TCSidewalks Live!: Common Room Tour of the Skyways this Wednesday

Following up on last year's surprisingly popular Minneapolis sidewalk tour, I'm doubling down on the Common Room event series run by the ever-fabulous Soap Factory gallery in St Anthony Main.

[Highlights include this beige area.]

Co-organizers Sergio Vucci and Andy Sturdevant asked me to lead a tour of Minneapolis notoriously quasi-non-controversial skyway system. Provided we can actually find a working entrance, I'm excited to do it! I've love/hated the skyways for a long time, and now I'll get to share my love/hate with you. (Mostly hate, actually.)

The tour will feature:

• The skyway system's origin myth vs. its actual macculate conception
• The site of the first skyway in Minneapolis (no longer extant)
• The site of the second skyway in Minneapolis (extant)
• Willam H. Whyte's thoughts on the IDS Crystal Court
• The longest skyway
• The ugliest skyway
• The place in the skyways where homeless people can sit
• The skyway to nowhere
• Whatever's left of "Block E"
• The never-ending legacy of Victor Gruen

Expect the forlorn, because nothing is more forlorn that the Minneapolis skyway system in the evening on a Tuesday.

Meet up at the Soap Factory at 6:30! Look to arrive back by 9:00. The tour will be a walking tour! Don't forget to bring your social stratification.

Bonus:

In my opinion, the Minneapolis skyway system is the closest the USA has gotten to this Popular Science vision of the "city of the future" from 1925.

This is their description of the streets:

“Future city streets, says Mr. Corbett, will be in four levels: The top level for pedestrians; the next lower level for slow motor traffic; the next for fast motor traffic, and the lowest for electric trains. Great blocks of terraced skyscrapers half a mile high will house offices, schools, homes, and playgrounds in successive levels, while the roofs will be airplane landing fields, according to the architect’s plan.” (from here.)

Twin City Doorways #7

 [Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis.]

[Downtown, St Paul.]

[Lowertown, St Paul.]

[East 7th Street, St Paul.]

[Lake Street, Minneapolis.]

[Minnehaha Avenue, Minneapolis.]

[South Loop, Chicago.]

 

 [Pillsbury Avenue, Minneapolis.]

Classic Sidewalks of the Silver Screen #76

Douglas Quaid runs away...

... in Paul Verhoeven's (1990) wacky sci-fi, Total Recall.

Classic Sidewalks of the Silver Screen #75

Jake tries to forget it...



... in Roman Polanski's (1974) transcendent Chinatown.

New at Streets.mn: Five Years Later, Nothing Learned from the 35W #BridgeFail

The 35W bridge collapse put a big jolt into this blog. I'd let it slip away, and not really been very excited about writing here until August 1st, 2007. Then I wrote a piece about the bridge, cities, and our everyday inter-dependency:

So much relies on so much steel, sand, and stone.

But of course we forget. People think when they slam shut their car door, flip on the A/C, and crank up KS95 that they're invulnerable. We think that our walls are solid, and that homes are ours and ours alone. We believe that bootstraps are the only things holding us up, but we forget that cars are just as reliant on public infrastructure as everything else, as trains or buses or electric sockets. In fact, this country has pumped trillions of dollars during the last 50 years into building a vast, vast network of highways, bridges, and concrete overpasses. We've spent more money on highways in this country than on any other public works project (unless you call the military budget a public work), but it's the kind of thing that's easy to forget about until something reminds us that somewhere, at some point, some guy under a fluorescent light designed everything we take for granted.

No, the real story today is that we've been reminded that we're all in this together.

I suppose that my piece today at Streets.mn is about how quickly we forget how quickly we forget:

The bridge collapse points to how little we change. If anything, our political system has become less flexible about transportation since 2007, less willing to shift away from the status quo. President Obama’s attempt to jump-start our national rail network was met fierce resistance. A host of new governors were elected demanding more freeways, and Scott Walker rather easily stymied any hope of a efficient rail connection between Minneapolis and Chicago. (You can find similar stories in Ohio, Florida, and New Jersey.) Anyone who imagines that our governments will raise gas taxes, re-calculate Federal spending formulas, or invest more in maintenance hasn’t been reading the newspaper.

In a way, I've been waiting for the another bridge to fall since 2007. The 35W bridge can't be the only one that's being neglected. There are far older bridges in far more neglectful states all over the country. But for whatever reason -- better inspections? -- there haven't been any other dramatic moments like the one five years ago. Instead, we get things like the New Orleans (#leveefail) or Duluth flooding (#sewerfail) or the Vermont flooding (ditto) or alarm bells over power plants. This recent NY Times article about infrastructure failures and climate change should raise your hackles.