Skyway or the Highway

I loved the skyways when I worked in downtown Minneapolis - until I had to walk through them after normal business hours. *shudder* Two well-known urban designers think they're a blight on the city.

When two of the world's top urban designers drop in for a visit and come away with the impression that your city — in this case Minneapolis — is a relic of the 1970s, ill-equipped to thrive and compete in a new century, and that its only hope is to tear down its skyways, well, that gets your attention.

"I feel sorry for Minneapolis," said Jan Gehl, the celebrated Danish architect whose work around the world has linked the rising importance of good public spaces to a city's success.

Thirty years ago, Minneapolis was thought to be a leader among winter cities. But taking people off the streets and putting them upstairs, "under glass," hasn't worked in Minneapolis or anywhere else, Gehl said, to the point that Minneapolis is no longer "up to the beat of the world-class cities of the 21st century."

Gil Penalosa, a noted public parks developer in both Latin America and Canada, said that the skyways lend a defensive, pessimistic air to the downtown core when, in reality, they are needed for only a few weeks of the year. "They suck the public life out of the city," he said.

Given the fat chance that Minneapolis will remove its eight miles of skyways, both men agreed that finding a solution poses one of the toughest design challenges faced by any city in the world: creating vitality at street level when most foot traffic has been shifted to the second story.

The biggest problem, both said, is that people in Minneapolis don't realize that great cities — even cold cities — are now defined by the vitality of their street life. "People here don't see a crisis," said Gehl. "They don't yet see themselves as behind the times."

Lit from Within

Wow: if you are or ever have been a denizen of the Twin Cities, you must check out View from the Tundra, a new-ish photoblog about the cities, for stunning stuff like this:

(Via the Deets.)

When Bad Things Happen to Tiny Artworks

I love the little installation-art pieces created by "Slinkachu," who shows off photos of his stuff at Little People. His most recently blogged piece is an actual gallery show, which is both fun to examine (through the photos) and a cool comment on gallery-going. I won't ruin the surprise by stealing any of his photos from the site; just go and check it out.

Le Bicyclisme

As little old Northfield putters along toward some sort of sustainable transportation strategy and medium-sized old Minneapolis makes a name for itself as a bike-friendly city (as described in this good story from KARE-11 news last night, big old Paris is gettin' r done:

What Paris has done right is to make it awful to get around by car and awfully easy to get around by public transportation or by bike. Any tourist in a rent-a-car who’s circumnavigated the Arc de Triomphe most likely will never drive in Paris again. But there are plenty of Parisians who do it all the time — far too many, in fact. So Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, a Socialist, vowed in coming to office in 2001 to reduce car traffic by 40 percent by 2020...

In short, public transportation will take you where you want to go, and you can use it all you want on an electronic card that can be paid by the week or by the month (about $70 these days). Taxis, of course, can also be summoned anywhere by phone...

Mayor Delanoë’s latest front in the anti-car war is the bicycle. Last week, more than 10,000 stolid, gray-painted bicycles (no Tour de France speedsters) became available for rent at 750 self-service locations across Paris. The cost is modest... and the bikes can be dropped off at any docking station. The number of bikes is supposed to double by the end of the year. Already in their first week, the bikes are all over central Paris, many carrying commuters — and, yes, some New Yorkers.

Conjunction Junctions

Pictures of horrifyingly complex intersections which make me glad that my ride to work entails just three turns (a left and two rights).

Waterfowl Play

More Swedish weirdness:

Police are hoping to speak to the owner of a Stockholm apartment after finding on Wednesday that she has been keeping eleven swans there. The strange discovery was made after the woman's neighbours reported strange smells coming from the apartment in the centre of the Swedish capital.

Police who went to investigate were surprised by what they found. "When the officers entered the apartment they initially saw two swans. When they looked around they found eleven of them there," police spokesman Björn Engström told The Local. Engström said they were well looked after and had been given food and water.

Fools, Their Money, and Parting's Felonious Sorrow

This beggars belief:

A 40-year-old Coon Rapids man who marketed himself as a tarot-card reader called "The Maestro" was charged with six felonies involving his alleged viewing of a minor having sex with her boyfriend.A 16-year-old girl and her 19-year-old boyfriend visited the business of Miguel Antonio Garcia Garro at 2500 Nicollet Av. S. after seeing an advertisement in a Spanish-language publication for spiritual counseling... The couple told Garcia Garro that they wanted to improve their relationship with the boyfriend's father, who did not approve of their dating...

[Garcia Garro] told the couple, identified only as S.S. and S.B., that if they paid him $750, he would see them twice a week and help them with their problems. On the next visit, Jan. 5, he took down their names and addresses and told them to strip to their underwear and wipe their bodies using napkins soaked with what he described as holy water... He then took the napkins and wrapped them in tinfoil so he could "examine the energy levels."

On the third visit, Jan. 9, he told then to have sex on his desk, which he covered with a sheet and told the woman to wipe herself afterward with a napkin and wrap it in tinfoil for him to examine. She did, according to the complaint. He also told the couple to wipe themselves, including their genitalia, in holy water before sex, the complaint said. Garcia Garro left the room before the couple had sex.

The same rituals occurred during visits on Jan. 12, 16, 19 and 24, but on the final visit, the woman noticed what appeared to be a stereo speaker, which upon closer examination she realized was a camera lens. She and her boyfriend went to the Minneapolis police.

Police got a search warrant for the unlicensed business and found the camera as described by the couple. The camera led to another room, where it was possible for someone to watch the couple have sex on the desk. A VCR and television were also connected to the camera. Police also found tinfoil squares wrapped around tissues, the complaint said.

Garcia Garro is being held in custody. He is charged with five counts of using a minor in a sexual performance, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years on each count. He also is charged with "interference with privacy," which is also a felony and punishable with a sentence of up to two years.

The considerable ewwww-factor aside, it's too bad the cops are preventing this entrepreneur from entrepreneuriating. At least he'll have plenty of chances to practice his skillz in jail.

A Designer's Eyes

A while back, when Elise and I were both trapped by ensconced at the same employer, we thought up a company that would organize events in which various kinds of experts - architects, historians, theatre or movie directors, et cetera. - would describe how they see the world to a group of interested paying customers. The architect, for instance, might lead a walking tour of a downtown or historic district; the director, a discussion of play or movie. We thought it was a good idea - just enough like a lot of other services to be familiar, but just different enough to have a niche.

As it happens, Ben Terrett is doing roughly the same thing for graphic design at his blog, Noisy Decent Graphics. One of this recent posts is a perfect example, a look into what it's like to live with "The Design Disease."

You'd step outside and see this and wonder how on earth that can be allowed to happened. Who would space type like that?

Curb Your Enthusiasm

It's a truism to observe that it can be hard to get along without a car in this crazy, crazy world. My wife and I live carlessly in Chicago for almost five years, I used the bus almost every day when we lived in Minneapolis, and now we are doing okay, down here in Small Minnesota River Town, with one car, so long as I bike to work. My lack of attachment to the car makes the new practice of "psychological traffic calming" - "to blur the boundary between pedestrians and automobiles by removing sidewalks and traffic devices, and to create a seamless multi-purpose urban space" - sound very appealing, a good way for practically every city to make it easier for cars, people, and bikers to get along. Can't you just see how this would make a nice compact downtown or neighborhood shopping district (say, Uptown Minneapolis) even more friendly?