In overhauling the appearance and ambience of a popular mall, the Minneapolis Downtown Council and the Minneapolis City Council have promoted strategies beyond heavy-handed policing, including philanthropy, social services, and community engagement.

A Mall for “Everyone”
Earlier this year, the City of Minneapolis broke ground on a $50 million overhaul of Nicollet Mall, the 12-block centerpiece of its downtown. Like many main street projects, the Nicollet Mall Project is rooted in high-minded principles of public space: that attractive, multifunctional, green, diverse, and life-filled downtowns beget economic activity and social well-being. The City hired the designers of Manhattan’s High Line to lead the redesign. The website for the project touts that it is “making a mall for everyone.”
There is some irony here. While Nicollet Mall is aesthetically outdated (one writer recently described it as “rather dull”), has poor frontage, and loses pedestrians to second-story skyways overhead, it already attracts tens of thousands of residents, workers, shoppers, tourists, and barflies every day. If you have attended a national conference in Minneapolis, you have probably been there too.
Some say the Mall’s problem is one of too many people, or at least too many of a certain type.
FULL STORY: Conflict and Placemaking: Tactical Urbanism on Nicollet Mall

Rethinking Redlining
For decades we have blamed 100-year-old maps for the patterns of spatial racial inequity that persist in American cities today. An esteemed researcher says: we’ve got it all wrong.

Montreal Mall to Become 6,000 Housing Units
Place Versailles will be transformed into a mixed-use complex over the next 25 years.

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

Santa Clara County Dedicates Over $28M to Affordable Housing
The county is funding over 600 new affordable housing units via revenue from a 2016 bond measure.

Why a Failed ‘Smart City’ Is Still Relevant
A Google-backed proposal to turn an underused section of Toronto waterfront into a tech hub holds relevant lessons about privacy and data.

When Sears Pioneered Modular Housing
Kit homes sold in catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward made homeownership affordable for midcentury Americans.
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Planning for Universal Design
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