The Move MN transportation financing proposal may be good politics, but it is bad policy. Enacting it will lead to a weaker Minnesota. Here are the reasons I oppose it.
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Somewhere inside you is that childlike itch to make-believe or draw funny faces on things. Play is such an amazing way to engage with the city and people around us. It creates an atmosphere of light-heartedness and curiosity. It humanizes an environment instantly and can lend your city a sense of humour. It's also good for you!
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The 10th Avenue Bridge is a local street with a local bridge that serves local traffic. Yet, in many cases, the general public narrative finds it necessary to criticize state legislators for not allocating money to support a project that has no state or regional significance. Herein lies the disconnect between how we think transportation financing works and how it actually works.
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There are as many models in the world as there are agendas. This is a particularly difficult lesson for those in the planning and policy fields who like to believe that models – particularly ones that give them the answers they want – can help them make precise predictions. Predictions are tricky, especially about the future.
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If you want your city to be wealthy and prosperous, stop obsessing about cars and start obsessing about your people, your wealth and the taxpayer's return-on-investment.
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The story of Lafayette is the story of America; they’ve just had the courage and foresight to ask a more sophisticated set of questions. They are responding to their stress and chronic budget shortfalls not by reflexively seeking more revenue or more service cuts – the standard responses – but by asking: why isn’t this working?
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Sharing some of G.K. Chesterton's city-building metaphors from Chapter 5 of Orthodoxy. The general idea is that an admirable life is one of mystic patriotism. By this he means having a somewhat irrational, inexplicable love for the place you live (both the universe at large and your little home therein). You love it just because it's yours. And yet you recognize that it's pretty messed up as well. And SINCE you love it so much, you work hard to improve it.
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Happy Jane Jacobs Day! (And now Urban Renewal Remembrance Day as well.) Today would have been the activist and urban theorist's 99th birthday, and it seems like every year, evidence continues to amass of her wisdom, foresight, and appeal to all corners of the political spectrum.
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Please take some time today to remember those who suffered from our collective hubris. Then vow to never to be fooled by randomness.
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Today's my last day at CNU 23 and we're going to leave nothing on the table.
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