Sometimes a higher calling means living in a home one could actually afford, depending on location of course. That’s the case at Francis Street Lofts in Charleston, South Carolina, where a former church built in 1937 (serving as a costume shop in the 1990s) now provides homes for young professionals.

The renovated building consists of twelve one-bedroom units ranging from 621 s.f. to 930 s.f., priced between $170,000 and $250,000.  Smaller units are what creatives are looking for in a down economy, and smaller units also need a bit more character to make up for the loss of square footage.  Most every unit has a spiral metal staircase (see image above), wooden fireplaces, exposed beam ceilings between 8 and 20 feet and green building design.

As far as neighborhood, the development is marketed to a crowd that “enjoys biking to work, walking to eat, and playing where they live.“ Just what the emerging market wants.

It’s a fairly common phenomenon, when things are bad, people seek camaraderie. When things become difficult across an entire city or economy, people seek a sense of community.

So, how does that translate to our own cities and neighborhoods? A renewed, and perhaps, more authentic interest in contributing to both public gathering places and local venues, specifically third places. Not only that, but crowdsourcing is a natural community-building methodology for doing so. Project for Public Spaces, the leading resource for presenting public placemaking examples, contributed to a Urban Land Institute article, The Upside of a Down Economy, that provides several recent case studies of successful public gathering places.

Seattle third places - Ron Sher, CEO of Terranomics Development, redeveloped a retail complex around Third Place Books that anchors a gathering space hosting live music, festivals and a giant chess board. He also developed Third Place Commons, a common area filled with tables, a stage and performance area, restaurants and adjacent community college. The community formed a nonprofit just to run its events.

Restaurant-driven neighborhoods - Tony Goldman, CEO of Goldman Properties, has helped transform NYC’s Soho, Miami’s South Beach and Philadelphia’s Center City by sticking to his formula of investing in a minimum of 17 local restaurants (not chains), inviting local stakeholders to join in, as a means of establishing a meaningful sense of place and ownership.

Wildly popular public market - Granville Island, a public waterfront in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, attracts 10 million visitors per year to its 280 local businesses because of its distinct character as a diverse and comprehensive public gathering place. It’s secret?  It’s long been organized as a public market based on local community groups, and remains the epitome of authenticity.

Detroit’s great hope - Read more about Campus Martius and it’s key role in the revitalization of Detroit in this previous blog post.

Houston’s Discovery Green - The City of Houston transformed 12 acres of downtown parking lots into a contemporary park with cafe, two restaurants, interactive fountain, playground, market promenade, dog runs, stage, sitting lawn and skating rink (pictured), attracting 250,000 visitors in less than three months and sparking investment in revitalization surrounding it.

Public market in Santiago, Chile - A public-private effort turned a desolate plaza adjacent to one of the city’s busiest transit hubs into SubCentro, a vibrant market and public space, soliciting the opinions of its residents from the beginning.

The growth of public markets in Barcelona, Spain - Rising prices in supermarkets have spurred a renewed interest in public markets, even encouraging private markets taking to the streets within a larger program to help revitalize neighborhoods.

Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore formed a coalition to invest in vibrant city centers, resulting in a Cultural Centre proposal in Perth, Australia as a model public gathering place, with photo exhibitions, indie music festivals, and a weekend market featuring local food producers.

Norway’s 13 ‘cities of the future’ is a formal program by the government to help 13 cities become models for sustainable development, of which preserving the cities’ almenninger (public spaces) is a major priority.

What stories are you familiar with?

Photo of ice rink in Discovery Green, Houston, Texas by Solburn.

I’ll be in Paris July 4 to 13, looking to meet with creatives that are interested in building a cultural exchange with creatives in other cities, especially via the creative community I’ve helped establish in Washington DC where I’m based, at CreativesDC. Please let me know if you’re aware of any person(s) or group I should meet!

Via creative economist Richard Florida, Kevin Stolarick at the Martin Prosperity Institute and BusinessWeek, here are the top 25 Best Cities for Gen Y. The rankings are based on more than thirty weighted variables in five categories: the share of a population at the young and single life stage, economic strength; education levels and safety; economic growth; and local amenities, measuring all 363 metropolitan areas in the U.S.

1. Boulder, Colorado (90K) - Progressive vibe, outdoor recreation, college town (pictured)
2. San Francisco, CA (758K) - Probably the most Europeanesque city in the U.S.
3. Washington DC (585K) - Internationally culturally rich with a small city feel.
4. Madison, Wisconsin (220K) - Progressive vibe, affordable, college town
5. Boston, MA (601K) - Highly educated with multiple universities, historic neighborhoods
6. Los Angeles, CA (3.8M) - The entertainment mecca and magnet for trendsetters
7. New York City, NY - The creative capital of the U.S., if you can afford it.
8. Santa Barbara, CA (89K) - A surprisingly high amount of international diversity.
9. Worcester, MA (166K) - Highly educated and gay friendly for a smaller city.
10. Bridgeport, Connecticut (131K) - Plenty of nightlife and an international crowd.
10. Trenton, New Jersey (80K) -  Also high educated and gay friendly.
12. Ann Arbor, Michigan (113K) - One of the top college towns in the country.
13. Austin, Texas (725K) - The live music capital with a rep for a free spirit, a giant college town.
14. Santa Rosa, CA (148K) - A quaint small town north of Silicon Valley, home to many creative professionals.
15. New Haven, Connecticut (124K) - College town and favorite for singles.
16. San Jose, CA (899K) - The more affordable region of Silicon Valley.
17. San Diego, CA (1.3M) - Lots of creative workers, arts and culture and great weather.
18. Raleigh, North Carolina (342K) - Small town Silicon Valley.
19. Honolulu, Hawaii (360K) - Lots of jobs in creative professions - food, entertainment, arts and culture.
20. Albany, NY (90K) - Lots of creative workers, growing companies
21. Seattle, WA (566K) - A big city version of Boulder, with an emphasis on tech and music.
22. Portland, Maine (63K) - Safe, many creative workers.
23. Colorado Springs, CO (390K) - Affordable, lots of creative workers.
24. Providence, Rhode Island (170K) - A favorite for young people, home to RISD, diversity of places to eat.
25. Minneapolis, Minnesota (363K) - Affordable, rich in arts and culture, one of the most underrated cities for creatives.

As pointed out in the same BusinessWeek issue, when looking at cities from a purely jobs point of view, the most popular U.S. cities with American students are:

1. New York, NY
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Los Angeles, CA
4. Boston, MA
5. San Francisco, CA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Denver, CO
8. Seattle, WA
9. Atlanta, GA
10. San Diego, CA

Then when asking American students where they’re looking to start their international careers...

1. United Kingdom
2. China
3. United States
4. France
5. Australia
6. Japan
7. Germany
8. Hong Kong
9. Spain
10. Italy

The bottom line is, Gen Y will tend to seek jobs where they’re most prevalent (ie big cities), but given the opportunity to find a job in their city of preference, that all changes.

Photo of downtown Boulder, Colorado by Molas.

It’s not often that you hear a headline like that, and I’m not sure it’s ever been claimed actually, but the real estate development firm, Renaissance Downtowns is committing to indeed, crowdsource downtowns. Not only that, but they’re focused on attracting creatives, with the help of CoolTown Beta Communities.

“Renaissance intends to address the needs of the Creatives by engaging this emerging market through crowdsourcing methodologies that have lead to the success of many technology offerings such as Amazon, Google and Wikipedia.

To address the changing needs of the American consumer, communities will have to provide the following attributes:
• Active, more engaging environments
• Artistic and cultural scenes
• Vibrant 24/7 economy filled with energy
• Preservation of a place’s history
• Tolerance (openness and diversity)
• Economic sustainability and environmentally sensitivity
• Multi-use transit oriented options
• Proximity to Mega Regions”

As CEO Don Monti puts it, “Our goal is to understand what the market truly wants, and deliver that to them.“

Focused primarily in the Northeast, the Renaissance team has established a unique Unified Development Approach of public-private partnerships with cities that are transitioning from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy. Renaissance provides the capital for development, at a scale of up to 1500 new walkable downtown residences.

Many of these cities are repositioning their downtowns to better attract knowledge workers to not only compete, but survive. If you’re associated with one of them, you may want to give the development team a call, as they’re in the reconnaissance phase of identifying which cities to invest in. They’ll also be at, and a sponsor of, the placemaking conference of the year, at CNU 17 in Denver, June 10-14, which I’ll happen to be at.

The question often asked in Michigan, and the U.S. in general nowadays, is ‘What about Detroit?‘  The mass exodus of jobs is well known.

What’s less well known is that much of the city’s historic pedestrian-oriented districts, the very kinds of neighborhoods that are the core magnet for economy-building knowledge workers, have long been destroyed. Not only that, but the present-day urban fabric is immensely auto-oriented, with extra-wide streets and machine-like buildings. So, even if Detroit’s economic development powers were able to attract, say, a Google office, Google’s workers still wouldn’t want to work in such an impersonal landscape geared to outdated technology. It doesn’t fit the brand, you could say.

But as stated in the Next American City article, Should We Abandon the Uncreative Class? No, we don’t, and here’s a couple of economic-oriented placemaking suggestions…

1. Build on current solutions such as Detroit’s urban placemaking bright spot, Campus Martius, which has itself attracted $450 million in investment, 300 condos and high tech companies.

2. Follow New York City’s Department of Transportation lead (how ironic, when you think about it) and invest in reinventing Detroit’s urban fabric towards one that actually appeals to people. See image above of the transformation of Manhattan’s Broadway Boulevard.

3. Find a Bart Blatstein and develop a culturally unique destination, like his piazza in Philadelphia surrounded by new condos, offices and local businesses.

As most CEOs will tell you, the number one determining factor for where companies relocate is based on where their employees are willing to be. So for cities, that simply means focusing on investing in places that people truly want to be in.

Coworking “is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.“ This Urban Omnibus article Work and the Open Source City takes a contemporary look at coworking today. The two main types that are emerging…

The permanent coworking space - You can find a list here of the hundreds of permanent coworking sites around the world, typically run as a business by creatives who wanted to be surrounded by like-minded people during the day. See upper photo above of the Treehouse in NYC by Matt Tyson.

Jelly - It started off as a brand name, but it’s quickly becoming known as a generic term for a periodic one-day coworking gathering at either a person’s home or venue with wi-fi.  See lower photo above of a Jelly at Panera Bread by Laura Forlano. The Treehouse, mentioned earlier, even hosts Jellys from time to time to let the public try out the space for free.

What is not associated with coworking are the random crowds of free agents that gather at wi-fi cafes, where there is practically no social interaction and definitely no identifiable sense of community.

The takeaway from the Urban Omnibus article is that a positive coworking community is increasingly becoming a larger factor for people in choosing where to live.