Rise of the Creative Class II

For anyone who doesn’t know Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, it is his market and economic research that largely qualifies signficant investment in CoolTowns.

Since being published in 2002 (with its sequel, The Flight of the Creative Class due in 2005), his work has helped either validate or inspire the creative mindsets of the mayors of Austin and Denver, the governor of Michigan, and the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to name a few, to

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Business networking CoolTown style

The Department of Labor released a study stating that 70% of what we learn about our job is done informally.  Meanwhile, economic growth is also being tied to community.

First, the CoolTown visual of what that looks like (see image).  Individuals doing their own thing, representing a variety of interests, yet working together with a common vision, learning and interacting in the process.  Chaos with a purpose if you will.

Second, the

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Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Not So Big Homes

Last week the blog illustrated the virtues of the Not So Big House. Yesterday the blog profiled the picturesque town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.  Today, a combination of the two.

The most immediate and noticeable value of these homes is that they’re within walking distance of the town center.  They just wouldn’t seem half as charming otherwise.  On the other hand, if they were all twice as big on much larger lots, there’d be half as many people walking

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Passing through Niagara-on-the-Lake

I happened upon the quaint little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada today, and understood why the locals talked it up so much.

While it’s not necessarily a CoolTown per se since it’s not very affordable, there’s some very cool things happening there.  I didn’t notice a single national chain on the entire main street, as all the merchants were unique Mom & Pops. 

The town was very walkable.  There seemed to be a fair amount of offices and

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Motion picture studios know why some of their movies become hits - positive word-of-mouth that becomes viral.  Great critical reviews do not correlate with box office returns.  In this knowledge age, that buzz is being used to make better movies via test screenings before they’re released, and online fan review boards for sequels and related genre films.  This is especially becoming more prevalent in TV show production, where fans have increasingly more say on the content of upcoming shows,

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Why is small so cool?

McMansions are out.  Small is in.

Smaller homes.  Smaller schools.  Small towns.  Smaller workplaces (ie home office nooks vs. corporate campuses), roads, stores, cell phones, laptops, ipod minis, cars, egos, etc.  Going from the industrial mass production age to the knowledge age, we’re finding we can do a whole lot more with a whole lot less.

In the coming weeks, I’ll take you back to the future through a tour of the kinds of places that represent this trend.  In

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Better than Bigger: Personalization

OK, so the images are a bit Martha Stewartish, but one of the key principles of The Not So Big House is to make the place your own.  As the author states, a well-designed personalized home can have more truly livable space than a home twice its size.

Just at its more interesting to walk into a restaurant with the ducts and pipes exposed under a tall ceiling compared to a low, flat, plaster hung ceiling with fluorescent lighting, a home that shows what

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Now here’s an example that takes full advantage of Not So Big living, courtesy of the Tag Front architecture firm.

Work at home?  Live at work? Would you believe this loft is so space-efficient that it’s nestled right in the middle of the firm’s architecture office?  Brings new meaning to the words ‘commute’ and ‘late night at the office’.  It’s really most appealing if the architecture office is already in a cool neighborhood.

Kitchen or dining room? Since we really only need one of

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Applying ‘Not So Big’ to CoolTown homes

By the way, in reference to yesterday’s blog, here’s Sarah’s link to the not so big house as applied to communities.

While the examples in The Not So Big House (NSBH) are generally single-family homes in the countryside, the not so big design principles are ideal for CoolTowns:

Open floor plan As in the rooms not being ‘compartmentalized’.  The kitchen blends into the dining area, blending into the living room.  At parties, people gravitate to

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Cool is ‘Not So Big’

A few years ago while running the National Town Builders Association (NTBA), I hosted a round table with Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House.  Her book was just starting to gain notoriety (it was #1 on Amazon at one point), and I felt she should meet members of the NTBA whose mission as a trade organization was (and still is) building entire communities of not so big homes.

A few months later, the sequel to her best-seller, Creating the Not So Big House,

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Public-private partnership in action

Downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Here’s a great example of how development/investor support groups partnered with municipal support groups to form a public-private partnership development team.*

For a $30-million, 266,000-square-foot mixed-use project in downtown Albuquerque, designed by visionary planners (part of the developer support group), the private sector team contributed $6 million and the public sector (the city) contributed $12 million in

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Just do it: The public-private partnership development team

As described in yesterday’s blog, a public-private partnership development team made up of the municipality, developer, tenants and university (when applicable) is necessary to build a CoolTown, simply because their individual assets are needed.

What’s a development team?  Essentially, anyone with equity in the project; bankable value.  Here’s what equity each party could contribute:

Municipality:  Land and/or money through

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The challenge: Collaborative CoolTown support groups

So, how does one get the CoolTown-oriented support groups of future tenants, municipalities, universities and investors/developers to collaborate?  This is where true public-private partnerships come in, that is, a new business (ie joint venture) created from these entities.

Much of Silicon Valley’s monumental economic rise can be attributed to such a joint venture.  In fact, it was (and still is) called Joint Venture Silicon Valley,

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The need for CoolTown support groups

Support groups are built on trust and are the basis for a strong sense of community, often coming together from a striking emotional issue.  Just look at what hurricanes and other selected disasters do for building community in small towns.  Count rage-generating traffic congestion and massive job hemorrhages among them.

The need for CoolTown-oriented support groups arises in four areas, all manifested by the need for building a CoolTown

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Building relationships for a CoolTown

A common phrase in commerce is that business is all about relationships.  On the residential end, a sense of community is also all about relationships.  The CoolTown process relies on building such relationships from planning to reality, and the key to success its fostering constant conversation.

In the CoolTown planning phase, these conversations are facilitated through support groups.  That is, people who share a common cause, often dealing with a

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Applying IM principles to a CoolTown

Based on what makes IM so popular for next gen-ers (blogged yesterday), here’s how that can apply to CoolTowns:

Next gen-ers are infinitely comfortable using the internet.  CoolTowns will not only have high-speed internet everywhere, it’ll be wireless everywhere.

Next gen-ers are very used to a bottom-up structure.  CoolTowns will be designed bottom-up, with the future residents shaping the town vision before it’s built.  Governance will be bottom-up

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Understanding the market: IM-ing is hot

In thinking of what is insanely popular by the next gen* crowd, IM (instant messaging) popped into my head (just like an IM itself.) Here’s a service that truly caters to the next gen market, and notice how applicable it is to CoolTowns:

Next gen-ers are infinitely comfortable using the internet.  Why?  They’ve had a lot of practice using it all through their high school and college life.  Period.  There’s really not much more to it than

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The University of Maryland Hinman CEOs program is one of the best small-scale examples of interpreting what the creative entrepreneurial market really wants, from a university student point of view.

Creative, entrepreneurial students wanted to be around one another, as often as they could.  They wanted places to < >network informally (ie the late night conversations with business ideas on paper napkins) and formally (ie give multimedia presentations).  They wanted fast internet and

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How does one interpret a CoolTown market?

In other words, how do you transform the vision of hundreds or thousands of future CoolTown tenants into a built place that is greater than the sum of their opinions?

The simple answer?  Talent.  More specifically, people who both truly understand the CoolTown market and know how to design and develop communities.

The challenge is that the people with the greatest design and development capability are either no longer part of the CoolTown market

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The art of interpreting what the market really wants

What distinguishes a successful company from a bankrupt one is how well they interpret what the market really wants into something the market will pay for.

Ford did a tremendous amount of homework in the early 1980s to understand that people wanted a sedan (insert ‘community’ here) that was uniquely beautiful in a sea of look-alikes, handled as well as the imports, and focused on quality design details from opening windows to playing

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How to truly understand what the market really wants, #2 of 2: Ethnography

Ethnography: The branch of anthropology that deals with the scientific description of specific human cultures.

The best way to understand something is to participate, as defined by zooming yesterday, but that’s probably a bit too radical for most.  The next best way is to practice ethnography.

This great article will give you a much better idea of how to apply this science as an art in the real world.  It

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How to truly understand what the market really wants, #1 of 2: Zooming

Taking a page from Freaky Friday, the only way one can completely understand a teenager if you’re a mom, and vice versa, is to become the other.  Business guru Seth Godin refers to this as *zooming.

For those who wish to understand the CoolTown market:  Unless you’re willing to try living in the city and/or giving up your car for a month, emptying out your bank account and hanging out and conversing with an entirely

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