Apartment renting takes a page from online dating

So many candidates, so little opportunity to find out which exactly which one is right for you. Wait a minute, are we talking about dating or finding an apartment? While searching for suitable dates via the internet is certainly not the most authentic approach, there’s a lot to be learned from such a system when fittingly applied to the inanimate yet life-impacting relationship you’ll have with where you choose to live.

Hubbuzz is the

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As stated just previously via Spiegel’s review of , an impressive 43.9% of Barcelona’s workforce is represented by the creative class.

Via the google earth image, you can see the cultural amenities centered in the historic pedestrian district and the fruits of the 1992 Olympics on the far right. Notice how transportation takes up increasingly more real estate each year, from a miniscule amount in the historic core, to its surrounding neighborhoods directly north, to

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‘An Inside Look at Europe’s Coolest Cities’

You’ve seen lots of rankings of cool cities based on opinions, but the city of Hamburg, Germany took it a little more seriously on behalf of their own cause and hired a firm to find out just which of the European cities were indeed the coolest and the best at attracting the creative class, now and in the future. Here’s their list of the top five, profiled in Spiegel, leading European news site:

Copenhagen This beautiful, progressive city enjoys

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On one hand, you’ve got Liverpool, the home of the Beatles. On the other hand, you’ve got Elements, the first beta community to crowdsource a restaurant, and in Syracuse, the first beta community to crowdsource a building for artists and musicians. What happens if you combined all three?

You’d then have the Liverpool Cultural Cafe, a nonprofit-initiated bistro by day, bar by night third place to develop local musicians and other artists. The kicker is that not only is the project

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A hotel expressive of the people who stay there

As with most buildings, the exterior and interior design of hotels rarely provide an expression of the lifestyle of the people staying there, other than perhaps their income. At the same price range, most hotel rooms pretty much look alike. However, one hotel is breaking that mold, and hopefully it will set higher standards for how residential buildings are truer to their tenants inside and out.

Based on the pictures, it’s easy to see that

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How’d you like to work in an office like this?

You may be among the millions of people who wish their workplace was a little more, shall we say, inspiring. Well, if you want an example of what such an office could look like, you may want to visit eOffice in London. Click here for a larger photo.

First of all, it’s in the heart of Soho (see pic on our About page), the media hub of London and a magnet for cool cafes, bars and coffeehouses, creatives and entrepreneurs. What good is a an

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Beta communities seeding in many cities (Part 2)

Continuing our look from yesterday at where Beta Communities are being formed…

Syracuse
Where will the creatives go in Syracuse when places begin to gentrify? That won’t be a problem at 200 South Geddes, where developer Rick Destitio is transforming a 5-story historic factory building into a artist-musician live-work center. Not only that, but he’s sponsoring a Beta Community that will eventually consist of 500 of the city’s most

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Beta Communities in cities across the country:

Washington DC

- A VIBE beta community to crowdsource a progressive new downtown restaurant, (since named Elements) now has 108 members and counting five months into the process, and it doesn’t even have a location yet (somewhere around 14th and U Street) . In the meantime, the beta community has convinced the business owner to grow from 1000 to 3000 s.f.; to go vegetarian, organic, local farm-oriented

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Clean Currents is making it easy for small businesses to switch to wind and other renewable energies (solar, geothermal) by linking them to the best ‘green power’ prices, often lower than standard rates! Clean Current locates the

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Professional Building Lofts.

These aren’t run-down units, but newly renovated loft-style residences with built-in washer

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Trio, a 3.8 acre, 283,000 sf (14,600 sf retail), 304 apartment development in Pasadena’s Playhouse District. The developers, Shea Properties ensured that the new construction blended

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Portland’s Green Dividend provides evidence that the two are synonymous.

The key statistic* in the report is the following:
20.3 miles/day - average Portland commute
24.3 miles/day - average commute in the 33 most populous metro areas
What does 4 miles/day add up to? Figuring in a conservative $.40 mile, that translates to $1.1 billion. Then

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Arizona State University is looking to change that in a grand way with their Next American University plan to accommodate 90,000 students via two new urban campuses, one north of Phoenix, one in its downtown. Then there’s ASU’s take on what university research buildings should be, a microcosm of University of South Carolina’s Innovista research village.

Skysong, aka the ASU-Scottsdale Center for Innovation, is a 37-acre, Posted by Neil Takemoto in • University Towns | (0) Comments | (0) Trackbacks | Link |

eat.shop guides.

All 90 of the profiled businesses are unique, local, independent, homegrown, creative types “who are highly

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crowdsourcing swell of activity to rebuild the city better than before.

One such group is the Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals (YURP), a fast-growing membership group of several hundred cultural progressives dedicated to making New Orleans their permanent place of residence.

The group’s goal is to

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Goloco!

Robin Chase, the founder of Zipcar, is fusing the concept behind her progressive car sharing service with a bit of Evite, Facebook and eBay, turning social networks into fun trip-sharing networks.

How’s it work? 
1. Post your

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Posted by Neil Takemoto in • Market Development | (1) Comments | (0) Trackbacks | Link |

Posted by Neil Takemoto in • Community Building | (2) Comments | (0) Trackbacks | Link |

triple bottom line is its walkability, and no site does that better than
Walk Score. Based on the number of retail businesses and amenities, you type in an address in its google-run system and it spits out a rating from 1 to 100 telling you just how walkable it is. Check out their rating system and benefits for scoring higher. One pretty darn handy feature is a left column list of the nearest common amenities, listed by distance.

As you can

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video from Adams Morgan in Washington DC, probably the most diverse neighborhood in the city, and one of the most international restaurant corridors anywhere. It also profiles the members of the Affinity Lab co-workplace, which

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profiled yesterday...

Why are you dedicating this building to artists and musician tenants?
“In my travels around the country, over and over again the most vibrant, exciting, and interesting places I have been were consumed with arts and music. It’s that feeling of creativity and ideas, that energy that comes from it all. It’s something

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An artist/musician ‘community in a building’, Syracuse, NY

There are numerous cities and neighborhoods with a reputation for attracting creatives, but what about buildings in particular? There are places like the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, VA that provide studio and retail space for artists, but what about to live and play as well? That’s where Rick Destito and his Vibrant Syracuse Spaces in Syracuse comes in.

Rick’s a next generation developer who owns a five-story historic warehouse

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Counter, a vegetarian, organic wine bar in New York City.

Starting with $300 and an agreement to use

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