The ‘little urban experiences’ of Buenos Aires

Looking for a little ‘hands on’ inspiration for a cool town? Venture south of the equator to Argentina…

Making the list of both Fast Company magazine’s 30 Fastest Cities to Work, Live and Play and Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Cities’ to Visit is quite a feat, so what is Buenos Aires attraction? Referred to as the Paris of the South, here’s a fitting local viewpoint:

“Buenos Aires is not a place for grand sights or world famous

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A sampling of the emerging consciousness for better cities…

So what are progressive, creative people saying about cities these days? Well, the only thing better than asking the regulars at a local, independent coffeehouse, is to ask the regulars at local, independent coffeehouses in 40 countries around the world.

That’s just what the folks at likemind, a rhythmic gathering of likeminded individuals sharing coffee and stories every third Friday morning at local third places did on October

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Green building 201: Water

Green buildings to the people reading this website is like buildings with four walls and a ceiling to the general population. So, it’s time to take a look at more advanced specifics of green building, especially with what is becoming less and less of a commodity: water. For instance, flying over Vegas last week for the ULI conference, one can easily see that that its main water supply, Lake Mead is down 100 feet and now only at half capacity. Coincidentally, the ULI

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Small town green micro-village

“I never leave the courtyard,” says one of the tenants of the Bison Courtyard in the heart of the small town of Banff, Alberta, Canada (immediately surrounded by one of the most beautiful landscapes anywhere in the world, almost like a storybook).

The Bison Courtyard is just a modest $10 million building complex in scope, but it’s a shining example of what happens when progressive minds work collaboratively toward a shared vision that inspires them on a daily

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To recap the previous entry, Linus Torvalds galvanized an army of people to co-develop a superior ‘program’ called Linux, and Steve Jobs is able to interpret people’s values, principles and stories into stunningly designed products like the iMac and iPod.

Now, what if you combined the efforts and applied it to creative real estate development? You’d get a community of profoundly satisfied people committed to, entirely proud of, and inhabiting the phenomenally-designed place they help

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I am speaking on a panel today at the Urban Land Institute’s annual conference in Vegas, and the inevitable question will be, “What is it that you exactly do?” The tagline above says it pretty succinctly, crowdsourcing cool places for creatives, which after explanation comes, “How is this done?”

By training city, business and community leaders to become a figurative combination of Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux, and Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple. First, it’s important to

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Some people have been wondering how the creative class relates to cooltowns and to Richard Florida, who coined the term, creative class.

True story: Back in 1999 while on a business trip to Pittsburgh, one of my contacts suggested I just had to go see a Carnegie Mellon economist professor named Richard Florida because we were speaking the proverbial ‘same language’. I literally dragged my business associate with me who happened to have a history of working in sports agencies, including the

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Having fun connecting with people over food, play and making an impact

There are many of us who feel that food, play and contributing to a cause can start to get routine-like. Thankfully, the innovation-tracking folks at Springwise have spotted some new ways to spice things up in those areas of our lives.

Group dining: You know there are people in your social or work circle that want to try out new restaurants or return to old favorites, but which friends, and which restaurants? Crazymenu

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Delaware seeks some creative identity

The name ‘Delaware’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue when naming places to be, so the folks in Wilmington had their work cut out for them. The transition of a neglected area into what is now being billed as the LOMA Design District is a good example of economic revitalization and destination building, but not a great model if you’re sensitive to gentrification or a typical creative because most of you probably won’t be able to afford living or leasing

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A design guru speaks on architec-ture

Continuing a look at world-changing design from the annual Fast Company series, 2007 Masters of Design, we introduce to you Philippe Starke from France, one of the elite who brings extraordinary design to the masses via Target.

He is currently garnering an international reputation for the emotional connections people have to the apartments and workplaces his company develops, many of which are historic renovations. No, they are not affordable by any

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How does the customer fit in with design these days? From the annual Fast Company article, 2007 Masters of Design, here are some notables from their featured designer, Yves Behar, followed by how it could apply to design in your neighborhood.

- Companies that focused on customer-experience design outperformed the standard (S&P 500) by 10 to 1 from 2000 to 2005. Yves, founder of Fuseproject and arguably the ‘LeBron James of design’ states, The simplest definition of design is how you treat

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The keys to successful coworking spaces

A quick refresher on what coworking is: “the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.”

As this article on the Coworking Blog reveals, profitability is a common coworking space challenge. The primary reason? Coworkers still find it more individually profitable to do business at the

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Design your own office space

From an interview with Architect Magazine, I stated how the next generation of architects will work with the creative vision of progressive future tenants rather than the opinion of one developer, with a lot less ego to go around. At the Balcom Agency in Fort Worth, Texas, you can get a hint of things to come in interior design.

From a Design Sponge article, rather than spend the entire interior design budget on one firm, the company distributed $300 to each

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Managing a town center/main street of local, independent businesses can sometimes be comparable to herding cats, so cities are grateful that organizations like the National Main Street Center provide experience in helping them prosper. Their plan for recruiting new businesses follows a four-part plan, presented here with a cooltown edge:

Assess: What have you got?
- Take a two-hour tour of the retail district as if you’re seeing it for the first time and identify the good, the bad and the

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The four sizes of urban retail-entertainment districts

When people talk about a retail entertainment district they either have in their neighborhood, or visited elsewhere and want in their neighborhood, it helps to be able to classify the scale. Thanks to New Urban News and retail consultant Robert Gibbs, here’s a little retail primer (with a cooltown perspective):

Corner stores
Location: Within residential neighborhoods
Size: 1500-3000 s.f.
Offerings: Beverages, grocery items,

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Magic Johnson presents ‘design-your-own’ lofts

There’s more interesting twists to this story than you may first think. The post-Lakers career Magic Johnson is known for in the business world is bringing urban retail to economically-disinvested neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, his somewhat industrial economy approach has been to do so with clusters of national chains like TGIF’s and Starbucks (see his website for immediate evidence), not the most effective means of supporting the local economy

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Inspired by the huge political, social and economic success of Paris’ bike sharing system, U.S. cities are looking for ways to instill a more profound biking infrastructure and culture. In Europe, a woman in a dress on a bicycle is the norm, while in the U.S. it’s a curiosity.

In a USA Today article, Big cities try to ease way for bicyclists, several cities are at least talking about big changes to support a more authentic biking culture:

New York City is creating the first ;a

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Krakow, Poland’s Old Town Square

If the town square is the stage, then there’s no bigger ‘ongoing public performance’ than in Europe’s largest market square, the Rynek Glowny (’Grand Square’) in Krakow, Poland. There’s enough to see and do in and around the square for a week straight, and enough for residents to make it a large-scale third place. It’s a good lesson in what a destination public square can be.

Cloth Hall, a 16th-century, Renaissance-style building, a primary attraction,

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First beta community meets in New Orleans

A few weeks ago we profiled a group of young urban rebuilding professionals that wanted to make a difference in New Orleans. On September 26, 2007 they were invited to take more action as far as the rebuilding itself was literally concerned, at the first New Orleans beta community meeting at Tulane University.

The first order of business was for the group to establish a manifesto by which the businesses, buildings and communities they were

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New Orleans - It doesn’t get more auth-entic than this

You hear the crazy post-Katrina talk about people who say New Orleans should go back to being the swamp it’s inclined to be. It’s probable that none of them have ever been to the Crescent City, because it’s a criminal thing to say once you’ve been there. If Venice is worth preserving despite going underwater every year, a 100-year flood is a centennial inconvenience by comparison.

If there’s one word (there isn’t) that can be used to

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It’s a bicyclist’s world once a month

Starting out 15 years ago on September 25, 1992 in San Francisco as a group of 48 bike riders making a stand against traffic, Critical Mass has since become a cultural phenomenon in hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, from India to South Africa to Russia, and of course Hungary and Denmark.

Every last Friday of the month after work up to a thousand or so bikers meet at a common point in a city and take off on an unplanned ride through the city.

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Manhattan loses an intersection, gains a plaza

A year ago we profiled a neighborhood effort in Manhattan’s tony Meatpacking District to transform a congested, dangerous intersection into a peaceful urban square, A NYC ‘beta community’ to build a piazza. One year later, we present evidence that the process works. Keep in mind this is being referred to as an ‘interim’ plaza - it’ll become even more attractive.

You can even get there by what will be New York’s first ever physically separated

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