I find it baffling that the Star Tribune article "Zoning divide" (front page, Aug. 8) would blame single-family zoning for excluding minorities from buying single-family homes because of the high cost of those houses. Like all commodities, the price of housing is largely due to supply and demand. To reduce the cost of single-family homes so more minorities could afford houses, cities should zone more land for single-family homes, not less. Single-family homeownership is the best way to pass down wealth from generation to generation. We should be encouraging single-family homeownership for minorities, not restricting its supply.

Pat Smith, Minneapolis

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"Zoning divide," which argues that we need to eliminate single-family zoning to promote more multifamily housing, would be more convincing if two-thirds of the housing being produced today in the Twin Cities wasn't multifamily housing. And half of all new housing units are being produced on land that was redeveloped from other uses. (Both data points are from the Metropolitan Council.) It is hard to see how zoning is holding us back with these kinds of numbers.

Carol Becker, Minneapolis

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The article about the difficulty for people in buying a single-family home in the Twin Cities is interesting to me. I see homeownership as similar to starting a business in that there are many costs that occur after the purchase, mostly with the maintenance of the home. The business that survives is one that has an investor to support it through those costs. Most people buying a home have family money that can see them through those events or an income that can get them through the costs of homeownership — that is what was missing in the examples from the article.

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The response on Aug. 10 by Stephen Grittman ("Single-family homeownership dream doesn't divide, it unites," Opinion Exchange) to the Aug. 8 story "Zoning divide" about the effects of certain zoning practices completely missed the point. It's true that most but not all people would like to own and live in a detached house. But the point of the article was that many people cannot afford it, laws and regulations have made it more difficult, disparities in location, wealth education and opportunity have resulted, and people of color have been disproportionately affected. The reasons are many and varied, neither pure racial conspiracy nor just market preferences, but both and more.

William Weber, St. Louis Park

As I read the last of Michael Nesset's delicate and intricate explorations on life as we presume to know it, I was saddened by his passing. He held a super knowledge of our existence and our significant role in the universe. By capturing observations and turning them inside out we were able to comprehend his novel ideas clearly. Extraordinary angles we never appreciated or considered gave us a sense of our many stumbles and imperfections. Can we learn from a highly sensitive and philosophical perspective that Mr. Nesset had so thoughtfully unwrapped?

In his commentary "Our clouded crystal ball" (Opinion Exchange, Aug. 8), he mentioned the past excitement of worldly technological dreams and desires to push forward. Inaccurate predictions made years ago on this front, however, never met today's reality of how messy and unpredictable the human trajectory has become. Struggles in our progression toward a better life on this planet also include overcoming enormous unintended consequences. Three steps forward; two (or even three) steps back. The global climate crisis, as he described in his commentary, is due to past efforts to advance wealthy societies. The result is the combustion of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases. Today we are developing clean energy in a desperate attempt to halt Earth's climb in temperature. Will we succeed? I sure hope so!

Sharon E. Carlson, Andover

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I read with great interest the commentary by Michael Nesset, in which he colorfully described the repeated and significant failings of various futurists' predictions over the past few decades. He correctly states that such failures are due in large part to the limitations of imagination, and, more importantly, of the models employed.

Then, near the end of the column he begins a paragraph with "Speaking of sustainable environments ... " and at that point falls completely off the rails when he abandons the topic at hand and veers to a technologically oriented description of the possible role of batteries in alternative power generation.

In so doing, he missed (avoided?) a perfect opportunity to apply his reasoning about futurism to the currently popular models and resultant predictions regarding climate change. All levels of government have lurched down a path of upending the world economy and people's lives in search of solutions to a problem posited by futurists who trust and heavily promote their imaginations and models. This in a time when models forecasting the behavior of COVID a few months out, or even the weather a few days out, routinely fail.

Bill Sutherland, Eden Prairie

Very seldom do I read a piece in the morning paper that stops me. But I read "Everywhere a friend zone" (sports, Aug. 8), and all other sections were forgotten. The essay by Jeff Day captured the essence of going to the ballpark in spades. It's exactly why, despite the Twins non-contending status, I will continue to hit the bull's-eye as many times as possible. There is no other place for me to enjoy the summer, the people and the baseball like our park.

Thanks for a terrific essay.

Joseph Carr, Eden Prairie

I'm hoping that I wasn't the only one who was blown away by Jeff Day's essay. It's rare when a writer so perfectly captures a mood and atmosphere as well as he did. I'm a long-suffering Twins fan, and as much as I have agonized over this season, it still beats the emptiness of last year. I miss Nelson Cruz and Jose Berrios already; I miss being in the thick of a pennant race and the excitement of reading the paper every morning to see what our closest competitors did the night before. But the, dare I say it, exhilaration of walking into the ballpark on game day and smelling the brats on the grill, hearing families and buddies talking baseball and seeing the vibrant green of the field makes it all seem OK. Thanks, Jeff Day, for the reminder of how good we really have it.