Along with the Star Tribune editorial board, Minneapolis for Everyone supports the goals of Minneapolis 2040 — especially regarding racial and economic disparities, increasing affordable housing and protecting (not merely “tending to”) the environment.   Unlike the editorial board, however, we believe the plan’s strategies lack the focus and specificity necessary to achieve those critical … Continue reading 13 Amendments that would actually help achieve the plan’s goals

Dear Council Members and Mayor Frey, There have been recent reports in the press about investors buying up swaths of housing on the North Side of Mpls for speculative investment. This is nothing new. After the last real estate bubble, Minneapolis and surrounding areas became more visible on speculators’ radar as a great place to … Continue reading Speculative exuberance in the Mpls real estate market: a letter to city officials

There have been a lot of claims made by the City about how environmentally responsible the draft 2040 Comprehensive Plan is.  But one of the fundamental things about the Plan is that it proposes demolishing existing housing and replacing it with more housing.  The argument is that the new housing will be more energy-efficient than … Continue reading Preserving Housing is the Most Environmentally Responsible Thing

How Minneapolis 2040 damages the whole community.

The City has posted Draft 2 of the plan. It was supposed to reflect citizen input from public meetings and online comments (an estimated 85 percent of which were critical). But it’s not substantively better. In important ways it is worse. Find out what has and hasn’t changed.

In an 8/1/18 email, Heather Worthington, the City’s chief of long-range planning denied that the City contracted with a PR firm to work on M2040. Then we found the contract. Dated 7/11/18, the contract with Goff Public, of Saint Paul, is for $80,000. Among other things, the firm recommends withholding information about the plan from … Continue reading City secretly hires Saint Paul PR firm to promote M2040

In the previous two parts, I talked about regional population, sewer and transportation planning. In this piece, I want to talk about how these regional plans are translated into municipal plans. The Metropolitan Council does other planning that is integrated with sewer and transportation plans. Sewer planning is integrated with surface water and drinking water … Continue reading Why do Comprehensive Planning? Part 3.

Part One talked about how planning for sewage drives comprehensive planning.  But comprehensive planning is also about transportation. The Twin Cities have had traffic problems pretty much since the rise of automobiles. But until the Federal Highway Act in 1956, most congestion was street congestion. But when the federal government said it would pay for … Continue reading Why do Comprehensive Planning? Part 2.

It starts with sewage. A lot of it. In the beginning, people got water from wells on their property and disposed of their own sewage, which may have been a pit in the back yard. Or not. In addition, transportation was by horse, which meant sewage literally ran in the streets. And into the drinking … Continue reading Why do Comprehensive Planning? Part 1.

The chapters of the plan do not include travel by automobile despite the fact that the vast majority of people in Minneapolis drive. The presumption is that this plan will continue the narrowing of streets, addition of bike lanes at the expense of driving, changing of timing of signals to make driving take longer, removal of parking, and other actions to deliberately make driving harder.  This is being done to actively discourage driving, as this is one of the tenets of the draft 2040 Comprehensive Plan.