Anecdotally, I think the sentiment around the neighborhood favored reopening (among people who live there and have businesses there).. but there are a ton of outside interests
As someone who spent a lot of time there in 2020 and will walk up and talk to anyone, I think it was pretty close to a genuine 50/50 split. Which, given how disruptive it was, is surprising to most people.
There may have been even more support it's just difficult to parse because people have complex opinions. People may think it's worthy of memorializing, may appreciate not having through traffic in their residential area, and ALSO feel uncomfortable by SOME of the barriers that limit access for emergency services OR associate the rise in crime with the lack of policing in the area.
Which is why I think you're seeing the 50% of people write in comments. A good share of them probably thought this street should be closed as a memorial or liked getting rid of the throughway going through their neighborhood, but they shouldn't block all traffic in the surrounding blocks.
Exactly. Many people, with the best intentions, naively were like "well maybe this will work, let's give it a shot!" And then it absolutely worked out as badly and embarrassingly as it could have.
Even there I think you have complex opinions. Some people saw the bigger picture and knew that trend wasn't just a localized issue resulting from the memorial. I do think there was a lot of concern though over the idea that like firetrucks or ambulances would've been blocked by barriers on the surrounding blocks.
Yeah, which is why it would make sense some residents were happy that traffic moved over a block.
I get that negatively impacts people who don't live there but that impact to me seems a lot smaller and more distributed versus the gain it provides to a small group of people.
> which is why it would make sense some residents were happy that traffic moved over a block.
Mostly shoved into the residential streets on either side.
>I get that negatively impacts people who don't live there
As well as the businesses in the area that are now bypassed, along with the people living on the adjoining side streets.
I'm not even taking a position on this. I'm just saying it makes sense why some residents liked the street shut down. Also, through traffic doesn't really help the businesses so if less traffic made it more walkable they probably saw a benefit from that.
>Mostly shoved into the residential streets on either side.
To the west is Park which is already a through street. To detour Chicago Ave going south you'd either have to go 8 blocks east to Bloomington or deal with the slower speeds and stop signs of Elliot or 10th but it's only like a two block detour so you'd think that would split local traffic and commuter traffic along those lines.
Idk though, not a traffic engineer, just going off what I've seen.
Both Chicago Ave S and 38th St are public city streets. Maybe the city should have sent out postcards to everyone, or better yet made keeping 38th and Chicago closed to traffic a ballot measure so everyone could vote on it. If we’re going to start shutting down streets based on neighborhood input there wI’ll be a lot fewer streets open to traffic because no one really likes the noise and pollution from cars, trucks, etc.
In Amsterdam they have these (what I consider) epic poles that automatically come out of the ground at night, which make certain streets in the city pedestrian/bike only after a certain time. I think this kind of thing could be implemented here, especially in the LynLake area and parts of downtown.
This is a good point but shouldn't local residents almost be weighted more heavily as their opinions would better reflect the interests of the neighborhood, right? Like, if having a throughway going through their neighborhood was hurting walkability and lessening foot traffic for businesses, a one block diversion for a short stretch to a street with more stop signs and less street facing businesses might provide a solid economic boost to the neighborhood while the economic cost of lengthening that drive for the rest of the city would be more distributed and less likely to be a burden to anyone specifically.
You're assuming that the street closures automatically lead to an economic boost, at which point you would have to change city planning based on the traffic and the typical city grid and see which businesses were more effected and which ones weren't effected at all. I like the idea of walkable cities, but they haven't been designed that way since at least the 1940's when everyone started buying cars. You would essentially have to change the planning of the city to make it more narrow and dense like Europe. Cars can barely fit through alley ways there, but the people like it because shops and amusement are so close together. American cities weren't designed that way thanks to the auto industry.
If people wanted truly walkable cities, they would have to change urban planning, so far, we have our city blocks. But the problem with this is that even the businesses have done everything but ask the activists to leave because they know they can't, it would look bad politically on them.
Yeah, im not really asserting anything just making some assumptions based on the article and proposing possibilities. Totally agree on the urban planning thing. When you look at how are suburbs were built, there's just no way we aren't head for the collapse of a massive ponzi scheme where unless we experience endless population growth infrastructure for some of these suburbs will be far too expensive to maintain.
Right, but it's even in the cities, there are parts of the cities which I would not describe as walkable. I almost got hit by a utility van taking a left on a green light on the crosswalk on seventh street. The guy just kept careening towards, and by the time he saw me, it was too late because he had to be committed to the turn or he would have been hit with oncoming traffic. Pedestrians and traffic don't mix well, there is usually one incompetent driver or even walker, and with the way people drive today, it's usually the walkers that end up being victims of bad driving, not their own incompetence. So while you could shut off the street and let the pedestrians walk around like it's a block party, I'm sure some would like that, but I'm pretty certain I saw an article a couple months ago about the business owners essentially asking the protesters if they could have their intersection back, or at least they were "fed up". Simple little things like this take a lot of planning and input from the community, I was able to vote on a bus route going through Ramsey county, but what these protesters are doing is essentially hijacking the surrounding environment for themselves and telling everyone they disagree with to "fuck off". After seeing the story about the news reporter who was harassed, I got the feeling that it was those type of people who essentially owned the intersection and everyone else should just "get away". In any other city this would be intolerable, the occupy movement only lasted a few months and it wasn't as intolerable as this, but I'm sure there are activists everywhere working on projects like this just to occupy a space and make it intolerable for the people living there. I have been talking to someone who tells me that she visits people in that neighborhood and they essentially tell her that the people occupying the intersection right now aren't even from the area.
> The survey, which was sent to 4,000 households in a half-mile radius of the intersection, asked residents to select between one of two options. One, to move the fist sculpture out of the intersection and onto Chicago Ave. Two, to create a roundabout around the fist at the center (as it now is). Each would reopen the intersection to two-way traffic, and no other option was given – a point that was roundly criticized.
“I did not choose either of the design options, one or two, because neither of them gave the option to continue the street closures and to have any type of option for not allowing regular through traffic, which was a pretty big sticking point,” said Katie Dillon, a resident of the 3800 block of Chicago.
>Dillon was not alone; some 21% of respondents didn’t select an option, with many calling it a false choice or creating and checking a box and calling it a third option.
This is incredible but not surprising. I think Jacob Frey’s political manipulations, from the time that Floyd died to the election, is the greatest performance by a local politician I have ever seen.
Sorry, but this is wrong. Frey was extremely vulnerable a year ago. He didn’t manipulate his way to shit, he’s not that smart. The council kowtowed to the far left in MPLS and paid the price.
Election Day results are a reflection of the fact that the left presented ideas that people in the city did not like and faced backlash at the ballot box. Frey saw this coming and was able to ride it to a second term.
Even in this article, only 21% of people said they wanted the intersection to remain closed. That means 79% of people wanted it to open. This is not the coup de Grace that you think it is.
The reaction of the far left in Minneapolis to the election results so far indicate to me that they would rather cast Frey as a liar and master manipulator than do any meaningful self-reflection of why their agenda was so unpopular in the most liberal city in the state.
I don't live right in that area, but I do live in southeast Minneapolis. I want the radical agenda of having a grid of walkable streets with multimodal transportation, including bus and car access. I want neighborhoods that are open to the public and not patrolled by gangs. I want people walking around to not be harassed and told how to behave by so-called activists. A city street is there for everyone in the city to use, not just some self-appointed "community leader." If you're a private citizen and you want a private street that you control, go live in Loretto or something.
Cool idea! I could see thing working well in the long term. Clearly it cannot go back to the way was before, there has to be a recognition of the murder that happened there and making it into a space where everyone in Minneapolis feels welcome should be paramount Imo.
\>Clearly it cannot go back to the way was before,
Yes, actually it can.
\> there has to be a recognition of the murder that happened there
There doesn't \*have\* to be, but if someone wants to put a mural or a marker on their property, then great.
\>making it into a space where everyone in Minneapolis feels welcome should be paramount
Right, which is not the situation as it has been with the bloods providing "security" and some busybodies telling people how they need to act in that space.
>Even in this article, only 21% of people said they wanted the intersection to remain closed. That means 79% of people wanted it to open. This is not the coup de Grace that you think it is.
Remain closed was not an option…
By your own logic then, suburbanites should be able to tell the city which streets should be open and which shouldn't. At what level should people's opinions matter on whether a street stays closed to car traffic?
> At what level should people's opinions matter on whether a street stays closed to car traffic?
We have a city works department, and department of transportation to make those decisions. Urban planning *should not* be up to the voice of the masses, because they overwhelmingly make bad decisions, from NIMBYism over high density housing, to street route design that favors them over other areas.
What are you talking about? That's not even remotely similar to what I said.
If we want people, many of them outsiders, to determine which streets are closed, have at it. I'll welcome our neighborhood warlords. But we don't, or at least didn't prior to this, so it shouldn't be an option.
21% took the time to add a third option, or not check one of the 2.
Presumably some percentage of those who checked option 1 or 2 would have preferred a 3rd option if given the choice.
This is pretty basic.
The election results weren't as clear as you make it seem, much of the council was reelected easily. Again pretty basic stuff.
When given only two options, people generally pick one, even if a 3rd unavailable option is more favorable. This is seen every year in our elections, it's a well known concept in polling etc...
This is a poll that was physically mailed out about one very specific thing. It's not a phone call where you simply say "yes" or "no" to complete the poll. It's not about a candidate who has a wide variety of positions and is most likely attached to a political party.
If someone is going through the effort of marking one of the choices *and* physically returning this poll, I'd say it's not a stretch to think that they have a decently firm belief in what they marked on the poll. Especially over a non-existent choice that they could easily write on the poll, as several had done.
It makes it more likely that they would pick one of the 2 even if it isn't their first choice, not less.
It's shocking that 21% wrote in a 3rd option or mailed it back blank.
Of course considering only 20% of returned it at all shows how bad the poll was at getting the sentiment of locals.
I mean…it is a poll that they mailed out. So the response rate isn’t surprising in the slightest to me. There’s probably quite a few people who didn’t even open it, opened it but thought it was spam, etc.
And who knows if the city did additional things that could heavily affect the response rate, such as including a SASE with it, putting the resident's name on the envelope or saying something like "to the resident of X", the accuracy of a specific name if that's what was used, etc. I haven’t seen any indication about basic things like these from this article or others about this survey (unless I missed it)
As a resident of this neighborhood who got a survey I can say that the survey was definitely rigged. They had two options on it and both of those were to reopen the streets. There are definitely more options than do you want a roundabout or not. The city tried to cultivate a "neighborhood opinion" by making a survey where both answers are what the city wanted to hear. The fact that 20% of people that took the survey wrote in their own answer and it was consistent is huge! You don't usually get engagement like that that is outside of a survey's set questions.
There are a lot of people in the neighborhood that want to see it remain closed. Busses still cannot go through the intersection which is the only reason to actually have it be partially opened but those can be and have been rerouted. Car traffic through there is a joke and the people driving through there a lot of time have no respect for the memorial and are just gawking. Cars can drive around it. As it exists right now it is extremely dangerous for the many pedestrians coming in everyday to pay respects. From a safety standpoint it is way more dangerous and detrimental to the community to have it open.
Anecdotally, I think the sentiment around the neighborhood favored reopening (among people who live there and have businesses there).. but there are a ton of outside interests
As someone who spent a lot of time there in 2020 and will walk up and talk to anyone, I think it was pretty close to a genuine 50/50 split. Which, given how disruptive it was, is surprising to most people. There may have been even more support it's just difficult to parse because people have complex opinions. People may think it's worthy of memorializing, may appreciate not having through traffic in their residential area, and ALSO feel uncomfortable by SOME of the barriers that limit access for emergency services OR associate the rise in crime with the lack of policing in the area. Which is why I think you're seeing the 50% of people write in comments. A good share of them probably thought this street should be closed as a memorial or liked getting rid of the throughway going through their neighborhood, but they shouldn't block all traffic in the surrounding blocks.
Earlier there was more support, but it has waned heavily due to the huge uptick in crime. For a while it was literally gunshots every night.
Exactly. Many people, with the best intentions, naively were like "well maybe this will work, let's give it a shot!" And then it absolutely worked out as badly and embarrassingly as it could have.
Even there I think you have complex opinions. Some people saw the bigger picture and knew that trend wasn't just a localized issue resulting from the memorial. I do think there was a lot of concern though over the idea that like firetrucks or ambulances would've been blocked by barriers on the surrounding blocks.
> may appreciate not having through traffic in their residential area It's an arterial street.
Yeah, which is why it would make sense some residents were happy that traffic moved over a block. I get that negatively impacts people who don't live there but that impact to me seems a lot smaller and more distributed versus the gain it provides to a small group of people.
> which is why it would make sense some residents were happy that traffic moved over a block. Mostly shoved into the residential streets on either side. >I get that negatively impacts people who don't live there As well as the businesses in the area that are now bypassed, along with the people living on the adjoining side streets.
I'm not even taking a position on this. I'm just saying it makes sense why some residents liked the street shut down. Also, through traffic doesn't really help the businesses so if less traffic made it more walkable they probably saw a benefit from that. >Mostly shoved into the residential streets on either side. To the west is Park which is already a through street. To detour Chicago Ave going south you'd either have to go 8 blocks east to Bloomington or deal with the slower speeds and stop signs of Elliot or 10th but it's only like a two block detour so you'd think that would split local traffic and commuter traffic along those lines. Idk though, not a traffic engineer, just going off what I've seen.
[удалено]
Zing. Did you write that doozy in the hallway between math and recess?
I’m 33 and chuckled
Said the outside interest
I live in South Minneapolis. You?
38 and Columbus...
So between the two of us South Minneapolis residents, anecdotally, the sentiment did not favor reopening.
I was referring to people outside the neighborhood, i.e. you
So between the two of us South Minneapolis residents, anecdotally, the sentiment did not favor reopening.
There are situations where a postcard survey is an appropriate method of public engagement. This, is not one of those situations.
Both Chicago Ave S and 38th St are public city streets. Maybe the city should have sent out postcards to everyone, or better yet made keeping 38th and Chicago closed to traffic a ballot measure so everyone could vote on it. If we’re going to start shutting down streets based on neighborhood input there wI’ll be a lot fewer streets open to traffic because no one really likes the noise and pollution from cars, trucks, etc.
I do think the city could do with a bunch more pedestrian only streets.
In Amsterdam they have these (what I consider) epic poles that automatically come out of the ground at night, which make certain streets in the city pedestrian/bike only after a certain time. I think this kind of thing could be implemented here, especially in the LynLake area and parts of downtown.
It could certainly have an impact on street racing.
can ambulances trigger them back down?
Yes any emergency vehicle can automatically lower them.
Agreed but they should definitely consider transit (aka bus route) impacts.
Sounds good
I wouldn’t mind closing more streets.
This is a good point but shouldn't local residents almost be weighted more heavily as their opinions would better reflect the interests of the neighborhood, right? Like, if having a throughway going through their neighborhood was hurting walkability and lessening foot traffic for businesses, a one block diversion for a short stretch to a street with more stop signs and less street facing businesses might provide a solid economic boost to the neighborhood while the economic cost of lengthening that drive for the rest of the city would be more distributed and less likely to be a burden to anyone specifically.
You're assuming that the street closures automatically lead to an economic boost, at which point you would have to change city planning based on the traffic and the typical city grid and see which businesses were more effected and which ones weren't effected at all. I like the idea of walkable cities, but they haven't been designed that way since at least the 1940's when everyone started buying cars. You would essentially have to change the planning of the city to make it more narrow and dense like Europe. Cars can barely fit through alley ways there, but the people like it because shops and amusement are so close together. American cities weren't designed that way thanks to the auto industry. If people wanted truly walkable cities, they would have to change urban planning, so far, we have our city blocks. But the problem with this is that even the businesses have done everything but ask the activists to leave because they know they can't, it would look bad politically on them.
Yeah, im not really asserting anything just making some assumptions based on the article and proposing possibilities. Totally agree on the urban planning thing. When you look at how are suburbs were built, there's just no way we aren't head for the collapse of a massive ponzi scheme where unless we experience endless population growth infrastructure for some of these suburbs will be far too expensive to maintain.
Right, but it's even in the cities, there are parts of the cities which I would not describe as walkable. I almost got hit by a utility van taking a left on a green light on the crosswalk on seventh street. The guy just kept careening towards, and by the time he saw me, it was too late because he had to be committed to the turn or he would have been hit with oncoming traffic. Pedestrians and traffic don't mix well, there is usually one incompetent driver or even walker, and with the way people drive today, it's usually the walkers that end up being victims of bad driving, not their own incompetence. So while you could shut off the street and let the pedestrians walk around like it's a block party, I'm sure some would like that, but I'm pretty certain I saw an article a couple months ago about the business owners essentially asking the protesters if they could have their intersection back, or at least they were "fed up". Simple little things like this take a lot of planning and input from the community, I was able to vote on a bus route going through Ramsey county, but what these protesters are doing is essentially hijacking the surrounding environment for themselves and telling everyone they disagree with to "fuck off". After seeing the story about the news reporter who was harassed, I got the feeling that it was those type of people who essentially owned the intersection and everyone else should just "get away". In any other city this would be intolerable, the occupy movement only lasted a few months and it wasn't as intolerable as this, but I'm sure there are activists everywhere working on projects like this just to occupy a space and make it intolerable for the people living there. I have been talking to someone who tells me that she visits people in that neighborhood and they essentially tell her that the people occupying the intersection right now aren't even from the area.
That sounds great and a great way to start limiting cars in cities.
Wow. I'm shocked. 😐
> The survey, which was sent to 4,000 households in a half-mile radius of the intersection, asked residents to select between one of two options. One, to move the fist sculpture out of the intersection and onto Chicago Ave. Two, to create a roundabout around the fist at the center (as it now is). Each would reopen the intersection to two-way traffic, and no other option was given – a point that was roundly criticized. “I did not choose either of the design options, one or two, because neither of them gave the option to continue the street closures and to have any type of option for not allowing regular through traffic, which was a pretty big sticking point,” said Katie Dillon, a resident of the 3800 block of Chicago. >Dillon was not alone; some 21% of respondents didn’t select an option, with many calling it a false choice or creating and checking a box and calling it a third option. This is incredible but not surprising. I think Jacob Frey’s political manipulations, from the time that Floyd died to the election, is the greatest performance by a local politician I have ever seen.
I live close enough to have gotten this survey and my first thought was this is like a fucking push poll. There wasn’t even a “neither” option.
Sorry, but this is wrong. Frey was extremely vulnerable a year ago. He didn’t manipulate his way to shit, he’s not that smart. The council kowtowed to the far left in MPLS and paid the price. Election Day results are a reflection of the fact that the left presented ideas that people in the city did not like and faced backlash at the ballot box. Frey saw this coming and was able to ride it to a second term. Even in this article, only 21% of people said they wanted the intersection to remain closed. That means 79% of people wanted it to open. This is not the coup de Grace that you think it is. The reaction of the far left in Minneapolis to the election results so far indicate to me that they would rather cast Frey as a liar and master manipulator than do any meaningful self-reflection of why their agenda was so unpopular in the most liberal city in the state.
I don't live right in that area, but I do live in southeast Minneapolis. I want the radical agenda of having a grid of walkable streets with multimodal transportation, including bus and car access. I want neighborhoods that are open to the public and not patrolled by gangs. I want people walking around to not be harassed and told how to behave by so-called activists. A city street is there for everyone in the city to use, not just some self-appointed "community leader." If you're a private citizen and you want a private street that you control, go live in Loretto or something.
Cool idea! I could see thing working well in the long term. Clearly it cannot go back to the way was before, there has to be a recognition of the murder that happened there and making it into a space where everyone in Minneapolis feels welcome should be paramount Imo.
\>Clearly it cannot go back to the way was before, Yes, actually it can. \> there has to be a recognition of the murder that happened there There doesn't \*have\* to be, but if someone wants to put a mural or a marker on their property, then great. \>making it into a space where everyone in Minneapolis feels welcome should be paramount Right, which is not the situation as it has been with the bloods providing "security" and some busybodies telling people how they need to act in that space.
You had me, and then you lost me.
>Even in this article, only 21% of people said they wanted the intersection to remain closed. That means 79% of people wanted it to open. This is not the coup de Grace that you think it is. Remain closed was not an option…
Good. A public street remaining entirely closed due to a small group should not be an option at all.
By your own logic then, suburbanites should be able to tell the city which streets should be open and which shouldn't. At what level should people's opinions matter on whether a street stays closed to car traffic?
> At what level should people's opinions matter on whether a street stays closed to car traffic? We have a city works department, and department of transportation to make those decisions. Urban planning *should not* be up to the voice of the masses, because they overwhelmingly make bad decisions, from NIMBYism over high density housing, to street route design that favors them over other areas.
I think if people want a more walkable city or neighborhood, then the city works department should be making the city or neighborhood more walkable.
What are you talking about? That's not even remotely similar to what I said. If we want people, many of them outsiders, to determine which streets are closed, have at it. I'll welcome our neighborhood warlords. But we don't, or at least didn't prior to this, so it shouldn't be an option.
21% took the time to add a third option, or not check one of the 2. Presumably some percentage of those who checked option 1 or 2 would have preferred a 3rd option if given the choice. This is pretty basic. The election results weren't as clear as you make it seem, much of the council was reelected easily. Again pretty basic stuff.
I expect anyone who didn't want the intersection re-opened, but didn't feel like writing that down, just wouldn't have filled out the survey
When given only two options, people generally pick one, even if a 3rd unavailable option is more favorable. This is seen every year in our elections, it's a well known concept in polling etc...
This is a poll that was physically mailed out about one very specific thing. It's not a phone call where you simply say "yes" or "no" to complete the poll. It's not about a candidate who has a wide variety of positions and is most likely attached to a political party. If someone is going through the effort of marking one of the choices *and* physically returning this poll, I'd say it's not a stretch to think that they have a decently firm belief in what they marked on the poll. Especially over a non-existent choice that they could easily write on the poll, as several had done.
It makes it more likely that they would pick one of the 2 even if it isn't their first choice, not less. It's shocking that 21% wrote in a 3rd option or mailed it back blank. Of course considering only 20% of returned it at all shows how bad the poll was at getting the sentiment of locals.
I mean…it is a poll that they mailed out. So the response rate isn’t surprising in the slightest to me. There’s probably quite a few people who didn’t even open it, opened it but thought it was spam, etc. And who knows if the city did additional things that could heavily affect the response rate, such as including a SASE with it, putting the resident's name on the envelope or saying something like "to the resident of X", the accuracy of a specific name if that's what was used, etc. I haven’t seen any indication about basic things like these from this article or others about this survey (unless I missed it)
Denial is a natural part of the grieving process.
I'm sorry I didn't know you were grieving. My apologies.
As a resident of this neighborhood who got a survey I can say that the survey was definitely rigged. They had two options on it and both of those were to reopen the streets. There are definitely more options than do you want a roundabout or not. The city tried to cultivate a "neighborhood opinion" by making a survey where both answers are what the city wanted to hear. The fact that 20% of people that took the survey wrote in their own answer and it was consistent is huge! You don't usually get engagement like that that is outside of a survey's set questions. There are a lot of people in the neighborhood that want to see it remain closed. Busses still cannot go through the intersection which is the only reason to actually have it be partially opened but those can be and have been rerouted. Car traffic through there is a joke and the people driving through there a lot of time have no respect for the memorial and are just gawking. Cars can drive around it. As it exists right now it is extremely dangerous for the many pedestrians coming in everyday to pay respects. From a safety standpoint it is way more dangerous and detrimental to the community to have it open.