The online world centers around conversation, via discussion forums, chat rooms, comment threads, Facebook’s ‘Walls’… many of these mediums didn’t exist ten years ago, even five years ago. That’s not difficult to fathom, given that today it doesn’t take more than five minutes to set up an online community with all these things. However, an internet minute is equivalent to a real estate year, so if you’ve subconsciously wondered why walking through your built environment lacks the spontaneity

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For those of you who have casually wondered what an auto-oriented street would be like if it were reclaimed by people, for people, Park(ing) Day is an annual step in that direction. Participants in cities around the U.S. and the world ‘park’ themselves in a parking space for the day, paying the meter of course, and make a third place of it.

Founded in 2005 by Rebar, a collaborative group of creatives in San Francisco, it is now sponsored nationally by the Trust for Public Land (TPL). The

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In another example of a picture being worth a thousand words, here are three before and after shots of pioneering New York City’s DOT (Department of Transportation) plan to transform auto-oriented corridors into pedestrian places and destinations.

Pearl Street Plaza, Brooklyn (Top) - An asphalt parking lot is now in the middle of a final transition to becoming a restored cobblestone plaza, hosting farmers markets and concerts. Read more about this street-turned-plaza, with wide-angle shot,

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A year ago we profiled Patricia Martin’s Rengen: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer - and What It Means to Your Business, which has helped define the term creatives as far as it’s used on this site. It’s time to check in to see how this second renaissance is coming along via this New York Times interview and a CoolTown perspective.

What is the rengen? That’s nicely defined here, a “a thirty-year swath (20-50 years old) of individuals who are living comtemporaneously”, but more of a

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First, the definition of bilingual - communicating in two languages fluently, or to further define language, communicating in two different methods of exchanging information fluently. Second, the definition of social network - is the organic gathering of individuals into specific groups; or from wikipedia, “a social structure made of nodes (generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas...” This can be

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Women make up a majority of those who start their own businesses, so it was a matter of time before that trend intersected with the coworking movement. It also helps to know that top women business builders are looking for creative and affordable environs.

Thus, we have In Good Company (IGC), an affordable/high-value coworking space in the creative capital of Manhattan (Flatiron district) - for women only. It has all the amenities you’d expect in a coworking site, like a conference room,

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Parking for cars with every new building has been the law since the 1950s (complementing the 1956 Highway Act which legislated our interstate system), not surprisingly resulting in what are easily recognized post-1950s developments and buildings - they look like cars are the priority. The 2000s mark the era where cities have decided that the great experiment is over, and are now focusing on pedestrians and people once again. Where to start? Removing parking requirements for every new

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Residents in the U.S. revel in block parties, whether they’re urban like Adams Morgan Day or residence-based in the burbs. It’s a time when you can roam the street freely without having to look both ways, and enjoying the street as one giant festive patio.

Still, having a block party in the U.S. is typically a major pain in the ---, where the city government and police department must be notified and involved. Imagine that though, U.S. citizens have become used to the fact that they need

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On two glorious days on August 31 and September 14, 2008, the streets of San Francisco belonged to pedestrians, bikers, joggers, skaters, dancers (lots of dancers), picnickers, roller soccer, hula hoopers… you get the idea (and actually get to see all of it in the Streetfilms video above). That’s because San Francisco became the last of the country’s most progressive cities (Portland, NY, Seattle) to host their own Ciclovia, a ‘party on the highway’ originating in Bogota, Columbia where

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While resources abound on who creatives are and the tremendous economic impact they have, what about how they think? What better wellspring than Psychology Today’s Ten paradoxical traits of the creative personality.

To summarize, the key personality traits have a common theme: complex, integrated, contradictory extremes, multitude, or how about bridging the line between order and chaos? In other words, creatives essentially tend to have a dual personality, but a complementary one. The ten

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a video explaining what coworking means to creatives? There really wasn’t any until this one came along, produced by none other than the pioneers of one of the first coworking sites in the country, the Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan, Washington DC.

Founded in 2001, the ‘Lab’ is peaking right now with a full house of entrepreneurs who rent workspaces full time and part time. They’re also one of the first to establish an online social network

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The previous entry highlighted what 600,000 people thought of 25 cities based on several well-defined criteria in Travel + Leisure/CNN’s 2008 America’s Favorite Cities guide. This entry will focus on those sub-criteria that tend to matter to creatives.

People:
Diverse: New York, San Francisco, Washington DC
Athletic/active: Denver, Austin, Portland OR

Culture:
Live music bands: New Orleans, Austin, Nashville

Shopping:
Local boutiques: New York, San Francisco, Charleston
Art

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After a while, listening to ‘experts’ tell you which are the best cities to live, work or play in can start to sound like white noise. However, Travel + Leisure magazine along with CNN, provide a vacation from top down lists with one of the best city comparison tools around based on you; the opinions of 600,000 people. Check out their 2008 America’s Favorite Cities guide.

What’s refreshing is that there’s no emphasis on ranking a top overall city, but only by the criteria that people

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As a follow up to the previous entry, Portland Striving to be the U.S. Bike Capital”, the city held its Sunday Parkways on one day, June 22, 2008, where six miles of streets are closed to auto traffic on Sunday from 8 am to 2 pm. It’s Portland’s version of Bogota, Columbia’s weekly Ciclovia.

The video, produced by Streetfilms, and the imagery of the event, reminds me of a Simpsons episode where the childrens’ cartoon show (Krusty the Clown) went off the air and suddenly the kids had

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First of all, what’s cradle to cradle? It essentially means all waste is recycled, as opposed to cradle to grave, where waste is disposed into landfills. It’s referred to as waste = food, and going full cradle to cradle is a near impossibility at this point, but the 90,000 person city of Venlo in The Netherlands is going for it.

Fortunately, the country’s culture itself already provides some of the best precedents - notice the number of cars in the photo above, which is not an uncommon

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While farmers and public markets are experiencing a renaissance across the U.S., the Viktualienmarkt (Victuals Market) in Munich, Germany provides a model of what a city should do if it wants to take the next step in establishing a regional destination for culture and commerce. Originating from a farmers market itself in 1807, the 5-acre market features 140 stalls, shops and cafes offering your usual market fare times ten, but in a much more elegant setting.

Here’s what makes it Germany’s

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Amid the biking craze in many cities around the world, if you’ve been biking around urban destinations lately, such as the DC neighborhood of Adams Morgan, you may find parking at a premium. In Japan, 700,000 people bike everyday, more than in the U.S., so one can imagine bike parking can be an unprecedented drag. Of course, the Japanese have already used their renowned technical ingenuity to not only solve this problem, but encourage even more people to bike.

The ward government of

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Following the announcement of a green home crowdsourcing program in July 2008, Taurus Enterprise Group, led by president Gail Montplaisir, has agreed to see if the building pictured above can be redeveloped and crowdsourced into green condos that creatives can truly afford. We’re not talking about ‘affordability’ in quotations, we’re talking about what first-time home buyers, those with average salaries or even recent graduates can literally afford to pay a month in order to buy their own

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In the continuing more community less architect series, we take a look at Veterans Field in Silver Spring, Maryland, aka ‘The Turf’, pictured above. The nearly acre-sized lot was covered with a temporary turf field in the three-year interim period before construction began on a new civic building, but since then it has become the most popular gathering spot in the city.

Alas, July 2008 was its last month of existence, but it’s another example of the kind of urban space that people are

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The European piazzas are among the most celebrated urban spaces in the world, with each of these destinations having a rich history and story-filled past. Yet what makes them such beloved places is better explained by what they don’t have than what they do.

Visit any of these venerable ‘urban stages’ and you’ll find they nearly all have something in common in its space - nothing. No architectural walls, platforms and stairs, no trellises, central fountains and planters, not even trees and

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In May 2008 the NYC DOT (Department of Transportation) announced plans for the Broadway Boulevard, a pedestrianized street from 35th to 42nd avenue.

By the end of August 2008, a mere three months later, the pedestrian plaza is completed. That’s a rare sign of a government bureaucracy defying being a bureaucracy, opting for a more effective people-oriented decision-making process, such as their streets to plaza program.

The public-private partnership is a model of sharing

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Dancing is one of the most effective ways to relieve stress, benefit from physical activity and have fun. As one dance instructor once said, “You can’t dance angry.” So why is it that if you longed to let loose on the dance floor with a DJ spinning tunes you’d have to until past 11 pm, weekday or weekend. No more.

Enter Granny Boots every Wednesday night at the Melody Bar (recognized as one of the top bars in the world) in the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto. It starts at 7:30 pm and

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