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Saturday Grab Bag 2013-04-06

Some things that have been on my radar lately. First, in today’s news:

More mixed commercial-residential development coming on 42nd Street. Is three a trend? We now have the Dakota Textbook Company building, Northern Heights at Griggs Square, and this new project as examples of mixed development in locations that in the past would have been either strip malls or apartment buildings. Downtown counts as well, so maybe we should quantify what the difference in these locations versus downtown represents?
Tina Rakowski writes in to say “the rent is too damn high!” Not in those exact words, but what are we doing in Grand Forks to examine the reasons for rent going up across the board?

Second, it’s been a positive week in the American streets blogosphere:

Cycling advocates so polite they might actually be Canadian install bike lane pylons in Seattle. How cool is this? Not only is the city completely polite in return, but they offer to return the pylons…in essence allowing the group to stage a protest at another location in he future.
Old people get to have all the fun–when they get old. The question is a great one: why wait until retirement to live in a place that lets you walk and ride where you need to go in complete safety?
College was awesome, not only because you didn’t have to drive anywhere. It’s argument by nostalgia, but even if you didn’t go to college (or didn’t live and eat on campus), there are a lot of things to be said for 1) lots of time off and 2) having good food close by.
Accessibility as a replacement for mobility (scroll down to “Moving green”). A short piece about interconnectedness versus disconnectedness in a longer article about greening cities.

Thirdly, some of the recent local/regional articles you may have missed (copies available on request):

Columbia Road widening project is pushing ahead (2013-04-02)
Central parking ramp to be repaired (2013-04-02)
Drunk driving is mostly victimless, so why should it be illegal? (2013-03-23)
We need Arts and Entertainment zones in Grand Forks (2013-03-17)
Speeding tickets are just a money grab (2013-03-02)
It’s no longer weird to ride your bicycle in the winter, in Winnipeg at least (2013-02-15)

Here at Grand Forks Streets HQ, we have a pretty low bar when it comes to the “best” local online posts and stories. So rather than a list of recent articles you may have seen in the Herald anyway, here are some local Craigslist postings relating to streets:

SeeClickFix: Let the city know what needs fixing

New website for the “South Forks Bypass”

A group in favor of building a bridge over the Red River of the North at Merrifield Road (County Road 6 / 12 Ave NE) has a new website to organize support: http://southforksbypass.wordpress.com/. A letter to the editor appeared in the Grand Forks Herald today.

Sidewalks as a Sedimentary Analog

Came across this example from Callan Bentley at Northern Virginia Community College and thought it was an interesting way to help students keep thinking about geology, even while they’re walking around campus.

Cycling through the Blizzard

Eight inches of snow? No problem:

The Grand Forks Herald has a thing for putting winter cyclists on the front page–check out this one of Chase Christenson from January 2010:

Updated: Here are a few more (I’ll keep updating below).

Matt Burton-Kelly waits for traffic at the intersection of University Ave. and N. 25th St. as he bikes to work at EERC

Tuesday. (Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald) (1 Dec 2015)

Professor Gordon Iseminger of the History Department at UND pedals across campus during Thursday’s snowfall. (Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald) (15 Jan 2016)

News Comments: A Topical Aside

Although this topic may not seem to immediately affect the streets of our fair city, it does affect a related aspect: community.

The Grand Forks Herald, after several months of allowing fewer and fewer articles to be commented upon, has finally removed all functionality on streets, etc.)?

And now that this particular community has been removed, how and where to rebuild a bigger and more inclusive one?

______________________________________

*Since I have no information on the reasons for the change, I’m forced to speculate. Obviously, if comments are hurting the company financially (paying someone to moderate, hosting fees, etc.), then there is no reason for Forum to keep them on at the Herald. I’m not asking for the Herald to keep free comments up if it is not helping them make money. Based on other AreaVoices comment sections remaining active, however, that doesn’t seem to be the reason.
**I have a theory that by allowing people to show off what they know through comment systems or message boards, we could get a better “oral history” of the area than we would if we relied only on people who want to edit Wikipedia. Wikipedia requires citations, comments do not.

State of the City 2013

The State of the City address was yesterday. You can find the summary information here (at least until next year). Direct links are below.
– Speech text
– Speech video

Highlights include a new focus on downtown and the 42nd Street corridor, props for Choice Health and Fitness and the Greenway, and especially support for CAT riders in the form of a new mobile app (well, actually interfacing with an existing mobile app, Columbia Road widening project, which focuses on moving cars, not people.

Geologic Figures Database, step 1

I hope to someday put together a tagged database of figures pulled from the geological literature that may be useful to others, primarily maps and stratigraphic columns. For now, though, I am sharing an Evernote notebook to which I will be adding over time. It can be accessed here:

~~https://www.evernote.com/pub/matthewbk/publicimages~~ [EDIT: No longer. 2014-02-04]

Future plans include tagging the images (type of map, area covered, stratigraphic units) but I am not sure of the platform to use. Tumblr, Blogger, or even Pinterest (in addition to the possibility of Drupal) are all possibilities at this point that will allow collaboration.

For whom is our mayor competing?

Chicago, Seattle Mayors Spar Over Bike Lanes, Tech Workers [Streetsblog]

Category: Uncategorized