St. Paul was destined to have low bike traffic volumes since the stations took a long time to appear and were spaced so far apart there (wide spacing also limits the attraction of the bikes in North Minneapolis).

hings should get better this year, since new stations are planned to extend all the way into downtown St. Paul (and be placed relatively densely there), though given how things have worked over the past few years, I don’t expect them to appear until about July.

Seems like a misunderstanding of the process of gentrification. I don’t think that a link between higher allowable densities and higher property taxes has been proven (and actually is rarely asserted), so I don’t see what pressure on smaller businesses would remain. Allowing higher density would relieve pressure on smaller businesses to move by allowing development to occur in fewer buildings. Unless there is enough demand for every single building to be developed at high density, allowing higher densities would require fewer buildings to be redeveloped while still satisfying the same amount of demand. Or am I missing something?