Wizard's got a point: there's noting like living in an area for many years to give one a feel for a place. My geography gurus call this "a sense of place". Not exactly rocket science if you think about it. My favorite outdoor pastimes now are walking around the neighborhood and taking 50-cent bus rides. The thing is, I've been walking and taking the bus and driving a car or a pickup truck in this part of town for quite a while and I've seen lots of changes.
Nicollet-Lake is a really busy place. So is "Eat Street" - just to the north of that superblock. McDonald's is just east of the Interstate and there's a nearby Taco Bell. Now there are Latino eateries and Somali grocery stores further along and I bet we'll see more places cropping up when the Sears complex comes on line. We all like to eat, me especially. Commercial strips that were sometimes nasty ten-fifteen years ago are really coming to life and there will be much more commercial infill as Lake St. is rebuilt and some sense is made of the vehicular traffic challenges. This hasn't been a sudden transformation. Progress is incremental in this part of town. But we who live here know what we're talking about. Conversely, I needed to make my way to Eden Prairie City Hall a few weeks ago and took what MTC had to offer by way of point-to-point transportation. Not to knock Eden Prairie - I've watched that grow out of the cornfields just as the elderly ladies in Southwest Minneapolis that I used to do chores for in the late 1980s would tell me about the cows they used to be able to see in what is now Richfield. But out there past 494 - you need a car. It's just not like Minneapolis' oldest neighborhoods. You can't walk two blocks to buy eggs for cheap. The bottom line for me is that whizzing around on the Interstates doesn't give one much of an urban narrative. Suburbs are swell but they're of recent vintage. Get out of a vehicle in my part of the settlement and it's urban. It's been urban through a solid century of succession migration and even mighty Allina is just the new kid on the block. Big kid, granted, but it has welcoming neighbors. We'll get along just fine. You wait and see. Fred Markus, West Phillips REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
