urbanMSP

Did you read the article? I'm trying not to be insulting, but it really seems like you didn't read it. They're not talking about "building around" businesses. They're talking about tearing down buildings that house successful small businesses. Generally, small businesses can't afford to t...

“It will be a little more of this yuppy, sidewalk dining, pizza on the sidewalk, drinks on the sidewalk. More like Minneapolis,” Marty said. Quelle horreur! I have noticed, though, that there seem to be a lot fewer apartments on Craigslist in this area than there were six months ago. Some of that m...

That's an impressively party-line vote.

Really? The two bus lines near me run at 30 minute frequency. That's not high-frequency. I'm not saying it's perfect, just to suggest that Metro Transit ignores the city's problems in favor of the burbs is ludicrous. I wonder what percentage of MT's budget goes to the high-frequency urban routes an...

Why should people in the city expect to wait less than twenty minutes for a bus? Crazy talk!

It's not as though we have a high-frequency network of buses that is more ambitious and comprehensive than any of the pie-in-the-sky subway plans advocated here.

Oh, hey, wait.

I'm just saying, priorities. Taking away free parking from Metropolitan State University isn't going to make anyone live closer or make for better transit, it'll just cost some people money. There are better targets to focus on.

School choice isn't a free choice, like the market you're positing. Ability to attend a traditional college depends not just on cost/willingness to accept loans, proximity, etc. but also on acceptance criteria (high school diploma vs. GED, grades in high school, criminal record etc.) and the other r...

I was under the impression that the triangle above the parking ramp was supposed to be part of the Yard. You can see in the old renderings that it has park-y landscaping: http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/6 ... 051414.jpg

Yeah, that parcel is in the densest census tract in the city, isn't it?

Yep. It's also pretty poor, though (there are two public housing towers, and the rest is almost all rentals). Plus, that part of Nicollet, aside from the intersection with Franklin, is a little rundown.

It's certainly possible to do it, sure. Between our CSA, a bus trip to the store every couple of weeks, and walking/biking trips to the bodega and the Wedge, my partner and I get by fine. But it's also a lifestyle; you have to be willing to structure a lot of time around going out to get food, and y...

Or even that giant vacant lot at Nicollet and 18th. Nicollet/Franklin wouldn't be much more convenient for someone on Clifton or Oak Grove than the Lund's. You can live in the area without a car and still get groceries, you just have to make a lot of small trips. But the thought of going grocery sho...

I don't disagree with any of that, really. I just think it's hypocritical to say that _now_ the thing that's been happening here for thirty years is bad; a lot of the people complaining now seem to have been fine with the process as long as they personally weren't priced out.

There is a path from the MoA to the Ikea, it's just very hard to find. If you head out the NE corner of the Mall and along the edges of the giant parking lot, there are signs for a "Walkway" between the two. It's certainly true, though, that it's not very convenient or easy to discover.

No? Gentrification is fine, even desirable, to a certain point. That doesn't mean we have to look the other way as neighborhoods are transformed into wealthy, white enclaves. So it was fine when the hipsters kicked the previous residents out of Uptown, but now that they're getting kicked out, sudde...

Isn't it a little rich to complain about hipster bars being pushed out as "gentrification" when those hipster bars wouldn't have been there if they hadn't started gentrifying the neighborhood in the first place?

Downtown shorter rides make sense to other parts of downtown.. Sometimes. Look, we can argue the ideal world where everyone is active and walks everywhere and takes transit, or we can discuss the real world where dozens of people get on the light rail at Target Field Station --or even Hennepin!--an...

So are we as a forum really to the point where we think anyone who wants short-ride transportation downtown is a sissy?

Why is this so shocking? A huge percentage of trips on the 18 are eight blocks or less.

I dunno, should we be directing our transit investments to capture the "people who don't want to walk four blocks" demographic? What kind of question is that? Who "should" we be building our transit system for? People who want to get from Downtown to Uptown but think a 20-minute...

The main use of the streetcar is to channel private investments to specific corridors. Not to quibble, but it's also to make transit use more attractive overall. Rail bias is a real thing, and streetcars are a relatively painless way to harness it. For example, one of the signal merits of the Nicol...