If you live in Minneapolis or St. Paul, you can now zero in on the locations of aggressive dogs that have attacked or threatened people and other pets with our new interactive map on StarTribune.com’s InfoCenter. The map, compiled from city records, is another way we’re trying to present news and information in ways that our readers can best make use of it.

The government makes this information available as a matter of public safety. In fact, Minneapolis even posts a rogues’ gallery of the dozen or so dogs classified as “dangerous,” the more serious of the two categories. Yet I know that pet owners aren’t always thrilled about having their names and addresses made public.

Whistleblower wants to hear what you think about this map, or your experiences in general with dangerous dogs, whether you’re a victim, a neighbor or an owner. Sound off here, or send me an email.

Last month, I described the plight of those living in the 4300 block of Stevens Avenue South, a neighborhood literally on the slide, thanks to some unexpected troubles during the massive 35W reconstruction project. Jake Weyer at the Southwest Journal spoke to neighbors about what it’s like living on this eroding frontage road. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is predicting that life on the block will stabilize by the end of the summer.

I took the picture above earlier this evening, after I stepped off the bus two blocks from my home in south Minneapolis. I wanted to remember the streetscape before those trees, all graceful ash, were infested with the fatal pest. I knew that fate was coming, but I didn’t think it would get here as fast as it has. The emerald ash borer will devastate the urban forest, just as Dutch elm did a generation ago.

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The federally-fueled demolition push in St. Paul and Minneapolis that Whistleblower has been blogging about house by house got some big-picture treatment, thanks to reporting by my colleague Chris Havens.

The numbers are striking: Minneapolis is planning to knock down 150 homes in the next 18 months, up from 34 in 2006, while St. Paul wants to raze between 90 and 130 buildings this year. Altogether, the cities demolished 369 houses from 2006 to 2008. A typical street in the Minneapolis grid has 14-15 homes on each side, so if all these homes were adjacent to each other, the flattened area is the equivalent of 12 city blocks. That’s a big jump for recent years, but as a planning expert points out in Havens’ story, it follows in the footsteps of the massive demolitions that accompanied “urban renewal” and highway construction in the 1950s, 1960s, and the late 1970s through the early 1980s.

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