Weird request: anybody in Minneapolis want to take a field trip and look at a stairway for me? 630 Cedar Ave. S. had a big fire, and has scissor stairs. The state report about the fire implies that the stairways were open to one another (no wall separating them) – I'd like to confirm that was true.

How can we improve urban housing to support families? In a new post, I look at downtown Chicago. Despite building little family-friendly housing, it's been among the city's fastest-growing areas for families. That's owed to broadly building more housing. pencillingout.substack.com/p/chicagos-d...

Shoutout this incredibly photogenic cement truck that’s been all around Logan Square lately

Some snapshots of today’s snow day from the office

New post from @zyudhishthu.bsky.social Broad themes: 1. Families live in downtown Chicago! 2. Households with children continue to move to, or households without children start their families in, downtown Chicago 3. The number of children in downtown Chicago has grown a lot

Here is the requested take: publiccomment.blog/p/mamdani-th...

Really interesting analysis from @zyudhishthu.bsky.social about how building housing, in general, benefits the ability of families to live in a city. pencillingout.substack.com/p/chicagos-d...

Reminds me of this 1910 postcard, depicting St Paul as the "center of the earth"

i wrote about the old wieboldt's department store on milwaukee in wicker park—fire, labor strife, leveraged buyouts, and the idiotic urban renewal plan that leveled much of the surroundings for a 600+ car parking lot and a jewel osco in the early 1980s www.postcard-past.com/wieboldts-de...

I think I’ve read a lot of the best history books about Chicago, so I want to turn to New York a bit. So what are the must-read NYC history books? Bonus for emphases on housing and economics, but that’s not a requirement at all

Yet another wonderful post from A City That Works. citythatworks.substack.com/p/we-havent-...

Look at the impacts of Seattle's previous discretionary review requirements, which only kicked in at 8+ units: much less development above that size. At the same time, developers adjust below 8 units by building more sq ft/unit to adjust (meaning less lower-cost housing supply)

This is a nice story about the civic/social infrastructure that came out of Mamdani's campaign Now I want to see the @resnikoff.bsky.social take on it www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/n...

Make what you will of prediction markets, but in the past 24 hours they have hardly wavered at all in predicting Frey to be a strong favorite. Now, at 94% they are at their highest certainty yet in favor of Frey

Reading this on my delayed train ride to work where nobody takes off their backpacks or fills into the ends of the train, so people can’t board the train

I wonder if anyone ever actually paid 5 bucks for an NBER working paper...

Thanks to the NITA Act, and a city ordinance from @aldermanlaspata.bsky.social, Chicago has the highest population of any city in America that live on property that does not require vehicle parking

Observations from @salimfurth.bsky.social: "YIMBYs need solid research results. And economists need reality checks from people who know policy better than they do." marketurbanism.com/2025/11/03/h...

I didn't realize there was a prediction market for Minneapolis's mayoral election. I'm surprised to see that Frey is nearly as much of a favorite as Mamdani (who is at 90%) !! Meanwhile Davis and Hampton have been completely counted out

This weekend we were the Chicago Board of Trade and Ceres

Who recognizes this Beef?

Kind of unexpected chart from @ebwhamilton.bsky.social: In the US, the ratio of 3 and 4-bedroom housing units to households has actually grown quite a bit in the fast few decades! You hear a lot about a shortage of family housing, but this suggests the opposite? www.governing.com/urban/to-sup...

Chicago has had huge growth in the # households since 2010, meaning more demand for housing. As I blogged about a few months ago, it's not alone — in 2020 many cities reached all-time highs in the # of households, even after past population loss. pencillingout.substack.com/p/some-citie...

The newly pedestrianized strip of Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square was lovely today, with a big Day of the Dead market. Just a year ago, it was a loud and chaotic through street. Things changing for the better!

Rent control is a clear wedge issue in Minneapolis's housing policy debates, but interestingly the city is approaching a post-YIMBY politics: both Frey and Fateh tout their support for the Minneapolis 2040 Plan and say that more housing supply is a necessary part of the solution

Okay just a little more Twin Cities posting Truly the most lovely place that I miss very much

Turns out my college friends spent the last year living around the corner from this @seandsweeney.bsky.social apartment A great example of modern Minneapolis-style missing middle housing

I took the old Minneapolis streetcar last weekend. It has some great reproductions of 100-year-old Twin Cities ads

Wow, this series completely lives up to the hype Tangential: it is not exactly an urbanist novel, but there are many great depictions of Naples and reflections on how we are shaped by the places where we grow up or move to

Interesting — Omar Fateh says he would take notes from Saint Paul on what exemptions he might include in a rent stablization policy (he's light on specifics though). But I'm surprised to learn that CM Chughtai does not support exempting new construction

An 1889 ad for newly-built workers’ cottages in McKinley Park: “for the price, the handsomest, best-built brick cottages in the City.”

This is Berwyn, my red line station ❤️ Imagine instead of this city block wide jewel parking lot, we instead see more storefronts with entrances facing the sidewalk and housing built on top

Well, here it comes: @toreyvanoot.bsky.social reports that Waymo has hired lobbyists in Minnesota and been talking to state lawmakers, looking for legislative approval to operate in MN www.axios.com/local/twin-c...

I can't stop thinking about this. We're pursuing zero fire risk in multifam, while tolerating much more in single-fam. People respond by building and living in single-fam, where they're exposed to not only one of the highest fire death risks in the developed world, but also TONS more car crash risk

IMO @zyudhishthu.bsky.social nails it on mandatory minimum densities: you CAN do them right, but the benefits are so minimal & the risks so inevitable that they're not worth the trouble pencillingout.substack.com/p/can-we-boo...

Imagine waking up from a coma, out cold since 2016, to learn that “the governor of California is giving a non-response about statewide upzoning on a Fortnite stream”

Last fall, a developer proposed to destroy a Logan Square church for three single-family homes. New minimum density requirements in Chicago’s NW Side made this illegal, and 16 units will be built instead. Are these types of zoning laws good? I’m not so sure, and I blogged about why.

This is a nice working paper showing that traffic noise creates a pretty large externality. Near major roads, people are willing to pay ~6-10% more for homes after a sound barrier is built. They estimate that traffic noise has an aggregate externality of $110 billion!

We used to make some incredibly great lobbies for our office buildings

Passing through the area one might call the “Rust Belt of Chicago’s North side”

imagining jack kerouac drinking himself to death at a sports bar in a supermarket

St Paul is so back

Perfect sunrises on Fullerton, and Armitage, today

Alrighty I am at the "Edgewater Residents for Responsible (no) Development" meeting. Lively crowd tonight, the parking lot is full. I saw someone squarely and aggressively hit the curb on their way into the lot outside. Fortunately I took the train. And the folks im here with biked.

The US has a lot of lawyers per capita, and unsurprisingly it has a lot of lawsuits per capita, which probably matters for our ability to build things. Info by way of @zliscow.bsky.social pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

Chicago has had substantially higher inflation than other cities in the past few months, and that's almost entirely being driven by rising housing costs. But, this is after Chicago experienced relatively low inflation in 2023, driven by abnormally low growth in housing costs

Spending a few days in New Haven at @yimbytown.bsky.social was fun. I got to present about zoning reform in the Twin Cities with @britvulcan.net, plus learn from many smart people working on housing. Two thumbs up

While Minnesota hasn’t moved the needle, Minneapolis and St. Paul have made progress on zoning @zyudhishthu.bsky.social and @britvulcan.net from @moreneighbors.org share what is working and what isn’t @yimbytown.bsky.social

Going to @yimbytown.bsky.social this weekend and will be co-presenting with @zyudhishthu.bsky.social about how recent zoning code changes have impacted Minneapolis and St Paul!

This was a fantastic (though ultimately quite sad) piece of Chicago-centric fiction. Highly recommend