How to do a pedestrian street right

For a vibrant, active, economically successful pedestrian street (paseo), it must have the following:

1. Unique, independent restaurants, cafes, coffeehouses, bars (preferably half the number of venues) so the area is worth visiting in the first place.
2. Outdoor seating for all of the above, providing a strong sense of street life.
3. Significant amounts of housing surrounding the district, ideally also above the first or second floors of the

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Is it time for the return of the pedestrian-only street?

Hundreds of pedestrian malls built in downtowns across the country in the 1970s and 80s failed.  However, downtowns overall failed during that time, as regional malls became all the rage in a time before people experienced traffic congestion.

Back to the future: However, regional malls are failing in the 2000s.  Cities and downtowns are regaining population for the first time in 30 to 50 years in the 2000s.  People are migrating

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A Coffeehouse David vs. Goliath

This is the coffeehouse ‘David’ in Athens, Georgia, Blue Sky Cafe, an independent, long-time institution and favorite hangout.  I assume there’s no need to tell you what the coffeehouse Goliath* is that opened up right next door, with little sympathy and remorse if they had put Blue Sky out of business.

Well, the good news is that Blue Sky expanded and is doing better than ever after that certain chain next door opened.  Why?  Because in addition to being a

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Why do small towns and cities prefer independent merchants?

That’s certainly the case in small towns and cities, but not in the suburbs.  What’s going on?

Suburbs are controlled by a few people.  It was designed and built for the masses.  Homes were built hundreds at a time, by the same firm.  The same firms also built shopping malls and strip malls to accommodate dozens of retailers at a time.  It took a lot of capital to build environments of such large scales, and that capital usually

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Local businesses give 70% more back to you than chains

A new retail study for a Chicago neighborhood discovered that for every $100 spent on an independent business, $73 went back into the local community.  However, for every $100 spent on chain businesses, only $43 went back into the local economy.

The study, completed by Civic Economics, the leading firm in the country for conducting these kinds of analyses, found that independents had 26% more of their staff locally, bought more than

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City living holds back aging?

Yes, apparently by 4 to 12 years.

News articles are reporting results of a new study, Suburban sprawl and physical and mental health, from the journal, Public Health.  Here’s an abstract:

“Sprawl significantly predicts chronic medical conditions and health-related quality of life, but not mental health disorders. An increase in sprawl from one standard deviation less to one standard deviation more than average implies 96 more chronic medical problems per

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See your home near transit rise in value...

A study shows that demand for compact housing near transit is likely to more than double by 2025.  That means you should buy now if you want to benefit from the rise in value your property will enjoy.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Capturing the Demand for Housing Near Transit estimates that more than 14.6 million households will rent and buy housing near transit by 2025, double the number that live in these neighborhoods today. That requires 2,100 new

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How do you create a great outdoor place?

Think about what makes a great indoor destination - a memorable, well-defined space, an inspiring creatively-designed room rather than a series of long hallways amid small, compartmentalized spaces.  Yet the latter is how most of our streets are designed.

Church Street in Burlington, Vermont is an extremely popular outdoor destination mainly because it doesn’t feel like a street.  It feels like a grand room.  One side is terminated by a grand

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Want to grow your local businesses?  Print your own money

Want to build a stronger sense of community?  Print your own money.

That’s what the people in Burlington, Vermont, and 4000 other communities worldwide (not so sure how accurate that is) are doing.  Yes, Burlington Bread is a legal currency, called slices instead of dollars, and in $1, $5, $10, and $20 denominations.  Even the City of Burlington is involved in its growth.

Circulation began in 1998, and merchant membership is

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Does affordable housing mean less profitability?

Not at all, but we need to make one distinction - there’s a difference between what we perceive affordability and attainability to mean.  Affordability often means government subsidy, as in, affordable housing program.  People are just a bit edgy about living in anything associated with the words ‘government project’ - especially if you look at the results.

The closest you’ll find today of government subsidy is inclusionary zoning,

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Where’s the heart of entertainment in Ann Arbor?

If there’s only one area to go in Ann Arbor for entertainment, that’s at East Liberty and State Street, home of the Michigan Theater and State Theater.

They’re both historic theaters, which seem to be the creative choice for the best entertainment in our five-city tour through Cambridge, Madison, Athens, Burlington and Ann Arbor.  Independent and foreign films, midnight showings, live music and comedians make up the daily schedule, but the

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Ann Arbor is the final stop in the CoolTown five-city tour, and while it integrates not one, but two main streets into the University of Michigan, it’s creative edge appears to be giving way to the words ‘trendy, swanky, upper class, pride, and bourgeois’, as spoken by the locally concerned who have taken an active interest in the future of the city, as well as student reviews, and would you believe an entire web site?

Ann Arbor has a lot of creative, inspired people (like Jim, Patricia,

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How can a chain be cool?

That’s a bit of an oxymoron there, but the best way to make a chain cool is to make it seem like an independent.  The most effective way is not to call it the same thing with the same products everywhere, but of course, I guess that’s what a chain is.  The other strategy is to make the locale as unique to the local culture as possible.

Espresso Royale Caffe is in a few college towns, but at least they’re unique in each place, have live entertainment (which of

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...even though the educational talent is similar?

Because they can.

Students are people too, and they’d much rather be in a great place to live.  The same goes for faculty, which explains why the universities in the towns that are rated highest by students/faculty as far as quality of life, entertainment and recreation are often the highest in tuition.  Then of course, because only those who can afford that hike in tuition can attend, they’re the ones who can afford the hike in rents that

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Burlington’s economy-defying pedestrian mall

What’s immediately striking for such a small town of 40,000 people is that there is such a large pedestrian-only zone at its heart.  I mean, how often do you see a Mapquest entry look like this for a small town in the middle of recreational wilderness?  Most cities that are at least ten times larger argue that they don’t have enough pedestrian-mall-supporting people and tenants to have just one block, yet Burlington has three, and just opened the

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If it wasn’t for the unrelenting, frigid winters, Burlington would be too popular for its own good.

We met with Erik, Peter, Elizabeth, Walker, John, Michele and James, and you can read about their thoughts throughout the next few blogs.  One things that stood out was that they were unanimous in saying that living in Burlington is a great place to meet people (and interesting ones at that) - if you meet one person, you’ll meet dozens more, and dozens of their friends.  I ran into three

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Athfest - “#1 Campus Scene that Rocks”

That’s according to Rolling Stone Magazine.

Ath Fest, a nonprofit annual music and arts festival in downtown Athens, Georgia that largely showcases the Athens area musical and artistic community for four days in June, was first started in 1997 because no one heard of or heard most of the 400 bands in Athens. It attracts 145 music acts (and 40 Southeastern artists) each year - the majority of them from the Athens area.

It’s a lot of fun, to be sure,

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What the #$*! Do We Know?!

No, I’m not going obscene, this is the title of a new motion picture that’s changing people’s perceptions of the world and themselves.  I saw it tonight and I think it deserves at least one blog in reference to providing new insight into understanding our emotions and behaviors.

The movie uses the field of quantum mechanics to scientifically explain that we literally (in no exaggeration of the word whatsoever) create our own reality, that how we think and what

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Why does Athens have such a strong sense of community?

The business manager of Athens Weekly News, a popular local political paper, answered this question last week while in a focus group of the community’s creative leaders - “Because nobody’s trying to get rich at this table.” The group also agreed that many of them participate in no less than 5-7 nonprofits each, and get to know one another through those organizations’ meetings and events.

Indeed, there is no shortage of things to do in

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Is this a bar, cafe or restaurant?

All of the above.  This is ‘Clocks’ in Athens, GA.

We’re become a lot more acclimated to diversity and choice - we’re seeing mixed housing, retail and office in our communities, and even in the same building.  This trend is continuing down to single venues within buildings, and people like it.  Why only recently?  We now have more access to knowledge, and that means it’s no longer considered crazy to run both a bookstore and a restaurant in the same

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