It’s no longer cool to be in a mobile device as much as it is to be on a mobile device.

To understand this evolution from (auto)mobile to mobile (device), it may help to quote someone who is playing a large role in it…

At the All Things Digital ‘D8’ conference on June 1, 2010, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple (now the second largest company based on market value next to Exxon) talked about the passing of the torch from the PC (desktop to laptop) to mobile devices, ironically using the auto industry as an analogy…

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars… PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”

However, just as computers are becoming more mobile, from desktops to mobile devices, the emerging generations that embrace this new mobile culture is setting the stage where cars themselves are going the way of the PC as well, begging the new question, Is the Digital Revolution Driving Decline in U.S. Car Culture?. So if ‘cars’ are the new ‘trucks’, what are the new ‘cars’?

That’s right, mobile devices.

So what Jobs really means to say, is that while cars are replacing trucks, his mobile devices are replacing cars. You’re going to need a new, more humble analogy, Steve.

Here’s a ‘looking at the bright side’ perspective for iPhone users in New York City and San Francisco that don’t like cars: The worse your iPhone reception, the more likely you’ll have a pedestrian-only plaza.

For those unfamiliar with the situation, it’s so widely known that New York City and San Francisco have spotty iPhone reception that Stephen Cobert on the Cobert Report, based in New York, joked that the one thing the iPad and iPhone have in common is that you can’t make phone calls on it. On the other hand, in New York City pedestrian traffic has become so heavy that they’re running out of sidewalk space.

It’s not really a coincidence that the two cities with the lousiest iPhone reception are also the only two cities that have such a comprehensive pedestrian plaza program.

It’s simply a matter of traffic congestion, whether it’s a lack of digital or asphalt infrastructure. Once a place becomes exceedingly popular, as New York City and San Francisco most definitely are, both digital (cell/internet) and physical (walking/biking/driving/transit) activity rise significantly.

The good news for pedestrians is that both cities are already beginning to pedestrianize the asphalt infrastructure to evolve with the knowledge economy (digital) from an industrial economy (asphalt).

As far as a digital one? While AT&T claims to have upgraded its digital infrastructure, the larger holy grail of free public wi-fi (infinitely less costly than the existing free asphalt network) is still something mostly only countries outside the U.S. are enjoying.

Photo of Times Square Plaza. Rate and comment on this place at Cooltown Places, or submit your own favorite.

One of the most dangerous cities for pedestrians will soon become one of the safest.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif commissioned the country’s housing ministry in the fall of 2009 to choose an international firm via competition that to work with a local one in planning the transformation of a noisy, car-congested downtown (where residents refer to crossing streets as a sport, or for nostalgists, a video game) into a pedestrian-only district. See rendering of their proposal above. The plan will take 10 to 15 years to fully implement.

Plans are ambitiously forward thinking, including:
- building multi-story underground garages outside of the center city from where people ride into downtown on streetcars;
- development of open-air restaurant areas;
- redeveloping old government buildings into museums, hotels, and art galleries.

These pedestrian-only developments are indicating a rather telling sign of a shift in economics. For the last few decades, and still today, the concerns were/are a resulting lack of business and street life in areas where streets were closed to cars. However, the main issue with these pedestrian-only zones is increasingly becoming a fear of them being too popular to the point locals will have to compete for access with visitors. The simplest solution is to plan more, which is what’s happening in New York City and San Francisco.

Does this make you more likely to visit Cairo? How would you feel about the plan as a local?

Rate and compare this project here among other places ‘that will soon exist’ at Cooltown Places, or submit your own.

The first thought may be when looking at this photo may be, ‘So what, it’s a Safeway!‘ But there’s more to the story here from both a placemaking and local independent retail point of view. It’s about a shifting of priorities for large companies, prioritizing people and community over cars and product.

Placemaking: What used to be on this site was your typical single story Safeway with a large surface parking lot in front of it, like you see in suburbia. The problem was, this is located in Georgetown, one of the most urban (and historic) neighborhoods in Washington DC. The parking lot is now located in the rear of the building as a two-story parking garage.

Local independent retail: But it’s still a Safeway right? Not on the ground floor it’s not. The Safeway is actually only on the second floor. Guess what’s on the first floor? Local independent shops.

Green: Designed to be the first LEED certified supermarket in DC, and the second for Safeway (the first is in Santa Cruz, CA).

Social: The prior store was known by residents as the ‘social Safeway’, and the new one improves on that theme, open 24 hours/7 days a week featuring huge windows where the previous one had none. Even the second story of the building’s corner piece serves as a public lounge (pictured below), with the option of being open to the outside in warmer months.

One intriguing note. In a Washington Post article, architecture critic Roger K. Lewis states, “This new building may not win design awards, but it deserves recognition for what it has aspired to achieve urbanistically and architecturally.“ Maybe one of these days, that will be the underlying criteria for architecture design awards versus its icon status.

Back to supermarkets, of course, there’s always the community-oriented alternative to the Safeway...

Would you shop here? If not, what would you prefer?

Photo above by Jim_malone. Photo below courtesy of Cooltown.

What will our cities look like in 2030 when we’ve run out of oil? The Our Cities Ourselves exhibition (June 24-Sept 11, 2010), a program of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy provides an intriguing answer to that question by matching ten of the world’s top urban designers with ten of the world’s most dynamic cities. The general theme? From the exhibition…

“In the middle of the 20th century, cities across the U.S. were redesigned to accommodate the car. As people flocked to the suburbs, cities were retrofitted with highways and parking lots. Roads expanded, public transit declined and so did our cities. In the decades that followed, cities around the world imported this auto-dominant urban design and began to suffer from its devastating impact.

Our Cities Ourselves proposes an exciting alternative path. Underpinning the images on show are ten principles developed with Jan Gehl, the noted Danish urbanist (see Copenhagen the birthplace of the pedestrianization movement?). With these as foundations, the architects produced visions of iconic sites projected to experience at least a doubling of residents by 2030.“

Check out a quick slideshow of the ten proposals via Fast Company magazine’s How to Design Cities for People Instead of Cars presentation (or click on the image above). Here’s a quick recap highlighting what makes these proposed designs so darn pedestrian-friendly:

1. Ahmedabad, India - Pictured above, I believe this is the first image associated with India on this site. Pedestrian-only plaza; textured streets which bikes share equally with cars (and horses!); arcades, awnings, and outdoor dining areas shaded by trees providing a transition from building to street/plaza; a culture that supports micro cars and electric vehicles. HCP Design, India.

2. Budapest, Hungary - Underground roads and parking allowing a pedestrian-only waterfront. Varos-Teampannon and Kozlekedes, Budapest, Hungary.

3. Buenos Aires, Argentina - Redeveloping train tracks into a bicycle way fronted by human-scaled shops and housing. PALO Arquitecture Urbana, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

4. Dar Es Salam, Tanzania - Combining the previous two ideas, redeveloping train tracks into a pedestrian-only waterfront. David Adjaye, Adjaye Associates, born in Tanzania, offices in New York, London and Berlin.

5. Guangzhou, China - Redeveloping an elevated highway into a pedestrian promenade lined by shops/office/housing. Urbanus Architecture & Design, Shenzhen, China.

6. Jakarta, Indonesia - Redeveloping dirt roads into bike promenades, building roofs become park space. Budi Pradono Architects, Jakarta, Indonesia.

7. Johannesburg, South Africa - Mixed-use buildings, public market plazas at transit hubs. Osmond Lange Architects and Ikemeleng Architects, South Africa

8. Mexico City - Underground streets for cars, above ground streets for pedestrians, bikes, buses. Arquitectura 911sc, Mexico City.

9. New York City - Pedestrian-only park below Brooklyn Bridge. Terreform ONE and Michael Sorkin Studio, New York City.

10. Rio de Janiero, Brazil - Tree-lined pedestrian-only promenade; BRT and bike avenue. Fabrica Arquitetura and CAMPO CAMPO aud, Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

Thanks to Michelle Hoffman of The Burning Desire for the reference!

What are the coolest, discovered or undiscovered places locally and around the world that will inspire what our neighborhood and cities will look like in the near future? The answer partly lies in our collective experiences. Under development for a year now, a site for crowdsourcing the best of those experiences is finally up at Cooltown Places. See the Cooltown Places button at the top right of this site.

The mission? “Crowdsource a library of favorite places from around the world to inspire crowdsourcing new ones in your community!“ Cooltown Places is a free public site to crowdsource profiles of the best places (e.g. a coffeehouse, building, street, piazza, neighborhood) around the world. The first hundred places, culled from this site, have been entered, categorized in ‘does exist’, ‘will exist’, and ‘should exist’. The best part is that the most viewed and the highest rated entries are the ones that show up first on the site, so the crowd decides which of the eventual hundreds of places should get the most exposure.

The goal is to have a much better understanding of what kinds of places we should apply crowdsourced placemaking to in order to transform the places that should exist into the places that do exist.

It’s in the first phase, so search, edit, videos, etc. will come later.

The newly opened corresponding Facebook Page is here (where you can ask technical questions, suggest features), and you can follow via Twitter here.

As an incentive, the most popular entry at the end of June will receive a free crowdsourced placemaking analysis for local implementation, if they so choose to receive it.

It’d be great to learn about those special places that you’ve long felt more people should experience. Isn’t that what placemaking is all about?

That’s the growing sentiment among Gen Yers, those in their teens and twenties, as evidenced by the graph above, provided in the Advertising Age article, Is Digital Revolution Driving Decline in U.S. Car Culture?

Some may argue that many states raised the minimum age for driver’s licenses, but as you can see above, the claim doesn’t hold true for those 18 and 19. Others cite the economic downturn for the drop in numbers, but in many ways, the downturn marks the difficulty in a massive shift in values from one industry (autos in the industrial age) to another (smartphones in the knowledge age).

According to the article, further evidence shows that the share of automobile miles driven by those of age 21 to 30 in the U.S. fell to 13.7% in 2009 from 18.3% in 2001 and 20.8% in 1995, illustrated in the graph below, based on data from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey released this year. This all happened while Gen Yers increased their proportion to the population from 13.3% to 13.9%. So, Gen Yers aren’t only driving less, they’re driving increasingly less than everyone else (see chart of ‘everyone else’ below).

Researchers state that the internet is keeping people from driving more, especially as digital communications becomes more mobile (ie smartphones) and accessible (ie 3G/4G, wi-fi on mass transit). However, Gen Yers themselves claim their main reason is the environment.

The Advertising Age article’s conclusion? “A resurgence of urban living in denser housing surrounding train stations. As a result, suburban shopping malls and big-box stores such as Walmart, Target and club stores that rely on people hauling big purchases away in cars stand to suffer.“ Statistics show the higher the gas prices, the less people shopped at Walmart. The article goes on to cite a prediction that “by 2020, the combination of younger people driving less and boomers retiring will cut mileage driven in the U.S. by half.“

Read more about this culture shift for all generations in the previous entry, Emerging gens prefer world beyond cars.

In the industrial economy people worked in factories. In the services/information economy people worked in office parks. In the creative economy, people are working in downtowns. Rod Stevens of Spinnaker Strategies summarizes this trend quite nicely in The New Urban Workplace.

He mentions the suburbia to city downtown shift of Microsoft and Expedia in Seattle, American Eagle in Pittsburgh, AT&T in Atlanta, and Target in Minneapolis. He also highlights how these companies are recycling buildings and sites: Adidas and Amazon are in retrofitted hospitals, Pixar replaced an old Del Monte cannery and American Eagle is sited on a former steel plant.

Why the downtown migration? Rod cites statistics that more women than men are graduating from college as well as working, more workers are openly gay, and more immigrants are educated where more than half of the new companies in Silicon Valley are started by immigrants. Suburbia does not appeal to these groups, which tend to be isolating, whereas cities attract more open-minded, diverse and connected populations. And where the talent is, the companies follow. For instance, the talent-rich Carnegie Mellon University even hosts Apple, Intel and Google on campus.

The report concludes with a checklist of what to do to attract investment and talent if you’re either a company, city or college/university.

The photo above is of the new GTECH world headquarters in downtown Providence, Rhode Island - the big gray box that unfortunately looks like a corporate office building. Too bad it couldn’t look more like the building to the right, but as Steve Jobs said regarding finding a home for Pixar, “What we really wanted was to find a big, old, brick building and rehabilitate it, but we couldn’t, so we built it instead.“ Maybe next time the GTECH real estate team will try a little harder. The bottom line here is who wouldn’t want to work with a scene like that in your backyard?

It’s not the first bike sharing system in the U.S. (which is SmartBike in Washington DC with 120 bikes and 10 stations), but the B-Cycle bike sharing program in Denver with 400 bikes and 40 stations was the largest at its April 22, 2010 launch (Nice Ride with 1000 bikes and 75 stations in Minneapolis now owns that distinction as of June 10, 2010) and definitely the most tech relevant. It’s also the first one designed and developed in the U.S.

What makes B-Cycle so unique?

- Three innovative companies, Humana, Trek and creative agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky designed the B-Cycle system for the U.S. with expectations of 50,000 bikes in a dozen cities within three years, starting in Denver.
- Like bike sharing programs throughout Europe (Paris is the largest with over 20,000 bikes/1400 stations), the first half hour is free. It’s $1.10 the next 30 minutes, $3.30 the next 30 after that, and increasingly higher, mainly to encourage shorter trips and reduce the likelihood of theft. Annual membership fees are $65/year, or one day for $5, a week for $20, $30 for a month.
- An iPhone app tells users how many B-cycles are available at each station, and how many B-cycle docks are open for when it’s time to return the bikes.
- You can keep track of your rides visually (see image below) like the popular Nike Run program.
- Health care provider Kaiser Permanente provided $450,000 in funding for the first three years, as a means of promoting preventative care.

Read about B-Cycle’s March 2009 debut at SXSW, and the story behind its key designer, Alex Bogusky.

Solar-powered, RFID-enabled B-Cycle stations.

Track individual bike rides, or summaries.

Here’s a short and sweet summary of the Denver B-Cycle user experience.

We all know there’s no way someone’s city ranking is going to communicate which city is ‘the best’. However, it may be helpful to provide a series of them, based on a diversity of criteria, that starts to give us at least a sense of which cities tend to be more appealing to cultural creatives and those in the creative workforce.

Here’s a look at some of these recent rankings…

Fast Cities 2010
Link. Fast Company magazine’s annual take on which cities are ‘blending the best and boldest ideas from across the nation.‘ Note that this is more of an up and coming list.

Car sharing: Austin, TX
Venture-capital mind-set: Cleveland, OH
Incentivized teaches: Denver, CO
Smart energy: Boulder, CO
Urban farms: New York
Farm fresh food: Portland, OR
Zero-emission public transit: Oakland, CA
Renaissance neighborhoods: Savannah, GA
Artists as residents: Boston
Open-source government: San Francisco
Broadband everywhere, for everyone: Minneapolis, MN

25 Best Cities for College Grads
Link. Compiled by creative class economist Richard Florida and team based on these criteria.

1. Ithaca, NY
2. Madison, WI
3. Ann Arbor, MI
4. Durham, NC
5. Austin-Round Rock, TX
6. Boulder, CO
7. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC, VA-MD-WV
8. Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
9. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NW-PA
10. Iowa City, IA
11. Charlottesville, VA
12. College Station-Bryan, TX
13. Lawrence, KS
14. Lincoln, NE
15. Tallahassee, FL
16. Columbia, MO
17. Trenton-Ewing, New Jersey
18. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
19. State College, PA
20. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
21. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
22. Santa Barbara-Santa Maria, CA
23. Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY
24. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
25. Seattle, WA

Cities Blazing a Green Trail
Link. This is more of a highlight list of cities that are innovating green.

Portland, OR - Cycle paths, light rail, car sharing.
Reykjavik, Iceland - Geothermal energy heats almost all of its buildings in a city of 120,000.
Vancouver, Canada - 90% of its energy comes from renewable sources.
Copenhagen, Denmark - Bicycle and organic food culture; wind turbines produce 1/5th of electricity in Denmark.
Malmo, Sweden - Aiming to be climate neutral by 2020, zero energy by 2030.
Chicago, IL - Hundreds of roof gardens.
Curitiba, Brazil - Possibly the most innovative bus system in the world.
Frieburg, Germany - Home of the eco-minded Vauban district.
Masdar, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates - Zero carbon, zero waste car-free city now under construction.

The Top Cities With the Best Broadband
Link. This is based on a 30-day rolling average with cities over 75,000 people.

U.S. cities:
1.San Jose, Calif. 15.02 Mbps
2. Saint Paul, Minn. 14.53 Mbps
3. Pittsburgh, Pa. 14.18 Mbps
4. Oklahoma City, Okla. 12.12 Mbps
5. Brooklyn, N.Y. 12.10 Mbps
6. Tampa, Fla. 12.05 Mbps
7. Bronx, N.Y. 12.01 Mbps
8. New York, N.Y. 11.85 Mbps
9. Denver, Colo. 11.68 Mbps
10. Sacramento, Calif. 11.34 Mbps

Global cities:
1. Seoul, South Korea 34.49 Mbps
2. Riga, Latvia 27.88 Mbps
3. Hamburg, Germany 26.85 Mbps
4. Chisinau, Republic of Moldova 24.31 Mbps
5. Helsinki, Finland 20.58 Mbps Mbps
6. Stockholm, Sweden 19.97 Mbps
7. Bucharest, Romania 19.68 Mbps
8. Sofia, Bulgaria 18.99 Mbps
9. Kharkov, Ukraine 18.15 Mbps
10. Kaunas, Lithuania 17.46 Mbps

21 Top Tim-Saving Cities
Link. Produced by Real Simple magazine, based on the these criteria. Ironically, if you want to save time reading the descriptions, check out CNN’s recap instead.

1. Seattle—Score: 22.5—Population: 598,541
2. Portland, Oregon—Score: 21.5—Population: 557,706
3. San Francisco—Score: 21—Population: 808,976
4. Boston—Score: 20—Population: 609,023
5. Minneapolis—Score: 19.5—Population: 382,605
6. Denver—Score: 19—Population: 598,707
7. Washington, D.C.—Score: 18.5—Population: 591,833
8. Pittsburgh—score: 18—Population: 310,037
9. Miami—Score: 17.5—Population: 413,201
10. Atlanta—score: 17—Population: 537,958
11. Baltimore—Score: 16.5—Population: 636,919
12. Philadelphia—Score: 16—Population: 1,447,395
13. New York City—Score: 15.5—Population: 8,363,710
14. Chicago—Score: 15—Population: 2,853,114
15. Austin, Texas—Score: 14.5—Population: 757,688
16. (3-way tie) Cleveland—Score: 14—Population: 433,748
16. (3-way tie) Dallas—Score: 14—Population: 1,279,910
16. (3-way tie) Los Angeles—Score 14—Population: 3,833,995
19. San Diego—Score: 13.5—Population: 1,279,329
20. Houston—Score: 13—Population: 2,242,193
21. Phoenix—Score: 11—Population: 1,567,924

Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey
Link, an annual list comparing 221 cities based on 39 criteria.

1. Vienna, Austria 108.6
2. Zurich, Switzerland 108
3. Geneva, Switzerland 107.9
4. Vancouver, Canada 107.4
5. Auckland, New Zealand 107.4
6. Düsseldorf, Germany 107.2
7. Munich, Germany 107
8. Frankfurt, Germany 107
9. Bern, Switzerland 106.5
10. Sydney, Australia 106.3

...and their Top 10 Eco-City ranking:

1. Calgary, Canada 145.7
2. Honolulu, U.S. 145.1
3. Ottawa, Canada 139.9
3. Helsinki, Finland 139.9
5. Wellington, New Zealand 138.9
6. Minneapolis, U.S. 137.8
7. Adelaide, Australia 137.5
8. Copenhagen, Denmark 137.4
9. Kobe, Japan 135.6
9. Oslo, Norway 135.6
9. Stockholm, Sweden 135.6

Also, check out Travel + Leisure’s America’s Favorite Cities that lets you see rankings of cities based on criteria (people, culture, nightlife, food/dining) as rated by its readers.

What’s the verdict? That’s up to you to decide. Though it looks like there may be some interest in Posted by Neil Takemoto in • Cities | Link