The Minneapolis skyline recedes from the rear-view mirror of my Mercury as I ascend the Hiawatha Lake Street Bridge. I like this bridge. Its no-nonsense, concrete construction is function before form. Yet the compound curve of its gentle arch over Lake Street topped off with a series of double-headed street lamps graces an otherwise stark Hiawatha Avenue. The lamps seen from speeding cars at night are a blur of light trails scribing the bridge's form.
Yet my thoughts turn to the landscape ahead as I crest the bridge on this grey Minnesota day. A zone of light industry, commercial, and old grain elevators crowd Hiawatha on the left, while houses in the Corcoran neighborhood peak out from behind an earthen berm on the right. Hiawatha Avenue leads my eye towards the horizon. I am struck by the sight in the distant sky of passenger jets landing and taking off at the Minneapolis Airport. I imagine the people and ideas coming and going with each of these planes. There is a sense of the future in the making.
Change pulses through Hiawatha Ave like the 900 volts of direct current powering Minneapolis' light rail cars. The potential power of voltage becomes the hope of light rail, which is as much about a city's imagination and a new vision of itself as it is about moving passengers. Accompanying urban renewal flows from negative terminal to positive, from undeveloped to what will be. Trains of change. Never mind the Ohms of resistance, those last-century thinkers with negative terminals corroded by cynicism.