“America has the greatest road network in the world … [and] includes 10 of the 25 most congested cities.“ Someone in Sean Duffy’s office is both so close and so far from getting it.

"Your restaurant’s fundamental question of “are we sushi or burgers” remains unresolved while your entire staff debates whether table 7’s soup was adequately seasoned."

You are not the board of Can I Put A Fence Here What planning commissions are for, and why yours probably isn’t doing that job

"The real work of a planning and zoning commission is not hovering over people’s backyard sheds with a ruler. The work of a planning and zoning commission is, or should be, planning and zoning."

Brilliant essay on the mission creep that has afflicted what we still call Planning in most U.S. cities.

100% this. I've long felt that people coexisting in public spaces (which leads to interactions with strangers that aren't transactional) is essential for the civic health of a community.

And 10x as important for political leaders. Every local elected MUST make a point of walking their city.

My favorite "no way that's a real person's name" name is this right-wing think tank dude named Judge Glock at the Manhattan Institute.

map og downtown minneapolis with the off street parking highlighted in red.

Good news, friend. City of Minneapolis has over 30k dedicated public parking spaces and for profit options exceed that many times over.

Within just the downtown, ~20% of off street space is parking.

Praise be to car storage.

I'm just a guy, standing in front of a moderate governor, asking them to do the actually fiscally responsible thing....

The Governor’s Supplemental Budget Has One Transit Line Item. It’s a Cut. Walz is looking to cut transit funding again — while ignoring a billion-dollar annual highway maintenance crisis stemming from the fourth-largest road network in the country.

Great idea to cut transit funding right at the outbreak of a prolonged oil shortage. Minnesota lawmakers should do precisely the opposite of what Walz is proposing. streets.mn/2026/04/07/t...

Curb lanes and sidewalks are some of the most valuable and important public space. Especially in a place like NYC where that space has to serve so many different functions.

Every city should have an Office of Curb Management.

Transportation politics is about dragging people kicking and screaming into change that results fairly quickly in a widespread consensus that we can't imagine going back to the way it was before.

Can always count on @sdho.org to keep us up to date (this particular date) on vital infrastructure Improvements around the Twin Cities.

The Single-Family Home Gets Caught in a Political Vise

Source: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/b...

Apartments are family homes.
Condos are family homes.
Triplexes are family homes.

This sanctification of the detached single-family house is so maddening—just a totally American form of brain worms that doesn't discriminate by political alignment.

"The days are getting longer, so we can have dinner in the morning, so we can stay up extra early."

-My 4 year old, trying really hard

Text: Action Alert - Starter Homes Act Committee Hearing Monday (3/23). We need you to show up to the hearing and tell legislators: We need more homes! Background image of the Minnesota State Capitol. Neighbors for More Neighbors logo at the bottom.

🚨 Action Alert 🚨 The Starter Homes Act is heading to its second committee hearing, and we need you to pack the room! Join us on Monday, 3/23, and tell the MN House to say “Yes to Homes!”

🔗 RSVP: actionnetwork.org/events/pack-...

Breaking news: Iran threatens to block Strait of Hormuz with giant Minneapolis Imart

who did this

Happy Calvin's Dad day to those who celebrate

most media is framing this as a revenue/budget thing. mistake! metered/paid parking makes parking and driving better for drivers. you could set the money on fire and there would still benefits. focus on that. being able to invest it elsewhere is a bonus.

Rent. Older me sympathizes with Benny and finds every other character insufferable.

Man, Washington DC is so far behind. Small towns in Texas have more progressive parking policies!

Still, it's good to see the city catching up to progressive places like Bandera.

Anyone remember how the NYT's Gail Collins made a running gag for years of only ever referring to Mitt Romney as "Mitt Romney, who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car,"

Journalists, you all know what to do with potential new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Our Somali neighbors make Minnesota better.

This is incredibly bad for researchers and the public at large. Want to know if corporate entities are buying up land for a data center? Out of luck. Want to know if private equtiy is buying up homes in your neighborhood? NOPE! Just a massive loss for public transparancy and accountability. (2/x)

Nostalgia is an underappreciated driver of NIMBYism. My experience in Florida was that the older anti-development activists talked more about sadness and anger at losing the beloved (and somewhat imagined) small, quaint beach town of their memories than about any other reason for disliking growth.

Using detailed address-level microdata, we trace movement chains originating with the initial residents of The Central and document three main findings. First, we show the building generated a substantial number of local vacancies. We identify 180 specific addresses that became vacant because of moves into The Central. Scaling to account for data coverage suggests the new tower induced more than 500 local vacancies in the three years after construction, by setting off chains of moves. Second, while The Central units were expensive on a per-square-foot basis, the homes vacated by movers were significantly cheaper. Homes left behind by those moving into The Central were about 40% less expensive. Unlike much of the prior literature, which track the changing neighborhood characteristics of movers

Even more evidence that building new housing decreases rents: Researchers tracked the residents of a newly built luxury condo building and found that they freed up less expensive apartments nearby.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My wife and I have this thing where a few times a year one of us says unprompted to the other, "Remember *that* nectarine?" Because the answer is yes: it is a specific one we shared in 2010, and it tasted like landing in Oz and seeing the world in color.

Have also had this experience with a tomato.

‘No one deserves this’: Beaverton father dies after deportation to Mexico A Beaverton family is grieving after the father, who was detained and deported by ICE, has now died.

This 53 year old man who lived in my neighborhood w/no criminal record & who had been in the US for 30 years, was detained and thrown into a cold cell for days, caught pneumonia and COVID there and deported.

He finally died.

I am so angry.
www.kptv.com/2026/02/21/n...

👀The federal judges in West Virginia, where ICE has been pulling over and detaining people on the freeway, are literally screaming about ICE's tactics.

"It is an assault on the constitutional order," Judge Goodwin says. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

My younger kid is still in Halloween mode. Wearing his pumpkin footie pajamas and demanding I make up songs about zombies at bedtime.

Gonna "yes, and" this a bit: while basically true, most people who claim they're doing this are still terribly un-strategic about it.

Far more common is landing cheap dunks on someone for kudos from those who already agree with you, while telling yourself you're doing it to persuade bystanders.