The key obstacle to building these towns is NOT financing.  At least, that’s what progressive institutional investors are telling me.  It’s finding progressive governments that allow, and better yet, encourage the development of these kinds of towns.  The investors’ challenge is that they will provide the financing if municipalities present such opportunities.  I’m working with a collaborative of such investors that are committed to bringing the CoolTown concept to reality as vibrant urban

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Here’s one such trendsetter who’s living that what-rush-hour? New American dream standard, with an office full of employees by day that transforms into a home by night. Owned by nationally-renowned marketing guru Faith Popcorn, in her words, “I used to rush to and from home and work and never be happy with whichever place I was in. It felt as if I was always supposed to be in the other place. I finally gave up this idea of a line between office and personal.“

In continuation of yesterday’s

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The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.  That’s the name of economist Richard Florida’s signature best-seller that’s defining economic plans for cities, states and countries.  The message behind the numbers is simple: if you want to create jobs, you’ll have to find creative people, and those people gravitate towards creative industries and creative amenities (nightlife, restaurants, entertainment, recreation).

The book is filled

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Prove it?  Some people already have, and it’s much easier to explain this visually via the graph below, where the dots represent the country’s cities.  On the x-axis, creativity is measured via creative class workforce (science, engineering, architecture, design, education, arts, music, entertainment), innovations (patents per capita), high-tech industry and diversity.  On the y-axis, overall economic performance is measured by job and population growth, high-tech growth and changes in per

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It’s partially a combination of the experience economy (below) and the Not So Big House movements.

People are realizing that there’s more to ‘experience’ than what’s in the confines on one’s home and TV set, and that involves rich, interesting and diverse layers of life and activity in the immediate neighborhood.  Maybe that explains the popularity of reality TV?  Anyway, that intensity of life can’t exist without a critical mass of concentrated residences, and a loft is one of the most space

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The most important task in building cooltowns is finding the passionate, visionary people that make it come alive… and Liz of The Dairy Godmother is one such person.

How did Liz and her Alexandria, VA Business of the Year become a community institution in just a year?  She instinctively followed the principles of the experience economy, focusing on her customers as unique individuals and her frozen custard shop as one of a kind: She greets her customers by first name, recognizes their

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Just ask anyone who recently got a parking ticket. To quote Mark Frauenfelder, “It works on some level, and so you don’t want to make that jump and take the effort to do it, but then once you do it, you realize you should have done it a long time ago.“  Unfortunately, for many of us there aren’t any better prospects.

People who live in the coolest towns (Manhattan, Chicago, Seattle, Paris, Singapore, Prague) rarely own (or need) a parking space, so maybe this fact will help understand our

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Check out HP’s ‘cooltown rocks’ video, which coincidentally has a similar vision - albeit from a very, very technology-oriented point of view.

Technology is merely a tool toward a higher level of human interaction - and that’s what a CoolTown is all about.  In fact, the technology in a CoolTown is only as successful as how invisible it is.

In the vignette below, a tribute to a music teacher is broadcast live to her former students at home, on the go, and even allows a guest musician in

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Feel like your office has as much character as the dentist office?  Visit Affinity Lab to see this casual office-living, or ‘being spaces’ evolution. It also happens to be where my office is, when I’m not working at home.

For a collection of other great workplaces, check out this Workplaces link, also accessible in the right column under …

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Welcome to my CoolTown Blog!

Here you will discover that there really is a trend of building places that prioritize people over traffic, town squares over strip malls and creativity over isolation.  Read on, and stay tuned to have direct input into designing real bricks-and-mortar projects that exemplify these qualities.

Image Source:  PictureContact”, which allows downloading of their images with the watermark - this image is just too spot on to pass …

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