With the announcement that Target is opening a CityTarget store on State Street in Chicago’s The Loop Neighborhood, the idea of a downtown Milwaukee Target has been generating a considerable amount of buzz in the past few weeks. Unfortunately for those wishing to shop at a downtown Target, none of that buzz has come from Target. Assuming Target was interested though, what location and store format would best match the desires of Target-loving shoppers with the needs of the city to continue to develop a healthy urban core in and around downtown? Let’s explore.

Cities across the country are in the process of constructing or exploring ways to turn freeways into public space. The most notable example of this freeway-to-park transition is Boston’s Big Dig project, which turned the elevated Central Artery freeway (Interstate 93) into a 3.5-mile tunnel and replaced it with the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Boston project was incredibly expensive, but it’s hard to imagine downtown Boston and The North End with a freeway dividing them today. Turning freeways into parks appears to be a wise solution when a city’s central business district (many of which are encircled in freeways) run out of land that can be easily developed or when the freeway serves as a barrier between two successful urban neighborhoods. Would it be wise to implement such an idea in Milwaukee?

With the strong possibility that Milwaukee will be seeing streetcar service return to our streets in the coming years, we thought we should show some example systems from cities around the world.
Portland
Portland has led the way with transit infrastructure in the U.S.  For example, it was the first U.S. city to bring modern streetcars to [...]

Broadway is the center of the action in the Third Ward, it works for business, pedestrians, and even automobiles. But just across I-794 it is a wasteland of surface parking lots and empty storefronts. While there are surely numerous factors in place that have hurt the vitality of this street, an area that can be addressed by the city to make it more attractive to business is to improve the pedestrian environment.

With the recent news of the federal approval allowing the City of Milwaukee to move forward on a modern streetcar system we thought it would be good to see what one of these systems might look like. A comparable system to what is being proposed in Milwaukee is Seattle’s 2.6 mile South Lake Union Line which launched in 2007.

As the RTA inches closer and closer to reality in Milwaukee, what else is going on in transit elsewhere in the country?

Information from the infosphere…

Seattle mayor Greg Nickels is working on a plan that will encourage all city employees to use public transportation, by giving the free transit passes.  Milwaukee should get behind this.
The Daily Reporter has a good look at the issues affecting the 27th Street ramp off of Interstate 94.
Thrivent Financial for [...]