20th Anniversary of This Blog

Believe it or not... I started this blog 20 years ago today. It's still the best career move I've made, as writing publicly about cities and sidewalks turned out to guide almost every other path that's led me to where I'm at today: pretty contentedly writing and teaching about cities all day long. 

Yes, this Target; I spend a lot of time there now.

One of the great things about having done this for so long is I have a track-record and archive on which to look back. For example, one of the first public hearings I ever attended was about the new "Super Target" being planned for University Avenue. 

I went to the meeting where urbanist advocates were pushing to force Target to build something, anything along the street frontage of University Avenue.

Here's part of my decidedly unprofessional description of the 2006 meeting:

Then the two Toms got into the action. Yes, there were two Toms representing the Target Corporation. The first Tom was an architect, had grey gelled hair with a nice black suit and some fancy artist (architect?) glasses. The second Tom was "folksy," with a beige sportcoat and brown penny loafers, paunchy with male pattern baldness. After the long powerpointed introduction by the neighborhood advocate talking about fancy architecture, the two Toms had a few little tagboard illustrations of plans for the new SuperTarget.

Here's a fairly accurate rendition:

_________
|________|


So, they had these pictures of a big box Target and were trying to point out all the "amenities," like a sidewalk and a landscaped tree and a path through the parking lot, etc. It was pretty funny.

... The funniest part was this one dyed-haired old woman who had walked the block or two from her house to the meeting, and raised her hand duringg the Q & A and said, "Why do you have all these flowers and trees in the parking lot? They're just taking up space. Nobody will see them. I don't want flowers and trees in my parking lot."

I think about this experience, and the continuing problem of big box stores in the Midway, quite a bit. At the time, then-Council Member Debbie Montgomery assured me that Target would build something soon along University Avenue, and I remember her every time I pass the Target (I.e. every day) and stare at the vacant empty street-front asphalt. It's nice to have a long memory when you're contemplating city politics.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I don't have nearly enough time to update this regularly, but still keep it dear to my heart.