Back to Minneapolis. If I am to apply my criteria for evaluating street food, Minneapolis gets little more than a D-. The effort is there, but the joy, the spontaneity…. the people…. are no where to be found. Instead, I am greeted by the rather gruesome display of a giant, flaccid turkey drumstick roasting in the morning haze inside a pristine white snatcher van.  Yippee.

The built environment, like language, has the power to define and refine sensibility. It can sharpen and enlarge consciousness. Without architecture feelings about space must remain diffuse and fleeting.

Yi Fu Tuan

from “Space and Place”

Minneapolis, Minnesota 2009

October 13, 2009

I’m not sure if I am caught in an atemporal vortex or if Minneapolis is hitting some sort of built-environment equilibrium. While walking home yesterday, humming various bits of soundtrack to myself, I noticed that my city is engaged in a process consisting of equal parts renewal and equal parts decline. As the first image testifies, the elements of renewal tend to be laden with a heavy handed, pig-wearing-lipstick aesthetic.

In true wabi-sabi fashion, while the parking garage is being turned into a disco-vomit-colored monstrosity, the businesses across the street are slowly being ground away…

October 13, 2009

New Urban Neighborhood in MSP - Snoooooooze

I am a fan of the urban ideals pushed forward the New Urbanism movement. How could I not be? Any movement that encourages walkable, friendly, dense developments in our city centers is something I should appreciate if not support. But… however much I like the ideas, when they are implemented the resulting landscape is almost always less than desirable. For some reason we now equate urban living to be a viable lifestyle for only wealthy young people. If America’s cities are indeed experiencing a renaissance or re-inhabitation, let’s hope that someone comes up with a way to make New Urbanist practices and spaces that are available to those of us who do not have a trust fund. If this doesn’t happen… I imagine our city cores going from ghetto for the socially marginalized to ghetto for the socially marginalizing.

How boring.

One Tiny Shred of Human Presence

Beef, Tater, Meow!

Gas Station... Being Cleared Away

Long Live LynLake... in whatever form it ends up as...

And bit more of failed public space from my own travel experiences.

Something shocking is happening in Minneapolis. A group of artists are undertaking a project to make art on the facades of unused buildings in the city. I was a bit skeptical when I saw the slickly printed, well designed signs for this type of work (I prefer guerilla style or ephemeral projects in public space). Intersecting artistic/private aesthetic interests with public space rarely works… but the Save Canvas project presented by Overproof Design Studio actually succeeds in its aims. It has been a pleasure to watch the empty structure along Nicollet avenue be turned into a work of art. Especially since this is the site of the unrealized Nicollet condo project (a 60 floor glass high-rise that never materialized thanks to the economic downturn).

Definitely check out their work.

On another note, I am reminded of something distinctly beautiful about the public sphere in Montreal. The city seemed to be predisposed to giving up automobile traffic for pedestrianized streets. In Minneapolis we have the “National Night Out” every year, during which certain blocks are closed to vehicular traffic. It takes a special event here to get people onto the street and walking around. In stark contrast, the above posters in Montreal indicate that the pedestrian is almost synonymous with the urban experience.

I couldn’t agree more.

Vancouverism is an urban planning and architectural technique pioneered in Vancouver, Canada. It is characterized by mixed-use developments, typically with a medium-height, commercial base and narrow, high-rise residential towers to accommodate high populations and to preserve view corridors. With a large residential population living in the city centre, no expressways connecting the core to the suburbs, and significant reliance on mass public transit, Vancouver is somewhat unique among large North American cities. In part, these reasons contribute to the fact that it is consistently ranked among the most livable cities in the world. Other cities have begun to take note of the principles of Vancouverism and have begun to incorporate this approach in their own planning directions.

Renowned architect Bing Thom described Vancouverism this way:

It’s a spirit about public space. I think Vancouverites are very, very proud that we built a city that really has a tremendous amount of space on the waterfront for people to recreate and to enjoy. At the same time, False Creek and Coal Harbour were previously industrial lands that were very polluted and desecrated. We’ve refreshed all of this with new development, and people have access to the water and the views. So, to me, it’s this idea of having a lot people living very close together, mixing the uses. So, we have apartments on top of stores. In Surrey we have a university on top of a shopping centre. This mixing of uses reflects Vancouver in terms of our culture and how we live together.

An excellent pod cast from the CCA on the topic:
Trevor Boddy: Vancouverism and its Discontents (5 April 2007)

The Pop-Up City

From The Gateway Reconstruction Project

I’ve been thinking a great deal about how one can actually inhabit a place. With the economy sliding into oblivion and funding in the art-world drying up, I realized that I am going to be in Minneapolis for a couple more years. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing… but… the entire time I was in graduate school, the general pressure was to move (to NYC or Europe) and live the life of an artist-in-residence/panhandler. Not exactly the ideal situation for someone who likes to work on perfecting his banana-bread recipe late at night, in the confines of his small, but rather delightful apartment.

Anyway. Back to the point.

One of the ways that I believe humans inhabit a place is through research into its history. My personal obsession right now is wandering around the Gateway District in downtown MPLS and wondering how amazing it could have been… had they not built a modernist dystopia on top of it. This website has a great overview and tons of photographs that depict the Gateway in its heyday… very impressive.