Yet another city with ambitious plans for the future (remember the Stockholm article a couple of days ago). Paris commissioned 10 design teams “to transform Paris and its surrounding suburbs into the first sustainable “post-Kyoto city,” a reference to the treaty on climate change, with an expanded Métro system and sprawling new parks.”
The plans are the result of a nine-month study commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and use transportation and parks as transformative urban design tools – an interesting similarity to Minneapolis and the Metropolitan area in general at a time when transportation in particular is expanding at a rapid rate and could transform the area, if planned and designed right.

A wonderful NY Times article featuring an area in Stockholm not too dissimilar to Minneapolis’ own transit crossroad section of the North Loop.  The article highlights design ideas for the area, and concludes with a call to “Think Big”!

If you haven’t read already, see the new Richard Florida piece that speaks to the urgency of Minneapolis’ new urban center…

This article from the NY Times describes the proposed transformation of the Manhattan Farley Post Office into the ‘Grand transit entrance to New York’ – part of the redevelopment of Penn Station, considered one of the great projects to have ‘enormous benefits for the entire region’. The article describes the government lead effort, the collaboration between city, state and Port Authority, and the selection of developers to help realize the larger project. Senator Schumer is looking for $100 million in stimulus money from the high speed rail and Amtrak stimulus budgets.

Here is a follow-up editorial.

Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority contracted the services of transit experts HDR to facilitate a week-long workshop to develop a conceptual plan for the inter-modal facility.  HDR has taken a robust and comprehensive look at the area around the transit crossroads – looking at a variety of scales – and developed concepts for a transit hub on various sites, reflecting multi-modal transit development best practices. This is the culmination of an enormous amount of work, and is an exciting and thought provoking presentation. Click here to see the presentation.

Check out this great article written by William R. Morrish, Professor of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban and Environmental Planning School of Architecture, University of Virginia. Morrish developed the article following his experiences working in post-Katrina New Orleans, post-9/11 Manhattan, and in response to the 1993 Mississippi River flood. He eloquently makes the case for:

• Re-thinking the role infrastructure plays in our private and collective lives
• Developing a comprehensive, integrated and collaborative approach to creating new forms of infrastructure that express and meet the new challenges of our society, economy and environment
• Incorporating natural systems and processes as structural components of sustainable infrastructure

Morrish’s article is especially noteworthy, as we move into a unique period of global warming, fluctuating fuel prices, limited natural resources and changing demographics—all of which require a new approach to development at a time of limited government resources.

Minneapolis has our own energy center – Hennepin Energy Recovery Center or HERC! HERC is an urban infrastructure hero dying for a make-over. Hennepin County and Covanta Energy, with the help of students from the University of Minnesota are planning this transformation. Click here to see why HERC is such a star and what her future holds.

Barbara Flanagan comments on 2010 Partners and the Ballpark neighborhood.

Check out this Steve Berg Column from MinnPost.

City building is complex, but there seem to be some fundamentals that serve as the foundation for successful planning and implementation process. These fundamentals fall under the category of civic support and are essential to consistently creating innovative, sustainable projects, neighborhoods and cities. They are as follows:

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP Strong political leaders that:

• have a vision for how their city could develop
• value design and its positive impact on economic development, civic identity and quality of life for its visitors and residents alike
• understand the design and building process
• have the political will and savvy to initiate projects, garner support for them and advocate to the end

PRO-ACTIVE BUREAUCRATIC STRUCTURE Planning and economic development departments that move away from being reactive functionaries enabling private development plans through the traditional regulatory processes and instead move to a pro-active approach to city building which develops and implements comprehensive plans and projects.This approach would require:

• integrated, comprehensive planning and design across disciplines and departments
• implementation process
• incorporating urban designers back into the departmental work force
• having designers at the table when plans are being formulated and evaluated, projects prioritized and implementation schemes developed

INSTITUTIONAL ADVOCACY Civic organizations with an interest in planning and design can contribute to the city building process with their deep reservoir of information and intelligence. These institutions, including the press, can also advocate on behalf of well- designed public and private development and provide forums for discussion and citizen education.

SUBSTANTIVE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION A substantive citizen participation process that considers residents a partner in the city building process, rather than a perfunctory step in the regulatory process that needs to be checked off. Residents bring invaluable information about what the neighborhood assets and liabilities are and how the neighborhood functions. They will also support a project if they feel they are being listened to and taken seriously, and have faith in the implementation process.