In the industrial economy people worked in factories. In the services/information economy people worked in office parks. In the creative economy, people are working in downtowns. Rod Stevens of Spinnaker Strategies summarizes this trend quite nicely in The New Urban Workplace.

He mentions the suburbia to city downtown shift of Microsoft and Expedia in Seattle, American Eagle in Pittsburgh, AT&T in Atlanta, and Target in Minneapolis. He also highlights how these companies are recycling

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With a population over 100,000 and a greater population of half a million, Lafayette, Louisiana is a little known small town creative mecca whose residents probably want to keep it that way. What’s their secret? The city’s aptly named Independent sheds some light in their cover story, Cool town. Lafayette is becoming a magnet for the creative class. Here’s why.

Economically, they’re successfully transitioning from the industrial age (oil) to the knowledge age (health care, tourism).

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Just as our evolution to the knowledge economy is providing opportunities to recycle suburbia, as Time Magazine puts it, a less intimidating precedent would be how we’ve recycled manufacturing industrial districts to suit contemporary needs.

The Minneapolis Warehouse District is one of the best examples of recycling warehouses into an entire 50-block retail and entertainment neighborhood, with a core of about 60 historic warehouses (pictured) in a seven-block area. Known as the SoHo of the

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Regarding this cultural and economic transition of communities prioritizing a pedestrian infrastructure rather than an auto one, 15 days ago the entry ‘People over cars’ begins to hit mainstream media stated, “The next domino to fall would be Fast Company Magazine - stay tuned.“ We didn’t have to wait long, and we’re definitely hitting the tipping point when a business magazine like that has a headline like this, Suburbia R.I.P..

Now first of all, this site is not about anti-suburbia,

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It’s a familiar scene - you find housing you can afford near a mass transit line on the outskirts of a city, and the reason it’s affordable is because few people will visit you. There’s no there, there.  For decades, Collingswood, New Jersey, neighborhood of 15,000 just outside of Camden, was just that. It suffered massive downtown vacancies like most other cities, even though it was served by a major transit line to Philadelphia.  It hasn’t helped that many are still averse to living or

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It starts out as a vastly familiar story. As the industrial economy grew and manufacturing jobs moved to the outskirts, many of Wichita, Kansas’ historic downtown buildings were boarded up, with vacancy rates up to 70%. Now an evolution to a knowledge-based economy is bringing people back to the city center, and as we know, the creatives will seek out the natural cultural districts first.

The premiere natural cultural district in Wichita (which may surprise you in that it’s the 51st largest

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That’s ‘Q’ is in ‘quarter’, as in the newly renovated Gateway Quarter for Urban Living in Cincinnati’s once down-and-out Over-The-Rhine neighborhood.

The Over-The-Rhine neighborhood suffered a population loss from 40,000 to under 5000, but the 70-acre, 100-loft, indie-retail-driven Gateway Quarter looks to reverse that trend soon.

Much of the renaissance can be credited to the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC), a nonprofit developer funded by some seriously capitalized

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What do investors think of TODs? (Transit-oriented development) The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “in many cities, the hottest development is taking place along the train lines” and “mass-transit lines are the new frontier in urban development.“ You’d better check out the article, The Little Engine That Could before it gets archived.

The evidence?

- There are 100 TODs in the U.S., with 100 more in the pipeline.*
- By 2030 the number of households near transit stations will rise to 16

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What will the housing market be like 10-20 years from now?

Robert Puentes, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program provides some answers in his presentation, A Review of New Urban Demo-graphics and Impacts on Housing. It’s essentially a slide show displaying key demographics and how they will shape residential development.

As you can see in the first slide on the left, urban downtown populations have grown in the last few decades after declining prior to that. The

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You’ve just seen the study that documents the connection between rising home values and the bohemian index, so what are some examples of such neighborhoods?

BusinessWeek provides a pretty good list (with the help of Zillow) in their recently published, America’s Next Hot Neighborhoods.

Their city neighborhoods with the fastest rising home values yet still affordable are:

Boston: Dorchester, Mount Bowdoin, Grove Hall
Chicago: East Garfield Park, Cicero, Lower West Side
Denver: Civic Center,

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With a #1 ranking in Money magazine’s Best Places to Live in both 1987 and 1997, Nashua, a small city of 87,000 on the southern border of New Hampshire, aims to become even more livable.

Within the span of just a few years, the downtown is expected to have 885 new housing units built: 158 that are already completed, 445 approved, and another 440 being planned.  One of the most notable is the proposed Cotton Mill Square which will offer 32 of its 162 new condominium units at $180K, $70K less

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Henry Cisneros. Magic Johnson. Shaquille O’Neal. Oscar De La Hoya. From a member of President Clinton’s cabinet to a world title holder, these four have one thing in common - investing in inner cities, and with significant economic and social impact.

Henry Cisneros - Henry founded CityView after his White House service “to help create the highest quality housing for America’s working families”, partnered with a $500M revolving fund from California Public Employees Retirement System, the

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What happens when a small city invests in attracting the creative class?  You have a city like Columbia, SC with a population of 117,000 adding 7000 new residences downtown within the span of a few years.

How so?

- It has a major university, and is building a university research village (Innovista), not a university research park, that will create 8700 knowledge-economy jobs.
- Developers are building appealing, human-scaled lofts and apartments, both contemporary and historic to appeal to

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If the nation’s economy is at stake, should cities and companies invest/locate in the city center or surrounding communities?  Based on findings (and title) of the highly respected Conference Board of Canada’s recent economic study, , the answer is:

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This week’s (July 3-10) Newsweek International focuses on cities, with no less than 13 full stories from the 10 fastest-growing cities to an essay by Richard Florida to how cities make a better wilderness than the countryside.

The cover story features the 10 ‘hottest cities’ above 750,000 people in each part of the world, that the United Nations recognizes as the fastest growing.  However, what the report fails to say is how sustainable the growth is.  Many of the cities on the list are

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What’s the Now South?  According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Now South: Lofts, lattes in Mayberry, it’s a “a wireless, latte-fueled, even hip update on small towns etched in Old South traditions and bypassed by the New South renewal of the 1970s and ‘80s.“

Other words becoming more prominent in Now South towns for the first time:  lofts, walkable, yoga, tea, microbrews, vegetarian... A researcher who monitors redevelopment in small towns exclaims, “Ten years ago, people

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While yesterday’s entry presented national evidence of the downtown movement, what about local evidence?  Syracuse, New York is one of many small cities investing in downtowns as they transition from a manufacturing economy to an information-based one.

Syracuse’s success story simplified:

Step One:  Designate a depressed warehouse (ie manufacturing) district, Armory Square as a historic (and very affordable) neighborhood, thus encouraging artists and entrepreneurs to settle there.  Sound

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There are still some that question whether urban is in or not.  Here’s further evidence that it is, especially to the ‘cooltown’ target market, based on research by the authors of the new book, Tomorrow’s Cities, Tomorrow’s Suburbs.

From 2000 to 2004, per capita income in cities increased on average from 86% to 89% of their metropolitan areas’ income, as well as the value of homes, as the desirability of city living increased in many, but certainly not all parts of the city.  As the

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If you’re educated, urban areas are ‘in’, and have been for quite some time.  The Associated Press analyzed census data for 21 of the largest cities from 1970 up to 2004 and found that nearly all have added college graduates even though many had lost population overall, as highlighted in a recent CNN story.  The most educated?  Not surprisingly, Seattle (pictured), with more than half of adults have bachelor’s degrees, followed by San Francisco, Washington DC and Austin.

What’s the big deal? 

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Where do Macromedia’s 600 employees work?  Not in a suburban office park coupled with traffic congesstion.  Not in an economically struggling city downtown.  They happen to work in what is the fastest growing, increasingly popular area (Mission Bay) of one of the most desired cities in the country, San Francisco.

Granted, word is that the transformed warehouse could have been a lot cooler rather than its cubicle-driven layout… and there could be more nearby dining options than are currently

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Now here’s where the The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy report gets interesting…

The following stats from the report provide clearer evidence that the job-creating 25-34 year-old population is not only attracted to 24/7 cities like Austin, Seattle and San Francisco, but specifically to the urban centers of those cities:

Growth Rate of 25-34 Year-Old Population by Distance from Urban Center
1. Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA CMSA - Inside 3 miles: 26.8%; Outside 3 miles:

2.

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A new report, The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy by CEOs for Cities, looks at how job growth, young adults, and city centers are interrelated.  First the correlation between young adults and city centers:

The 1990s: In this decade, city downtowns start to become cool for young adults to move to - three times cooler.  In 1990, 25-34 year-olds were about 10% ‘more likely than other residents in the metropolitan area to live within 3 miles of the region’s center’.  By 2000, they

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How popular is downtown L.A.?  It’s population is expected to double to nearly 50,000 by 2015.  So what do people who live there think?  The L.A. Times asked them.

It was fun in the beginning when things were more affordable
“The coolest people were here. There were rooftop parties and barbecues. It was a very social building. You would have parties every weekend.“ “There were a lot of people moving from all parts. Downtown was very economical.“

The gentrifying crowd isn’t as social, and

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The Brookings Institution comes through with quantitative evidence that not only proves that downtowns are growing in population, but details who’s living in them.  Here’s an edited summary from their Who Lives Downtown report:

An analysis of downtown population, household, and income trends in 44 selected cities from 1970 to 2000 finds that:

- During the 1990s downtown population grew by 10%, a marked resurgence following 20 years of overall decline. 40% of the cities saw growth before the

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How dramatic is the excitement of moving to Philly’s downtown?

The area in

shows where current construction and renovation will lead to an expansion of this perceived ‘downtown’.  That means a lot of people are and will be calling downtown home, about 20,000 to 30,000 of them in this decade.

The details are included in this housing study, which also indicates no shortage of

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