It’s a simple idea and the demand is certainly there, but why aren’t there any car-free neighborhoods in the U.S.?

First, overcoming either of these two reasons would have resulted in a car-free neighborhood:

1. No developer has the guts. Honestly, it really does only take one person with money to make it happen. It’s amazing, but no one in the last 80 years has stepped up. Until Joe Mellett of Bicycle City in Columbia, South Carolina. He’ll soon receive recognition for being one of the most influential people of the 21st century just because, and doing it starting with under a half a million $. Millions of homes cost more than that. The first Bicycle City will be greenfield, so who’s going to be the first to do one within an urban area?

2. The market hasn’t demanded it as a market. If you ask enough people, especially creatives who live in cities, you’ll soon find that there is more than enough demand for such a place. However, they haven’t organized themselves as - and this is extremely important - as a market that a developer or investment group can easily market to. It helps to be willing to move. This is where crowdsourcing comes in. It starts with 20 people, anywhere in the U.S., that want to start such a campaign. Are we there yet? If at least 20 people comment below with a yes (and email me at so I can contact you all) we’ll start there. Make history. Otherwise, see reason #1, and we’ll revisit this next year or wait for someone else to take the lead.

Second, these reasons haven’t helped, but they can all be overcome with either of the first two:

3. It’s illegal in the U.S. to have a car-free neighborhood. That’s right. Zoning doesn’t allow it. It’s a long story, starting with home builders and rising car manufacturers who lobbied the government in 1934 to establish a financing program that made it cheaper to buy homes in newly created auto-required suburban zoning than to rent an apartment in the city. Non-whites were explicitly excluded from the program. True story. This is why to this day any new building requires parking, and only rehabbing buildings pretty much pre-1934 don’t. Zoning exceptions can be made.

4. The internet is still relatively new. Before the internet, it wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to organize all those individuals that wanted to live in a car-free neighborhood. Today, it is. However, well-organized social networks have only existed for a few years, and it hasn’t caught up yet to organizing one for car-free neighborhoods, in part because people have been intimidated by the top three reasons. It will. However, this can be expedited.

5. Our financial markets aren’t designed for this scale. As we’ve all recently seen, the economy has largely become finance companies investing in other finance companies, to the point where 99% of the financial capital out there is completely out of touch with, well, how we actually live day to day. Wall Street won’t invest in anything less than a $15 million project. This results in only 19 possible product types they can invest in, and none of them represent anything you or I want to live or work in, from strip mall complexes to mobile home parks. Try these 19 instead. This isn’t anything reason #1 or #2 can’t overcome, but works well with perpetuating reason #3.

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 growth, with only 19.2% for single-family. 63.1% are re-evaluating their already planned projects to reflect this.

There are also indications that opportunities for crowdsourced placemaking are growing:

- Nearly half of the respondents answered yes to the question, “Since the recession, do you see large development firms changing the way they do business in an effort to share financial risk?“ With crowdsourced placemaking, homes/businesses are pre-sold/pre-leased, thus effectively sharing in the financial risk.

- Nearly half also stated that ‘demand‘ is the most pressing challenges in developing residential real estate today, followed by a third who pointed to financing. Crowdsourced placemaking is essentially demand-driven development, unlike the vast majority of real estate today, which is supply driven.

Read more in Citybizlist Baltimore.

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, and that leads to…

Mode Split Versus National Obesity Rates (below) - The less you take transit, walk or bike, the more likely you’ll be obese. Mind you, this is common sense, but the sense is made even more common when presented visually.

The following two charts:

Public Transportation Health Impacts - Shows how the health concerns of traffic safety, pollution reduction, physical fitness, mental health, affordability and basic mobility are positively affected by transit, and often ignored by conventional city planning.

Public Transportation Health Impacts - For all you decision-makers out there, this shows the financial impact of ignoring health issues and health-oriented planning and development. It gets pretty expensive very quickly.

Public Transportation Health Impacts



Estimated Public Transit Health Benefits

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 ‘Furniture Tetris’ in Houston, Texas (above), or got stuck with (as she put it) a compartmentalized unit like Maria (floor plan below) in Barcelona, Texas, which she transformed into ‘Maria’s Pockets’.

Why is Chris’s small home so livable? The open floor plan that makes his 450 s.f. place seem a lot larger. How’d he make it more livable? The sheer divider curtaining off the sleeping area from the living room also serves as a projector screen without making the place seem smaller, as well as playing ‘tetris’ with the furniture pieces to maximize his ability to entertain guests comfortably.

Why is Maria’s chopped up 699 s.f. apartment so livable? High ceilings and a balcony, and close to nightlife and the beach. How’d she make it more livable? Curtained-off sleeping area doubles as a living room, very comfortable furniture, and lots of artistic touches via lamps, paintings and plants.

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 Streetfilms, Copenhagen’s Car-Free Streets & Slow-Speed Zones.

A brief history:
- 1950s. Copenhagen experienced what they call their ‘car invasion’ as the auto industry hit the affordability tipping point.
- Early 1960s. The downtown was congested with cars.
- 1962. The City decided to take cars out of its 1 km main street (at the protest of businesses).

Today. As you can see in the video, the car-free program was such a success that it’s continuously expanding, with the support of businesses. This includes the transformation of 18 pedestrian-only squares that used to be parking lots, and the presence of 7500 cafe seats that are out for 10 months of the year. The latter stat is pretty remarkable considering Denmark is closer to Alaska in latitude.

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 Wikipedia is more in line with this, the process and policies by which a nation improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people. Almost, but not quite, a triple bottom line approach.

Until it is universally defined as such, economic development on this site will be referred to as sustainable economic development.

The point is, the evidence shows we’re rapidly evolving toward sustainable economic development as the norm…

In ABC News, Smart Money in Real Estate Is on Smart Growth, Alexander von Hoffman of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies states, “People are increasingly pushing for policy that supports an urban lifestyle, and leaders from the White House to town halls are listening…“

- “This year, President Barack Obama created the Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities to coordinate federal housing and transportation funding with local development. The president is helping to coordinate and reinforce a movement that was already gaining momentum. He’s helping those local and state leaders.

- “In California, for example, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 375 in 2008, requiring each region to adopt a “sustainable communities strategy“ to reduce greenhouse gases and give transportation projects top priority for funding.“ ...such as The Railyards urban village in Sacramento, pictured above.

- Public and private entities did a 60-40 split on the $132 million development costs for a smashingly successful Rockville Town Square in Maryland.

- Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce spokesman Marty Carpenter added that two-thirds of the residents in the region surrounding Salt Lake City voted to raise $2.5 billion for more commuter and light rail lines through sales tax.

- Operations for a new streetcar system in St. Louis will be covered by a transportation tax residents in the surrounding area approved by 97%, which many say gained such support for sustainable economic development reasons than mobility reasons (ie sustainable urban development follows new transit stops).

- If neither government funded nor locally funded sustainable economic development is for you, then how about locally tasked? Those Oak Cliff residents are at it again (see Better Block and ‘Better Plaza‘ projects), saving their City a chunk of their own money by volunteering to paint streetlights that a private company was overcharging for.

Oak Cliff continues to prove that it’s amazing what can get done when people work together rather than complain alone.

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 for healthy reasons, but economic ones too. Reports show the highest ever recorded rise in the price of food, while the cost of vegetables has risen more than 6% in 12 months.

Demonstration projects (which are all the rage with downtown street closures) are making it easier for both cities and its residents to accept progressive change. Over eight months prior to the Town Meal, the Middlesbrough city council provided locals with parkland, urban planters and other sites for urban farm growing. This year the City is stepping it up, suppying seeds, containers and 280 growing sites to 2000 individuals and groups (and counting), including 31 out of 51 schools, with 280 growing sites. Housing authorities and schools are adding their own growing sites. There’s even a plan to open a restaurant supplied by community-run food co-ops.

Check out the town meal video here.

Now, imagine this campaign with a pedestrian plaza program like this one...

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 in your neighborhood?

Create a new Group to define the kind of place you’d like to crowdsource in your neighborhood… A coffeehouse? A coworking site? A car-free neighborhood? You define the vision, then start attracting people to build up a crowd. It’s very important to note that the Lab team will even provide assistance (only through the site) for free. Why? Because this is a new field, and people need all the help they can get.

What’s next? Once you build up a sizable crowd of at least a hundred people; a beta community, the Lab team will help you find a ‘sponsor’, that is, an investor willing to work with your group to implement your collective vision. Think of it as the crowdsourced placemaking challenge.

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 can learn more about here.

They’re looking for ways to be zero energy, so if you have ideas to replace their propane camping stove, let them know. They’re currently working on a bicycle powered bean grinder.

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 year, about the same as city residential (which not surprisingly is much higher than low-density residential).

In the same category as Walmart, the county’s highest retail-only is its regional mall, at almost $22,000 per acre, aided by high end department stores.

However, two to three story mixed-use (retail and residential) at over $70,000/acre produces more than three times that of the Walmart, while three to seven story mixed-use at $560,000/acre generates twenty five times as much. Naturally, the higher you go, the higher the revenue.

The important lesson here is that perhaps two to three story mixed-use development/main street development is a sweet spot for the kind of development a city can prosper with, and its residents can enjoy that walkable small town character in.

For more local analysis of this and other information presented, check out the Citistates Group article, Mixed-Use Downtown Development Puts Standard Malls’ Tax Yield to Shame, and for a copy of the entire report that the graph is from, you can download it here.