Marsupial Bridge
Originally uploaded by compujeramey

The Brookings Institution recently ranked America’s most walkable big cities. Milwaukee didn’t crack the top 25 unfortunately, but consider this…

However, the Brookings report itself has some major flaws. I know I’m going to sound like a major hater here, but somehow out of 30 metropolitan regions nationwide, the Miami-Ft Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro ranked 8th place – above metros like New York and Philadelphia! For anyone who knows anything about cities and metropolitan regions, this should immediately raise a red flag.

So how is such a ranking possible, you ask? It comes down to Brookings’ flawed methodology for calculating walkable areas in each metro. Instead of calculating the percentage of area that is walkable in each metropolitan region, the Institution instead chose to go by arbitrary districts or neighborhoods, which vary considerably in size and functionality. For example, both Center City, Philadelphia and Coconut Grove, Miami were chosen as walkable locales within their respective metros. However, despite Center City being much, much larger than Coconut Grove, the two areas count the same…. Read more from Transit Miami

Milwaukee, while far from the ranks of Chicago and New York in terms of walkability, has made significant strides in the past few year. Things like the Marsupial Bridge, Oak Leaf Trail, and Riverwalk are significant and growing assets that signal the emergence of a pedestrian culture in urban Milwaukee.

It’s hard to find developments today in Milwaukee that aren’t pedestrian friendly. Developments like The Residences on Water, The Catalyst, and Edison Green all replace parking lots or underused gravel lots with intelligently-designed, sustainable towers that only will increase the pedestrian-centric transformation underway in Milwaukee.

Plus, it’s hard to ignore a city that has willingly removed an urban freeway to replace it with pedestrian-minded buildings.

So yeah, Milwaukee isn’t on a flawed list today, but the community at-large is working to set the standard for tomorrow.

Edison Green, LLC, a new venture by Russell Davis the owner of Café Vecchio Mondo and co-owner of Riverwalk Boat Rentals, recently responded to a City of Milwaukee RFP for the city-owned land at 1027 N. Edison St. The resolution 071131 seeking approval of the land sale will be before Tuesday’s Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee meeting and appears likely to receive approval because it meets the RFP design criteria for parking, building height, Riverwalk and environmental requirements. The project itself will consist of an eight-story building containing a restaurant on the first floor, banquet facilities on the second floor, as well as office and residential condominiums. The Riverwalk segment will be constructed with access to the restaurant helping to activate a new section of the downtown Riverwalk. Further the approach to parking is fairly unique by its utilization of a neighboring parking garage which should allow for reduced construction costs and higher densities. This project looks to provides quality infill on a long vacant parcel of riverfront land and should continue the ongoing downtown renaissance.

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