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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