Crowdsourced placemaking had been a private sector sponsored success in Bristol, CT, but what about coming from the public sector?

To many, public sector sponsored crowdsourced placemaking sounded rather impossible, with such arguments as:

- A municipality doesn’t do placemaking, or implementation, the private sector does. It’s the actual physical implementation of building real places that sets crowdsourced placemaking apart from just crowdsourcing.
- The city government is obligated to

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When it comes to crowdsourcing, there’s not much compelling about the Give a Minute program that allows a city’s residents to send in their ideas to improve their community via website, Facebook, Twitter, or text, like an online suggestion box. However, when a city commits to actually implementing the most popular and feasible ideas, now you have something meaningful.

That’s what New York City is adding to the Give a Minute! program, which has run its course in Chicago and Memphis. NYC’s

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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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It’s not just a grassroots effort anymore. Fast Company Magazine’s September 2009 issue takes a look at how the most innovative government agencies and corporations are “enticing urbanites out of using their cars.“

NYC DOT: Possibly the most innovative government agency in the U.S., New York City’s Department of Transportation closed several miles to cars in their annual Summer Streets program last year, and made Times Square and Broadway Boulevard pedestrian only this year. What’s next?!

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First we had the federal government funding crowdsourced placemaking solutions, and now they’re crowdsourcing transportation solutions! Who would have thought the federal government would be out-innovating the private sector.

Located in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America) is sponsoring a $50,000 prize for the best crowdsourced solution to our traffic congestion

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If even the federal government is funding a crowdsourced placemaking project, you know the private sector is getting a serious wake-up call. The resulting program, Crowdsourcing Public Participation in Transit Planning, is experienced predominantly through its website at nextstopdesign.com, which launched in the past week.

The U.S. Federal Transit Administration, under their 2008 grant program for Innovative Small Research Projects to Advance Public Participation Related to Public

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Fitting with the previous entry, ‘People over cars’ begins to hit mainstream media, the City of San Francisco revealed that they’re considering closing the busiest street in the city to cars.

Why?

Perhaps it has something to do with the success of its summer Sunday Streets where miles of downtown streets were opened only for pedestrians and bicyclists, which were all the rage in major cities last year.

Perhaps it’s a realization that U.S. cities need to better compete with

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President Obama, from the Fort Myers town hall meeting on February 10, 2009:

“Well the eh…we have target billions of dollar at infrastructure spending. And states all across the country are going through what Florida is going through.  There was a study done by the American Association of Engineers… that might not be the exact title, but engineers from all across the country… we get a D in infrastructure all across the country… This should be a wake-up call for us.

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What are the real, personal financial benefits of going car-free?The friendly folks at the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) have provided a collective body of research, Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse (RBC), the goal being to help build more affordable, pedestrian-oriented residences, especially in preparation for what they’ve been instructed will be an innovation-minded administration. The following statistical summaries are found within:

- Minimum parking requirements,

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So, what does a creative economy strategic report for a city look like? One example is Creative New York, now a few years old (December 2005), published by the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy organization focused on the well being of New York City’s low-income and working class.  Being that this is an implementation-oriented site, let’s cut right to their recommendations on what NYC should do to grow its creative sector.

Create a centralized coordinating body modeled after

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