Driver2165

dude, pedestrian malls are not a cave to suburbanites. don't make me come over there.

Yeah I saw that crew on my lunch break too. About 7 prematurely gray-haired women with incoherent signs.

If I gave them a finger it wouldn't be my thumb though. Har har.

no no no the speed is a cave. it really should be 15. that 5 miles makes a huge difference. not least of all because 15 is second gear, thus a lower rpm and less exhaust and noise for the pedestrians

ah, all right, i guess i'll spare you then.

i'm a firm believer in controling the spead by the width of the street. they've proven that that controls how fast people go much better then posted limits. Unfortunatly, most of our streets nowadays have to be build wide enough for a fire engine to turn around without going around a block, which means that almost all of our streets are engineered for 50-70 mph speeds.

There is something to be said for the low speeds on Nicolett Mall. People won't walk on streets if they don't feel safe from traffic (it's subconscience). Usually on street parking makes people feel safe, but that is missing on a pedestrianized street.

i thought it was really funny when you made the fish face last night.

Hey! Those suburbanites are keeping downtown Mnps alive...not to mention supporting our local businesses (sales taxes for the city) and paying for bus transportation.

to that last anonymous person:

so? does that have anything to do with anything? are you chris dugan? shouldn't you be off somewhere thanking god for wiping out new orleans? (http://www.repentamerica.com/pr_hurricanekatrina.html)

yay another weblog controversy!

by the way, i'm only aware of 2 similar malls in the us, i know there's probably more, but i only know 2, which are portland and madison. they both work better than ours. they're also transit malls, as opposed to a sometimes pedestrian sometimes transit mall like we've got. face it, nicollet mall is a failure.

i strongly disagree. Boston also has a mall like Nicollet (downtown crossing/washington street). It sucks ass. In fact, Boston is looking at Minneapolis and Portland (and Vancouvers) examples in how to try and fix ours. In my opinion, Nicollet Mall is one of the few places in downtown Minneapolis that actually functions like a city ought to. I think the main problem with NM is the lack of housing nearby. Even for the areas that are populated in downtown (loring park, the warehouse district, grant park and the waterfront) only loring park has a good walking connection to the mall. From any of the other residental parts of downtown you have to walk by unpleasant streets and endless parking lot deserts. J and I used the mall alot when we lived down there (and loring greenway is a really pleasant walk). Downtown Minneapolis needs more places that are a) pleasant to walk and b) have storefronts fronting the street instead of facing inward inside buildings. Nicollet Malls shortcomings are more related to it's surrounding blocks then the design itself. In my opinion at least.

yup

you forgot the most important reason: the mall of america.

when a retail chain wants to add the twin cities to their market, they start at the mall (h&m, puma, apple, victoria's secret common stores that are in downtowns in every other city). the nicest store nicollet mall can muster to this point is a crate and barrel. indie stores can't afford to stick around long with a few exceptions.

yeah, that's really a good point, but it's still a problem of demographics. most of downtown's residents still own a car. Really it's been almost three generations in Mpls since there have been any real "urban" population in the twin cities. it's just going to take time for people to learn to live in a city again. The first thing you've got to do is give them someplace that they are willing to be so that they don't go to the mall.

i didn't forget about you. it sounds like we both agree about nicollet mall being a failur, we can both come up with a couple dozen reasons why, and we could both go on about our pet reasons all day.

my solution is this. make nicollet mall one or the other. it's horrible mixed. have the buses go down marquette like they did until the 1980s, and make the mall pedestrian only. it might not attract businesses, but at least it wouldn't make it a horrible place to be.

http://www.thinkpage.net . he's begging for a guy like you