How and when did you become interested in urban planning?
I think that this question could have multiple answers, one would be when and how I decided to pursue it as a career, and another when and how I became interested in cities, and transportation infrastructure – how this stuff works or doesn’t. For the first answer, I first took an urban studies course during undergrad where I read the book “Origins of the Urban Crisis” by Thomas Sugrue, the book chronicles the downfall of Detroit from its height as the “Arsenal of Democracy” to its rapid decline into bankruptcy and desolation. The book presents a sobering account of the forces which conspired to destroy not only Detroit but most of the US’s urban centers through the 20th century. This book led me to write my own chronicle about the downward spiral of my hometown and to piece together the forces here which conspired to level the same fate on Minneapolis. I would also like to shout out to “The Geography of Nowhere” by James Kunstler as a second inspiration for the truly ugly absurdity of modern suburban America.
For the second answer, SimCity was absurdly impactful on my little brain. From SimCity 2000 to Cities Skylines, I have sunk an embarrassing amount of time into building my own little worlds where what I say goes, unfortunately for my ego, the real world doesn’t quite work like that.
You wrote your bachelor's thesis on twin cities' history. Why did you gravitate toward local history rather than more exotic times and places?
As I mentioned previously, the decline and destruction of once beautiful cities have always fascinated me, whether that be ancient Rome or modern Detroit, but I wanted to discover more about why MY city had not escaped the same sad fate as other US cities. Minneapolis is an interesting case study, I focused on the decline and total destruction of the Gateway District of the city and how its fate was tied to much more than just the wrecking balls that knocked down its ornate buildings. The first-ever completely enclosed mall was built in Edina (Southdale) and is still there today and proved just the recipe to accelerate the drive-by culture of modern America. The malls of the suburbs were not the only thing that help to accelerate the demise of inner cities, but they are a piece of the puzzle, almost an unintended consequence of bigger forces. Freeways, “slum clearance”, suburban mortgage preference, red lining, public housing, racism, riots, nuclear war, idle factories, and globalism all played roles in turning our once-bustling cities into glorified parking lots. These issues are not ancient history either, which is another aspect that drew me, sure I could look at what Julius Caesar did to the Gauls in 50 BC but what could I learn that would be relevant for the modern world? Cities are history we are living in every day.
I think in the grand scheme of things, modern US development patterns are rather exotic, in that they never existed in human history before about 1950 and they likely are not long to last in this world. If humanity continues beyond our modern calamities, suburban America will be just a small blip and likely be looked at with contempt and derision, a particularly wasteful and destructive practice.
What inspired you to create the Lost Minneapolis map?Modern architecture generally lacks a certain level of complexity and visual interest to me. Everything is codified in a book, laws that say how high, how many doors, how many materials, etc dictate what can or cannot exist in our modern vernacular. There is a sort of fascinating mystery and awe which corresponds with the opulent buildings of the past. Minneapolis particularly was not overly concerned with the past and has gone on to destroy some of its most impressive buildings, buildings that brought stories, character, and definition that modern glass skyscrapers decidedly lack. Minneapolis is not unique in this fact, but it's always worthwhile to see what we lost so we don’t make the same mistakes again. Also, I do love the art style of the old drawings of buildings, the hyper-realism while still clearly being a drawing is appealing.
Which landmark or building of Lost Minneapolis do you consider the most tragic loss?
The Metropolitan Building, Great Northern Depot, and the Industrial Exposition Building – each for different reasons.
The Metropolitan Building was condemned and demolished for a parking lot while still being fully occupied and well kept. It’s a corrupt tragedy that felled a beautiful building, which was still functioning at a high level, and replaced with essentially nothing – a huge loss, at no gain.
The Great Northern Depot was not necessarily the most beautiful or notable building, but what it represented was – a main passenger rail hub for the city and the region, once it was bulldozed and the tracks ripped up, there was no going back. Now we are spending billions to rebuild a worse system than what we willingly destroyed only a generation before and now Minneapolis lacks even basic regional or interstate rail capacity since there is no longer a central train depot, while St. Paul’s Union Depot is a great building, St Paul is not the center of the region and so that depot will continue to languish due to lack of real organic interest.
The Industrial Exposition Building. This building was probably not practical to maintain long term, it was not built with the best materials, was built very quickly and its scale was not conducive to easy upkeep. However, that’s not to say it was impossible to maintain, rather its destruction exemplifies the thinking of modern America obsessed with destruction and renewal. It was replaced by a Coca-Cola bottling plant which itself was destroyed only a few decades after the Expo building, today bland row houses and apartment towers sit on its site.
What is your favorite era of American architecture, especially in the Midwest and the Twin Cities in particular?The time period leading up to the Great Depression and after the Civil War (the 1870s to 1920s) I think brought us some of the most unique and long-lasting building styles, many of them uniquely American. Whether that be gothic skyscrapers in Chicago and New York, or the neo-classical monuments found in Washington DC and statehouses across the country. There is a level of detail and care found in these buildings that, combined with the technical advances of the time, could have only really been achieved then, when the old world, built by hand, met with the scale and technological rise of the modern world. Today, we can build things bigger, but we cannot match the craftsmanship of that age, simply because those craftsmen no longer exist. Once profit, or cost savings, became the main motivator of construction projects, the forces that created both beautifully intricate and large-scale buildings evaporated, sucked dry by the depression and run out of business by the suburban boxes that replaced our truly great urban spaces, left to decay if not outright bulldozed for parking lots.
What is your favorite extant building within the twin cities metro area?
I have always loved the designs of (old) churches, a certain grandeur and permanence emanate from them. The Cathedral of St Paul is hard to beat in that regard, a fantastic building sited at an amazing spot. However, I have recently become fascinated with Byzantine architecture, the sort of melding of ancient temples and medieval churches – a connection from ancient to more modern, Lakewood Cemetery’s chapel is a wonderful example, almost a little Hagia Sofia, beautiful both inside and outside and pretty unique for churches in the region. I would also give an honorable mention to Folwell Hall on the UofM campus, the detail is extraordinary and the proportions are just right.
Which twin cities neighborhood do you think has the finest residential architecture?It is very hard to beat Summit Hill in St Paul, most notably Crocus Hill. Just a fantastic walk, with old brick alleys and spectacular homes nestled at the top of the river bluff. The Victorian homes and dramatic grade changes of the topography give a sense that one is no longer in the modern Twin Cities. For Minneapolis proper, the Prospect Park neighborhood has a similar feel, nestled on top of Tower Hill with the imposing Witches Hat Tower standing over the well-kept and handsome turn-of-the-century homes is a great walk. I would also give a special shout-out to Milwaukee Avenue in Seward; the car-free street shows just how nice this experience is and what could be if we were all a little less car-obsessed.
How would you compare the character of Minneapolis versus Saint Paul?
I have always heard that Minneapolis is the first western city, and Saint Paul is the last eastern city. This to me holds pretty true, St Paul holding on much tighter to its history than Minneapolis while Minneapolis has experienced much more modern development. Otherwise, major differences which likely existed many years ago have mostly melted away, and the two cities blur into each other to the point where St Paul increasingly feels like just another neighborhood of the larger melded cities, especially the western side of St Paul, which other than the signs that say ‘Welcome to Saint Paul’ one would be hard-pressed to know they were in a different city.
Both Downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul appear to be ghost towns nowadays. Any theories as to why?St Paul and Minneapolis are ghost towns for different but similar reasons. First, St Paul’s downtown lacks the commercial activity density of Minneapolis, as Minneapolis is the true center city of the region (sorry St Paul). However, they both suffer from the same history that most downtowns in the country do. In the heights of urban renewal and freeway building frenzy, the downtowns were completely stripped of two important elements, access to the rest of the city – downtown was completely strangled by the wide freeways we have today which both cut off the downtowns from its surrounding supporting neighborhoods and suck capital and income from the city to the suburbs, the other very important element that was stripped from downtown was residential uses – for many decades the downtowns were exclusively commercial and entertainment hubs, serving as little more than a place to work and play but not to live. This just is not a natural evolution, residential neighborhoods were clear cut and replaced with highways, parking lots, commercial high-rises, sports stadiums, etc., and only in the past decade or two has this started to change, but with 60 years of precedent, it will still be some time before downtowns feel like a place to live rather than a place to just visit, I think this is at the heart of the ghost town feel you get walking down Nicollet Mall at 8 pm or… anywhere in downtown St Paul.
Some areas downtown show the potential of truly urban neighborhoods however, North Loop and Lowertown both are lively and populated at all times of the day. It is less than coincidental that both neighborhoods also retained much of their historic fabric, while the CBDs have been completely razed and rebuilt into soulless glass-covered skyscrapers, which now sit completely empty.
What was the worst urban planning decision in twin cities' history?
Building freeways through the heart of the cities. Not only do these freeways (and the plethora of other high-speed bloated roadways) literally kill Minneapolis and St Paul residents in the form of violent car crashes daily, but they also slowly kill us with toxic emissions, and they kill the cities themselves by sucking out capital and redistricting it to unproductive suburbs. This comes in the form of people and businesses which may use the city’s infrastructure but do not pay for it and elect representatives who fight to starve the cities even more. If not for the freeways, which were only possible from massive unbelievable federal subsidies, all of America’s cities would be better off – they would be financially healthier, they would be socially healthier, physically healthier, and environmentally healthier. Creating entire generations completely and utterly dependent on the motor vehicle was a mistake that we will continue to pay for a long time.
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How do you envision the future of the twin cities in urban planning terms? What are some barriers to progress in that regard?
The biggest issues I see are sunk costs, myopic thinking, and lurching momentum.
Sunk costs: The sunk cost fallacy is because you have spent considerable time, money, and/or resources on something then you must continue to do so. This is the logic I have seen at every level of government when discussing the issue of infrastructure, namely the impossible to maintain roadway networks. I say impossible not because it would be physically impossible to keep up with maintenance, rather it is practically impossible. In just Minnesota, MnDOT’s (yet to be released) Highway Investment Plan projects roughly a 50-BILLION-dollar shortfall from projected revenues and projected needs (keeping the highway system in a state of good repair) to 2050. Minnesota is a relatively small and well-maintained state. If our shortfall is that large, you can guess what the nation looks like as a whole. To actually adequately maintain all our roadways in a state of good repair projections run into the multiple trillions of dollars, which would not be a one-time solution either – as our heavier and heavier vehicle fleet causes more and more damage to the highway system, it’s a never-ending carousel of spiraling costs. But because it is what our DOTs and public works departments have been doing for multiple generations now (since at least the end of WW2), it is all they know, so we will keep getting band-aids until it all comes crashing down, one way or another.
Myopic thinking: This is not something limited to just Minnesota, but American thinking, in general, lacks the acknowledgment that other places exist and the ability to think of those things in an American context – there is FAR too much “well that would never work in America” thinking going on. America is certainly different in some ways, but the obsession and utter dependence on the automobile was a completely constructed phenomenon that was created over a few generations, created for profit and control by the powers that be. No American begged for freeways to rip apart our cities, no American asked to destroy mature streetcar networks in every single city in the nation, and no American wants to spend 45 minutes driving to work every day. Americans will do what is most convenient, cost-effective, and just plain available (like any human). For the past 80 years, the country has decided to make automobiles the most convenient and cost-effective means to travel, even when that is completely illogical and self-defeating. We are now reaping what we sowed over the past decades, and yet, still refuse to look at other nations for ideas on how to get us out of this mess, and we will continue to suffer because of it.
Lurching momentum: This idea is connected to the previous two. I like to compare our nation’s land use and infrastructure situation to the Titanic, the alarm bells are ringing in the captain’s quarter, and the crew is running around trying to move the boat before it hits the iceberg, but the captain is asleep and the momentum of the ship is too great to turn in time, the ship hits the iceberg and the unsinkable Titanic goes down on its maiden voyage. Now, I am not sure if we have hit the iceberg yet, or if it is still looming just in front of us, but make no mistake, we will hit that iceberg. The momentum of bureaucracy, the sunk costs, and myopic thinking make this all but an inevitability. We need a radical new way to think about how we get ourselves and our necessities around or else we face a bleak future of constant shortages and cascading infrastructure failures that have been predicted many years in advance.
These three themes are more national in thinking but reverberate in the Twin Cities. The slow rebuilding of a transit system will continue, full of cost overruns and delays because institutions in the US refuse to look to international expertise or utilize international firms which know how to build transit. The never-ending expansion of suburban and exurban homes will continue to eat up prime farmland and critical ecosystems. These ever further out housing tracts and strip malls will continue to be served by an ever-unwieldy freeway network, which will only continue to be more distressed as liabilities mount and revenues dry up. Speaking specifically of freeways and DOTs, no one is even considering what the impact of EVs will be on both national and state-level revenue streams. The state DOTs, nor the federal DOT, actually bring in enough revenue from vehicle taxes and fees to adequately fund the maintenance backlog of our highways and roadways today. What will the future have in store if driving is reduced (by choice or not) or if ICE vehicles are replaced with EV ones? EVs are far heavier than ICE vehicles due to the massive weight of batteries, while they in turn produce almost no revenue for roadway maintenance. This is not something being seriously considered by any policymakers, nor staff of our governments, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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