The Broadmoor neighborhood in central New Orleans was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, but it inspired NOLA YURP (New Orleans LA, Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals) to do something about it - see New Orleans creatives take the initiative to rebuild.

Through its network, the group identified a sponsor developer from the triple bottom lined Green Coast Enterprises, who in turn suggested a few buildings/sites for YURP members to consider crowdsourcing. Working with the diverse local

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The Bearden Arts Building, a crowdsourced development (restored building in front, new building in back) in the once bustling/now revitalizing H Street/Atlas District of Washington DC, has released the following triple bottom line goals, co-developed by its beta community, as a causal benchmark for any development:

Financial/Economic
The Bearden Arts Building will meet required member rates of return, serve as an appreciating investment for its homeowners, and provide a revenue source for

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It’s the question I’ve lately been getting asked the most, so I thought I’d publish a response.

First of all, to clarify in the simplest terms, a beta community is the future group of tenants/buyers/customers for a place to be, involving crowdsourcing it into a community numbering in the hundreds. But how does it all begin?

It may help to explain where the millions of people initially came from to establish eBay, Facebook and YouTube - by providing a unique valuable service and allowing

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I get asked that a lot.

It’s not easy to explain in words, so here’s a visual map (larger one here) that can help provide a big picture answer. CoolTown Beta Communities is the implementation entity of CoolTown Studios, this ‘weekdaily’ newsite blog. The blog itself (and only the blog!) is a free public service (including all 1200+ archived entries) toward building better places to live/work/play. We’re also establishing a joint venture with a change management and viral marketing firm to

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A picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe a diagram is worth at least 500. For those of you who have read about beta communities on this site, but don’t quite understand how they work, maybe this visual map will help.

First of all, it’s a snapshot of an actual project underway - the Elements green vegetarian restaurant and education center in Washington DC.

Notice where one

on the path. As each step is completed, the path (arrow) turns green, so you can instantly see how the

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.“ Margaret Mead

A few months ago NOLA’s (New Orleans, LA) young urban rebuilding professionals (YURP) established a social network for the purpose of building a sustainable New Orleans, now at 1688 members.

Within a couple of months, a hundred of them established a beta community to identify development opportunities they could crowdsource into a model of what New

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Gear Factory, Syracuse, NY
Developer Rick Destitio is renovating a historic 1910 five-story gear factory building into a artist-musician live-work center via a beta community now consisting of 170 of the city’s most progressive creatives. They’re now working on the floor plans for the 65,000 s.f. structure and will start taking reservations next month. If you live in Syracuse and want to be a future tenant or patron, join the effort here.

Elements, Washington DC
A VIBE-sponsored beta

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To recap the previous entry, Linus Torvalds galvanized an army of people to co-develop a superior ‘program’ called Linux, and Steve Jobs is able to interpret people’s values, principles and stories into stunningly designed products like the iMac and iPod.

Now, what if you combined the efforts and applied it to creative real estate development? You’d get a community of profoundly satisfied people committed to, entirely proud of, and inhabiting the phenomenally-designed place they help build.

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I am speaking on a panel today at the Urban Land Institute’s annual conference in Vegas, and the inevitable question will be, “What is it that you exactly do?“ The tagline above says it pretty succinctly, crowdsourcing cool places for creatives, which after explanation comes, “How is this done?“

By training city, business and community leaders to become a figurative combination of Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux, and Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple. First, it’s important to understand

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A few weeks ago we profiled a group of young urban rebuilding professionals that wanted to make a difference in New Orleans. On September 26, 2007 they were invited to take more action as far as the rebuilding itself was literally concerned, at the first New Orleans beta community meeting at Tulane University.

The first order of business was for the group to establish a manifesto by which the businesses, buildings and communities they were investing in would be defined. Three writers were

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What kind of space do artists and musicians want in the city of Syracuse?  The simplest way to find out is to ask them, which is what developer Rick Destito formally began doing Tuesday night last week on the first floor of his 5-story, 65,000 s.f. warehouse (pictured), which Rick (brown shirt, hand in motion) is committed to transforming into an artist/musician live-work community (see rendering here).

Here are a few key discussion points from the beta community meeting:

The status of the

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Continuing our look from yesterday at where Beta Communities are being formed…

Syracuse
Where will the creatives go in Syracuse when places begin to gentrify? That won’t be a problem at 200 South Geddes, where developer Rick Destitio is transforming a 5-story historic factory building into a artist-musician live-work center. Not only that, but he’s sponsoring a Beta Community that will eventually consist of 500 of the city’s most progressive, culturally creative, entrepreneurial and/or

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Here’s a rundown on the progress of Beta Communities in cities across the country:

Washington DC

- A VIBE beta community to crowdsource a progressive new downtown restaurant, (since named Elements) now has 108 members and counting five months into the process, and it doesn’t even have a location yet (somewhere around 14th and U Street) . In the meantime, the beta community has convinced the business owner to grow from 1000 to 3000 s.f.; to go vegetarian, organic, local farm-oriented (except

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A major reason why developers find strip malls and office parks so enticing is that the tenants are predetermined, and thus are easier to finance because investors see the same predictability, which leads us to why 95% of development churns this out instead of the ‘good stuff’. Subdivisions and apartment towers are not far off, being marketed to as a mass audience who think and act the same.

So, in the same vein as what made YouTube, Wikipedia and American Idol drive millions to a passionate

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For all that time you invest in helping choose the next American Idol, popularizing a book on Amazon via a review, or educating the world by updating Wikipedia entries, what’s your reward?  Many of us do it because we feel like we’re making a difference in something that strikes an emotional chord.  Well, what if we strengthened that emotional chord, greatly augmented the community difference you’d make, and financially compensated your valuable time as well?

That’s what a beta community

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Veterans of this website know that a beta community is a group of future tenants/patrons formally co-designing a cool place with a partnered developer. However, there are many definitions of what a ‘place’ is, so here are the four types places and their associated beta communities:

1. VIBE Beta Communities - For third places, establishing a community of patrons to co-design and co-invest (via sweat equity) in those businesses. Click here for a current example in Washington DC.

2. Building

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Last night, 14 people - Lisa, Angela, Christian, Mike, Sarah, Joey, Justin, Ayari, Raj, Ritu, Heather, Robert, myself and business owner/VIBE Linda - met over pizza, beer and wine to discuss, as a beta community, what Washington DC’s next cafe/bar/coffeehouse should be. It was the first ever VIBE beta community, as well as DC’s first beta community. Two hours later we had laid out the foundation for what very well may be the coolest, most innovative venue in Washington DC.

You’d actually have

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What to do when no one seems to be providing a bold vision for downtown Louisville, Kentucky?

Last fall a core of creatives in Louisville established a beta community and set forth on that very mission.  The above image is the result of that local beta community to date, from a group of future patrons, tenants, developers, building owners and city officials, presented as the South Fourth Street Entertainment District.  Five of the buildings are owned by beta community participants who are

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Continuing the previous entry introducing the two economy-generating factors, Web 2.0 with the creative class, what happens when you combine the two in your city?

Let’s take the most popular Web 2.0 website as an analogy…

Imagine the rabid popularity and obsession young adults spend on MySpace, but applied to job-creating entrepreneurs in a single walkable district in your town. Now, people may spend inordinate amounts of time meeting new people by commenting on the blogs, pictures and

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First of all, what is Web 2.0?  In a nutshell, Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people.

Its wikipedia (a Web 2.0 product) definiton: perceived or proposed second generation of Internet-based services - such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies (don’t worry, we’ll go through these) - that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.

The creative class is well documented, as well as its connection to job growth.  These are the innovators (ie the

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A City can plan itself to death if it doesn’t attract real and significant private sector investment dollars resulting in compelling, vibrant buildings and places on behalf of it, not to mention the events, creative class and jobs that follow. I know for a fact that a lot of cities are going through this.

Based on the previous two entries on our evolution to a customer-led economy, the answer lies with the City’s own population. Not to oversimplify things, but here’s a CoolTown scenario of

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“In response to the blank canvas Savings #2 - As an up and coming home buyer in Atlanta as well as being a young architect, I love the idea of a blank canvas or “shell” although I feel as though developers would not lower the home price and instead make more profits by leaving out the “finishes” of the home and call it a feature. I think that this is a great idea but it needs to be done in such a way as to protect the young “creatives” who’s buying power is minimal.“ Kellen

It starts and ends

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There’s a key neighborhood street block in your downtown that could be the catalyst and benchmark for inspired urban design and investment to attract the next generation of downtown residents and tenants.  Is there a way then, that these emerging populations in your could city get together to design and develop their own neighborhood, buildings, workplaces, third places and homes at attainable prices?  They can via a beta community (evolved from crowdsourcing), a progressive community of

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You know how real estate is… ‘wait until they build what you want’, which could be years from now if ever.  Well, last week some of the most creative, entrepreneurial and intelligent in Louisville, KY took it into their own hands not to wait, meeting at the University of Louisville and other venues to establish what is the only official, active beta community to establish a vision for partnering developers and investors to implement.

Focusing on the downtown, they wanted a place that

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Each week I receive inquiries from cities that want to provide incentives to real estate developers that can attract the job-creating creative class.  At the same time, I work with investment funds that are seeking progressive real estate developers to invest in.  The question is, are there enough cooltown-oriented real estate development firms to match the opportunities?

Please contact me if you are (see email link in right column.)  The development opportunities are there.  The capital is

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