Saturday that coincided with the first Winter Open Streets event, drawing quite a large crowd and making the event more active. It was fun walking around…
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10 Insights for Creating Livable Cities from Santa Fe Conference
The International Making Cities Livable Conference held their annual conference the first week in October in Santa Fe, New Mexico this year. Each year a new city is selected based on the innovate approaches that have been implemented by their local governments. Dozens of countries were represented at the conference this year despite political tension,…
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Airports as Mini Cities: Lessons for Urban Design
I recently flew from Minneapolis to Santa Fe, stopping over in the Denver airport. While waiting for my connecting flight I noticed something about the the airport that I had not seen before. Airports, those large enough to support multiple terminals, function like a city. Each one has restaurants, retail shops, transit (the train between…
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Transforming Modern Town Squares: Insights from Gilmore Girls
In the TV show Girlmore Girls, the town square is the heart of the fictional city of Stars Hollow. I watched the whole series again in preparation for the release of the reunion season. What I noticed is the town square in the show functioned like the town squares of early American cities before cars…
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Designing Welcoming Communities: The Role of Front Porches
A few weekends ago I held a garage sale to cut down on the amount of stuff I have to move to my new house. After living on my street for the last year and a half, I have spoken to five neighbors total. The only neighbors I got to know live next door to…
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The Planning Lady 