active living

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Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City examines how Detroit, a symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America. Watch it here. Read more >

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A new elementary school in Canada requires its students to walk, bike, skate or scoot to school.  The program addresses issues ranging from child obesity to traffic congestion.  

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It seems that streetcars are making a comeback. This post over at the infrastructuralist shows that 45 cities have plans for extending or creating streetcar line(s). This is great news, but yet will make competition for $130 million funding even more difficult.

Again, PDX, who had the political will and capital to put in a streetcar years ago is planning to expand the service over the river to finally create the streetcar loop.

Just in case you didn't know, Minneapolis has its own plans for a streetcar network that should hopefully supplement the bus, LRT, and BRT (down the road) network we currently have. Plus here is the work done around the planned streetcar along our beloved Greenway.

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Can an urban ecovillage model be a possibility in St. Paul? This report done by Elizabeth Turner makes a compelling case for one. Here is the executive summary:

This paper explores types of development that would be most sustainable for Sparc’s Willow Reserve property, in the full economic, environmental, and social definition of the word. The concept of the Urban Ecovillage is explored in depth, and successful examples in Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and Minneapolis are profiled.

An Urban Ecovillage is defined as a community of residents with a common fervor for ecological living working towards existing in a way that is socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. This philosophy can take a wide variety of forms, although there are many commonalities. Ecovillages usually employ techniques of permaculture and co‐housing and often have a gardening component. While the first ecovillages were in rural areas, a growing number can be found in cities, where they can serve as a catalyst for sustainable development in their urban surroundings.

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I was at the downtown Minneapolis library yesterday when a large map caught my eye. It was a 1910 ariel map with all the transit lines included. As a new Minnesotan I was shocked to see that at one time you could get to Stillwater or Hopkins on mass transit (that was not a bus).

It was a great reminder that not so long ago we had the plans and capital in place to move people around our region that was not based on expressways, but rather mass transit. Here is the old map (1910) and the new map (2020). A lot has changed in 100 years, but I find looking at these two maps educational to say the least.

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Great post over at SF Streetsblog about politics in the planning process from the planning directors of major cities.

City planners have been on the hook for some of the last century's greatest metropolitan mishaps: urban freeways and "slum clearance," arbitrary minimum parking requirements, and land use laws that have left little room for the mingling of uses. Understandably, today's planners are a bit humbled. But when planning directors from some of North America's most progressive cities spoke at City Hall this week about the political challenges that face urban planners, several of them said the field needs to move beyond worrying about past mistakes.

Minneapolis planning chief Barbara Sporlein echoed that concern. "So much of planning is making up for past mistakes," she said. "It just feels like every time something happens, [we say,] 'That can't happen again.'"