Related Articles - Page 9
Metropolitan Areas Ranked for Walkability
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 will 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.
Dec 9th, 2007 by Jeramey Jannene
Bronze the Fonz
Henry Winkler Originally uploaded by chelsea tobe Urban Milwaukee and Fresh Coast Ventures, LLC would like to throw their support behind the “Bronze the Fonz” campaign. The urban, pedestrian-friendly location of the statue on the riverwalk will only give Milwaukee visitors one more reason to stay downtown, walk downtown, and spend their money downtown. A couple grumpy art gallery owners in Milwaukee apparently are not seeing how the statue will encourage visitors to “stay downtown, walk downtown, and spend their money downtown”. This would inevitably help their business by increasing foot traffic in the area, but that doesn’t seem to matter to them. Most important to these art gallery owners is the fact that the statue is an icon of mediocre public art. Milwaukee Art Museum Director David Gordon also appears to be upset that the bronze Fonz might interrupt the development of a fancy new public art development coming to Wisconsin Avenue in a few years (of which I can’t seem to actually find any details other than the artist is Janet Zweig,). Fonz-implementers have claimed that the statue will be out of the Wisconsin Avenue sight lines of the Milwaukee Art Museum and new Wisconsin Avenue public art project by being placed on the riverwalk. Good, problem solved. Let’s build this statue. No one is going to make fun of Milwaukee for having this statue and every first time visitor is going to want to see it and get their picture taken with it, just like that “bean” that our neighbor to the south has. Build the statue. It’s only going to help people have one more thing to do in downtown Milwaukee. Игровые Автоматы Онлайн
Nov 30th, 2007 by Jeramey Jannene
