We know the demand for walkable communities is there, but what about the supply? Looks like it’s finally catching up, at least as far as surveys go.

A survey of 1000 builders and developers in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic area, conducted by The Strategic Alliance real estate group, found that 60% of them are shifting away from bigger traditional home designs to pedestrian-oriented mixed-use neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, 61.4% of them feel multi-family residential holds the greatest potential for

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In case any public or private institution asks just what’s so great about walking and transit when it comes to your health, here’s a number of hard hitting facts visually communicated. These graphics can be found in the very readable 25-page Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits report published by the American Public Transportation Association.

Daily Walking Trips And Transit Travel (above) - It doesn’t matter what your income is, if you don’t use transit, you’re hardly walking,

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Moving into smaller homes hasn’t only become a financial necessity, it’s fast becoming a desirability.

If you’re looking for inspiration for big living in a small apartment, there are few better resources than the annual Small, Cool Apartment Contest presented by Apartment Therapy, which by the way, is one of the best blogs on the very same topic.

This year’s U.S. and international winners provide complementary examples for whether you have a more contemporary open floor plan like Chris’s

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Businesses drive much of the economy in the U.S., and as a result, much of our culture as a result. In Copenhagen, Denmark, the people often drive its economy and culture, and businesses follow. When Copenhagen decided to go pedestrian-only in the 1960s, businesses went along kicking and screaming fearing the loss of their customers. Little did they know then that that’s a primary reason they’re thriving today.

Illustrating this story is yet another amazing video (above) from the folks at

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Economic development was defined in the industrial age as the increase in the amount of people in a nation’s population with sustained growth from a simple, low-income economy to a modern, high-income economy. [Someone needs to change this on Wikipedia]

It’s definition in the knowledge age is more in line with sustainable development, universally known as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Its second definition in

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How you set a healthy standard for an entire town? How about crowdsourcing an entire town meal from food grown right in the neighborhood?

On September 26, 2009, the town of Middlesbrough, England did just that at their Town Meal festival, where 8000 people enjoyed a meal made from fruits and vegetables grown by 1000 of the town’s residents. The primary purpose? To provide awareness of food miles and improve the health of the town’s residents as part of its Healthy Town campaign. It’s not just

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This is a site for defining, talking about and providing examples of crowdsourced placemaking, but what about actually doing crowdsourced placemaking? That’s what the Crowdsource Placemaking Lab is for.

The purpose of the Crowdsource Placemaking Lab is to assist people who are committed to crowdsourcing a place that they feel should exist in their neighborhood or city, but doesn’t… yet. It’s a place for you to answer the question, What place would you be passionate about creating with others

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Now that you’ve now been introduced to Bicycle City, when it comes to getting your coffee fix, a few innovative minds in Brooklyn, New York, are providing a preview of the kinds of amenities you could expect to see in such a place. One that perhaps complements a bicycle cafe.

Kickstand Coffee, in a nutshell, is a 9-foot long portable coffee bar that folds up and is transported via two bicycles. Founders Aaron, Neal and Peter even crafted a system to offer both hot and cold coffee which you

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Or at least go two to three stories.

What more precisely is a main street worth compared to big box/strip mall development to a city’s revenue? Peter Katz, Director of Smart Growth/Urban Planning for Sarasota County, Florida with data compiled by Public Interest Projects provides a compelling look.

Above is a chart showing county property tax revenue per acre for Sarasota, Florida (click on it for a larger image).

The county’s big box stores (Walmart, Sam’s Club) generate $150-$200/acre a

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If you’re passionate about walking, biking and living outside of the city, then you might want to check out what may be the very first new car-free community to break ground in the U.S. Modeled after remote pedestrian-only towns like Zermatt, Switzerland (see photo above and aerial of town here), it’s called Bicycle City, and its founders would like the initial development 15 miles south of Columbia, South Carolina to be the first of many.

It will be very similar to the Vauban neighborhood in

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One would be hard pressed to find any real estate development firms firmly committed to investing in crowdsourced placemaking yet… except one. See Renaissance Downtowns’ recent press release below:

July 20, 2010

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Looks like your typical highway map doesn’t it? Except this isn’t for cars, this is the map for London’s new bicycle superhighway system. Check out the full size map with legend here.

From London Mayor Boris Johnson, “These radial routes are set to transform our great city into one where cycling is the first choice for many thousands of Londoners. As well as being good for your health and wallet, encouraging more people to commute to work by bike will in turn help us improve air quality, cut

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You know what it was like with commuting by bike in the 20th century… you may as well wear a tie-dye as well.

When bicycle advertising campaigns are featured in business magazines, you know the times are a changin’. Check out the logos, gear, posters and website behind People for Bikes: Uniting a Million Voices to Improve the Future of Biking at the Fast Company article, Finally, Bike Branding Moves Beyond Hipster Ghetto. People may even want to choose their bike from the icons above and make

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If all continues to go well, San Francisco’s business and resident groups (ie the crowd) will be able to trade parking spaces for revenue and quality-of-life generating spaces instead. The City’s Pavement to Parks trial program is experimenting with repurposing underutilized street space into pedestrian-only parks and plazas. Their first project, the 17th Street Plaza has already become a favorite local destination.

The positive reception has lead to its ‘Parklet‘ program, where a pedestrian

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It just keeps getting better in Oak Cliff, Texas for its Better Block project. First their two-day demonstration of a pedestrian-oriented destination on 7th Street spurred city council action to work on making it permanent, now the team is ready to tackle something bigger… a three-month demonstration of a pedestrian-only plaza.

Less than three months after the 7th Street demonstration, Dallas’ city council, led by council member Delia Jasso, told Better Block founder Jason Roberts that he and

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Ah, the effectiveness of graphics, from the socially innovative folks at GOOD.

Top diagram: The number of pedestrian and biking trips, with each, uh, person representing a billion trips. That last image representing 2009 is starting to represent Manhattan.

Lower diagram: DOT (U.S. Department of Transportation) budget for pedestrian and bicycling programs. More evidence that government (and private sector) investment will follow the crowd, especially when the crowd makes itself known. The

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So, you’re South Africa and hosting the biggest event in the world, throwing the biggest party in the world via its Fan Fest... what kind of destination do you provide to embrace it all? That’s the Fan Walk, a 1.6 mile/2.6 km pedestrian promenade linking downtown Cape Town to its Green Point Stadium (pictured). In fact, it’s so successful, city leaders are looking to make it permanent.

You can’t ask for a more entertaining walk, or rather, experience. What’s more, it’ll be a cultural showcase

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Wouldn’t cities be a lot greener (literally and figuratively) with more trees and solar energy? Those are two very big ticket items, and exactly the kind of scope where purpose-driven collaborative crowdsourcing is most effective.

One Block Off the Grid tackles the solar energy Catch 22 where solar panels are too expensive to install for one home, and significantly more affordable only if produced for hundreds. They aggregate interested buyers. Notice the chart above is a long tail diagram,

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Like anything in business, coworking is evolving. Here’s where coworking stands today, and it’s looking good:

Definition. Wikipedia’s definition has gone from a cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents to
a style of work which involves a shared working environment; 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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