2024 was quite a year. For urbanists like myself, this week’s unveiling of congestion pricing on the streets of Manhattan was the equivalent to a New Year’s Eve “ball drop.” In case you’re not paying attention, New York City’s congestion pricing plan has been an idea for a half-century and a concrete policy proposal for almost two decades. After months of self-immolating political decisions from New York politicians, it’s finally happening, though in a diluted form.
So far, so good. Like dedicated bus lanes, it’s the kind of urban climate action that we need to shift the incentives and privilege allotted to different users of our public spaces.
Given the policy excitement, I am taking this opportunity to look back at my columns from the past year and, to some extent, some things I’m pondering in 2025.
To my eyes, last year’s big story remains the COVID pandemic and its prolonged effects on our urban society. A friend of mine commented the other day that our country has never really paused to mourn this event. Individually, we all have our stories, but as a whole, more than 1 million Americans died. Many times more had their lives fundamentally changed. For the most part, everyone seems to ignore this.
For cities, ignoring the pandemic is impossible. Last year, I wrote repeatedly about how workplace shifts have altered our downtowns. Thanks to the inertia of building assessments, leases, subleases and the like, the effects of that change are only beginning to “shake out.” I wrote about this early and often in 2024, and I don’t see any cooling off of this hot topic. In June, it grew so intense that I even evoked my personal patron saint, Jane Jacobs, in thinking about how decades of planning have led downtowns to this difficult impasse.
This downtown conundrum plays out differently in each city. Back in February, I pointed out the lack of downtown ice rinks in the Twin Cities, a glaring omission given how well they activate public space. (This is still a problem: Why not flood a block of Nicollet Mall?). A few months later St. Paul’s big “downtown revitalization” report came out, and it was full of good ideas for improving walkability. There seem to be a half-dozen studies and reports by this point, and it’s hard to keep up. Of course talk is relatively cheap; meaningful action is far more rare.
The other big impact of COVID has been on public safety and retail, and I had a handful of stories on these topics this year. In February, I wrote about the dispiriting nature of copper wire theft. While this problem is improving, as I travel around town I still fixate on the bases of street lamps. Many miles of everyday darkness remain on our streets.
Transportation changes
The issues around the light rail are rife with similar dynamics. For the 10th anniversary of the Metro Transit Green Line back in June, I wrote twice about how that investment has been playing out in our core cities. Long story short, COVID changed everything — from staffing to public safety — and change has been far slower than most people anticipated. That’s maybe one reason why the corner of Snelling and University, which saw a giant loon appear in September, has been ground zero for lowered expectations from city planners and community members alike.
Speaking of transportation, there was a lot going on there too, much of it connected to pandemic upheaval. Because infrastructure projects often take so so long to plan and construct, transportation is perhaps the slowest sector of the planning world to change. Witness the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s “Rethinking I-94” project, which I wrote about a few weeks go. It’s been in the works for almost a decade, with another decade or so to go, though the latest news looks grim for the “boulevard” or freeway reduction options. That’s bad news for the climate, to say the least.
To make matters worse, a couple of big-ticket transit projects are going badly. St. Paul’s Riverview Corridor finally died, and Ramsey County’s Purple Line seems to be on life support.
Retail was another sector affected by COVID, and where people’s habits continue to shift toward online and isolated experiences. That’s clearly played out, especially in formerly retail-oriented nodes like Uptown Minneapolis. A year ago I wrote about Grand Avenue, which continues to be a hot button St. Paul topic, and I came back to it in November when the long-standing Metro Independent Business Alliance closed up shop.
I’m definitely going to be looking at how commercial zoning and retail trends are affecting planning policies in 2025. And in other news, small businesses like the historic 19 Bar in Minneapolis’ Loring Park remain as priceless and irreplaceable as ever. I wrote about their tragic fire back in April, and am told that they will be reopening any day.
Housing headlines
Finally, housing remains the other big issue, almost an existential challenge (at least, if you’re a city). While Minneapolis and St. Paul have been somewhat on the cutting edge of housing policy in the US, the result on the ground hasn’t exactly been a panacea. This is partly thanks again to the slow pace of construction and financing, where policy changes take a long time to play out.
The two big stories were zoning reform and rent stabilization, which have tended to offset each other to some degree in how they’ve affected housing production and affordability in Minneapolis and St. Paul. I wrote about St. Paul’s proposal to change their existing rent stabilization policy back in August, and that’s sure to be a story that returns in 2025. It has certainly shaped the conversations about the Ford Site, which I discussed in my most recent piece. (See also: this story about a potential garbage truck industrial facility near West 7th Street; rent control makes an appearance.)
Meanwhile in Minneapolis, the specious anti-2040 Plan lawsuit finally died in 2024, just in time for the 2050 comp planning process to begin sometime late next year. It’s a great case study of how long it takes to change things in cities.
I wrote about another overlooked area of reform in March: the need for changes to the state building code. This was the column that generated the most pushback from commenters, who did not buy my argument that fire codes are too strict in ways that harm both livability and affordability. I predict this issue will return. More and more evidence points toward the need for single-stair reform in Minnesota, and other changes to loosen up restrictions on housing.
Stay tuned for more on all these topics as we move into 2025. As always, if you have any good story ideas or suggestions I’m happy to hear them. Personally, 2024 was a banner year because Minnpost launched an official Cityscape newsletter, and some of my favorite columns this year have been ideas directly from you, the readers. This includes the Rethinking 94 piece, the one on 740 River Drive in St. Paul’s highland neighborhood, the Desnoyer Park merchandise scoop, and the recent column on demographic modeling. Please keep them coming in 2025, and we’ll see where the city takes us.
Bill Lindeke is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Geography, Environment and Society. He is the author of multiple books on Twin Cities culture and history, most recently St. Paul: an Urban Biography. Follow Bill on Twitter: @BillLindeke.
