{"id":86979,"date":"2024-02-09T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86979"},"modified":"2024-02-09T07:03:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T13:03:03","slug":"failures-of-reimagination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86979","title":{"rendered":"Failures Of Reimagination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hang onto your wallets. The same bureaucrats who connived with the City of Minneapolis’s ruling class are, uh, “reimagining<\/a>” again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to talk about how we\u2019re going to reimagine downtown,\u201d Adam Duininck, Minneapolis Downtown Council president, said at the annual meeting. \u201cOur story\u2019s going to continue to be centered around public safety, inclusion and reimagining the future of downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Duininck, a former head of the Met Council, is a lifelong DFL fixture; his imagination has given this blog a lot of material<\/a> over the years. While the Southwest Light Rail debacle wasn’t entirely <\/em>his fault, he was part of the ocntinuum of bureaucratic arrogance and, shall we say, less than exceptional capability that has turned that project into the flaming dumpster it’s been since its inception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, with the Downtown Council – the crowd that brought you the redevelopment of Block E – they want to “Reimagine” again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Downtown safety continues to be a concern for some Minnesotans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking a look at 2023 city data, violent crime is down about 14% downtown compared to 2022<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Why do they never compare crime with, say, 2016? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway – this is far from the first time the “in” crowd has tried to “reimagine” downtown; efforts go back to the disastrous “Urban Renewal” effots in the ’50s and ’60s, the building of Nicollet Mall in the ’60s and ’70s, the building of the Metrodome in the ’80s, the rebuilding of the Nicollet Mall in the ’80s, Light Rail, the de-building of the Metrodome and its replacement with Darth Vader’s fishing cabin, Betsy Hodges’ exquisitely expensive Bauhaus rebuilding of Nicollet Mall in the 2010s…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and the’re not done with Nicollet Mall: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Looking ahead, city leaders said there will be challenges, but 2023 was a turning point to reinvent what downtown could be.

\u201cOn Nicollet Mall, we can have a fully pedestrian world-class mall<\/strong>. We can set a tone for other cities to follow,\u201d Frey said. \u201cWhy can\u2019t it be more like Times Square? Why can\u2019t we have digital billboards off and tons of light and activity? Why can\u2019t we use that excess revenue to do more programming to make sure that there\u2019s activity 100% of the time?\u201d

Another goal has been to get people back in the office downtown.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

“On Nicollet Mall, we can have a fully pedestrian world-class mall”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What – again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could someone just buy the Downtown Council a “Minecraft” subscription?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The free market could, of course, settle this inside a generation – if there were a free market in force downtown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Downtown Minnepolis is in the state it’s in because <\/em>of politics – the spring from which government planning flows, and the arthritic yet flighty decision making process that comes with it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hang onto your wallets. The same bureaucrats who connived with the City of Minneapolis’s ruling class are, uh, “reimagining” again: \u201cWe\u2019re going to talk about how we\u2019re going to reimagine downtown,\u201d Adam Duininck, Minneapolis Downtown Council president, said at the annual meeting. \u201cOur story\u2019s going to continue to be centered around public safety, inclusion and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minneapolis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86980,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86979\/revisions\/86980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}