The Move Minneapolis webinar “Discover the Joy of Downtown’s Walkable Neighborhoods” brought a panel of your downtown neighbors together to share their lived experience finding joy through walking as a means of sustainable trips in their everyday lives.

A few quotes from the webinar:

Why did you choose to live where you live downtown?

I’m 26 years old. So, My calculation was I kind of triangulated this location if you can believe it. I have a job in St. Paul. Most of my friends live in Loring or, nearby in that part of South Minneapolis. And so I wanted to be able to get to same call easily, but I didn’t want to move to St. Paul. So I was looking for access to transit and bikeways. The green line leads right to my job so I was looking to the proximity of that and believe it or not, the best deal I found out an apartment, in proximity within like a 10 to 15 minutes proximity of the Green Line at the time was in my current north loop apartment.

Maxwell Singer

Short answer is proximity. Proximity to my job. My job is I think two light rail stops and I live close to a light rail station. In addition to that, being my first time in Minneapolis, I wanted to live somewhere where there would be an opportunity to be involved in the community and interact with the community. With my experience. The city, the downtown area is the central area of high traffic, community engagement. community interaction.

Jenairo Thornton

We would I would walk downtown all the time and I would walk through Loring Park and through the Lauren Greenway to get to downtown and I it was beautiful. I just I just fell in love and and said one day maybe I would be able to live on the greenway. It was almost serendipitous that when we fell in love with this condo that looks out onto the basilica and down onto the Loring Park that I realized our back door was on the greenway. It’s like living in a park. I love this neighborhood.

Deanna Newman

Tell us about your favorite routes to walk in your neighborhood?

It’s Loring Greenway basically this lovely linear park and that’s maintained by volunteers. So it’s like I have a garden except that I don’t have to work it myself. It’s a place where we meet informally, I almost never walk out on a greenway without seeing one of my neighbors out there sitting by the fountains. And it’s my primary way to get down town. Living next to the park, our regular routes would be around the park, but I have to tell you that it one of our favorite routes is actually through downtown to the river. And then down the river either one side or the other. And back. So it, It we I just have too many choices. And usually we can figure out an errand to run on the way just to justify being out for hours walking and doing nothing else but walking.

Deanna Newman

The other routes I take I take purposefully to get lost. So my favorite and scenic route is anywhere. Toward North Washington Ave.

Jenairo Thornton

How do other transportation options compliment living in a walkable neighborhood?

I live in the north loop without a car. As a matter of fact, I did have a car before moving downtown that I was not using so much so I kind of made the very conscious trade off where it’s like I could live in this fun neighborhood, but I couldn’t afford a car at least not even to park it. So I was able to take the parking out of the budget and then all of the other maintenance stuff out of the budget and that flexibility first of all allows me to to take advantage of different opportunities… One of the great things about being downtown is the access to transit. The transit network serves downtown very well. I’ve, been able to to get to places. I think people are even kind of surprised at some of the places I can get to. Earlier this spring I went on a date at the roller rink in Burnsville, which is I’ll have you know right across the street from an Orange Line station, which runs every 15 minutes or so.

Maxwell Singer

Do you have any tips or tricks for replacing car trips with walking trips?

I have a little cart that I take with me. Know it’s 1 of those old folding things right and I can I can put in several bags of groceries or a big bag of dirt or anything else. And I just ignore the fact that I look like a little old lady doing it!

Deanna Newman

I try to trick myself into thinking I’m just going to fill up my cloth shopping bag. That’s it. If I can just fill up the cloth shopping bed, I can walk back. Doesn’t ever end that way. So I end up with my cloth shopping bag plus about 3 or 4 paper bags. So I’m like, let me catch a ride share back.

Jenairo Thornton

Do you have any stories to share about the challenges to getting around without a car? How have you approached those challenges?

Sometimes I start waving my hands and saying, ‘you can’t do that, you can’t make a right hand turn on red there, you know you just pulled into the bike way.’ I’m, I’m constantly saying, oh my gosh, people need to be educated about who has priority on our streets. I also think that, sometimes it’s difficult in the winter time to walk in Minneapolis. I see a lot of old people walking around my neighborhood. And, unfortunately we are inside.

Deanna Newman

Watch the full webinar here: