There are ‘green festivals’, then there’s San Francisco’s second annual Bicycle Music Festival, a one day, 15 band, 7 festival stop, free music festival that uses zero cars, trucks or even electricity. How?

- The bands all carry their equipment via bicycle trailers.
- The audience arrives via bike, skate and foot. They then travel sequentially to each of the seven festival stops in different parts of the city.
- The 600-watt P/A system is pedal-powered, developed by Rock the Bike in Berkeley, which produces some pretty snazzy bike lights. They also cofounded the festival along with The Juice Peddler.

Check out more in their video.

Image source: 2008-06-21 Bicycle Music Festival (Set)

Many of us are now familiar with crowdsourcing, but the most often asked question is how it’s applied in the real world. Writer and web community creator Josh Catone explains the three categories of crowdsourcing, though I took the liberty of clarifying it further, followed by how it applies in the world of cool towns:

Creation: Developing a new product or business. Examples include Wikipedia and tools for creating new projects like Cambrian House and CrowdSpirit. This is the basis for CoolTown projects like crowdsourcing attainably-priced green condos or rooftop restaurant (pictured).

Prediction: Collective decision making. Examples include businesses that let crowds vote on isolated decisions, like Jones Soda’s labels and Kettle potato chip flavors, or finding gold. This would be the approach for determining which neighborhood to crowdsource a coworking site in, for instance.

Organization: Prioritizing what’s important, what’s not within a body of knowledge. Examples include digg, del.icio.us, Google. Google determines its results based on what people link to the most, while both digg and YouTube are self-organizing services based on what its users think is most popular. Organizing all that’s going on in the crowdsourced placemaking universe is one thing CoolTown Studios will be launching soon, following the precedent set by its Washington DC-based CreativesDC site. This is the easiest way to start crowdsourcing your life.

Image source: Restaurant in Melbourne, by Mark (LP).

If you’re wondering where creatives stay in the city known as the home of the happiest people in the world (Copenhagen, Denmark), it’d be Hotel Fox, no doubt.

In a rather bizarre venture with Volkswagen, an aging hotel was brought back to glorious life by commissioning 21 artists, illustrators, graphic designers, graffiti artists that decorated its 61 rooms in anything from Japanese Manga to neo-Baroque to Pop Art. The rooms come in T-shirt sizes (S, M, L, XL), and savvy guests choose rooms to fit their mood. Of course, you can rent an ipod or a bicycle.

What else can you ask for? It’s also near a train station and at the edge of Copenhagen’s nightlife, plus it’s part of a carbon-neutral program, naturally.

Thanks to Rasul Sha’ir of Vosica for the reference!

Manhattan is on a roll - first there’s Summer Streets where major streets are being closed to cars on August Saturdays, then talk of a bike sharing program, and now the rather mundane announcement that they’re turning two of four lanes on Broadway in Midtown into a pedestrian and bicycle zone - to be completed in mid-August 2008, permanently.

To be known as Broadway Boulevard between West 42nd and West 35th Street, the project will feature a Euro-style designated bicycle lane and a host of public gathering spaces that include cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and planters.

Once again, the effort is being led by Mayor Bloomberg and the NYC DOT (Department of Transportation). All cities need to take note of this level of government leadership if they’re to establish their own pedestrian-friendly destinations.

Read more at NY Times: Closing on Broadway: Two Traffic Lanes.

If you’re a creative in Washington DC, then CreativesDC is just for you: “A beta community of free agents, entrepreneurs and creatives in DC, crowdsourcing places, events and scenes that inspire conversation.”

CreativesDC launched July 11, 2008 and its founding dozen members have already invited 100 of their fellow creatives (assume a 10% conversion rate) - that’s the power of community focused on a vision. By the end of July 15, the invite list will hit a thousand (again, a 10% conversion rate, resulting in a 100 new members in about a week) as local ‘gatekeepers’ organize a kickoff party on July 23. This is an example of the viral loop.

What’s the point? One longtime wistful request of the innovators in DC has been a forum to meet one another, even collaborate. What CreativesDC provides is not only an opportunity to provide that, but the means to create, as stated, the actual places (eg a design-oriented coworking site), events (eg monthly happy hours) and scenes (eg an active daytime entrepreneurial population) that represent those collaborations - via its groups. This can easily be replicated in other cities.

There really is no better model than Europe for walkable neighborhoods, so it should be of special note when Europeans recognize the top urban developments of the last 25 years! The International jury of the 2008 Philippe Rotthier European Prize presents their ten winners via this A Vision of Europe website and forthcoming book.

Here are the true benchmarks of walkable urbanism (note the European flavor in the descriptions), and remember, these are recognized as the best within the last 25 years:

Best Operation of Urban Renaissance in a suburban city - Plessis-Robinson, FrancePrix (pictured)
Best New City - Val d’Europe, Ile-de-France
Best Reconstruction of an Historic Center - Historisches Gesellschaft DresdenNeumarkt, Dresden, Germany
Best Reconstruction of a City Center - Palermo, Italy
Best New Village - Poundbury, Dorchester, UK
Best Public Intervention - Rathaus Viertel, Gladbeck, Germany
Best Neighbourhood Center - Borgo Città Nuova, Alessandria, Italy
Best European Urban Plaza - Plaza del Juncal, Irun, Spain
Best New Garden-City - Heulebrug, Knokke-Heist, Belgium
Best Urban District - Akroken Campus, Sundsval, Sweden

Special Mention: Quality of the City Extension to the Spanish Cities of Alicante, Bilbao, Burgos, Carbajosa de la Sagrada, Gijón, La Coruña, Oviedo, Pamplona, Salamanca,San Sebastian, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Valladolid, Vitoria.

Thanks to Alessandro Bucci for the reference.

Next time you’re in London seeking local, independent businesses, or if you’re looking for inspiration supporting such destinations, make sure to peruse the Unchained Guide. The coolest part of this online directory is how you can search for businesses based on the following characterizations: Arty, Buzzy, Classic, Contemporary, Designer, Eclectic, Ethical, Ethnic, Green, Indulgent, Posh, Preppy, Quaint, Quirky, Romantic, Sophisticated, Sporty, Street, Techy, Traditional, Trendy. You’ll find in this interview with the founders that they’re every bit as vibrant and full of character as the businesses in their online directory. Some excepts:

On why Unchained?...
“We think great independent shops are sexy. And just sticking to the same old, big brand, multi-national chain stores is dull, dull, dull.
We love quirk, originality and experiences that come from meeting interesting people… Because they rock. Seriously.”

On the importance...
“...Unchained shops play a massive part in their community too. We wouldn’t want to wake up in ten years time in a world where big brand retailers line our streets and grumble about it. But by then, it will be too late.”*

On where to find them...
“Independent shops can’t pay the rent on the massive streets in this city.”

Still, it could definitely benefit from a Yelp-like user review community, some better images and a means to perhaps allow the community to help the businesses prosper.

*Anyone who’s seen WALL-E will find this particularly interesting.

Buying an attainably-priced green home is a no brainer for most creatives given the option, however finding one is comparable to a needle in a haystack. So, in the District of Columbia the GreenHomes DC program is launching an opportunity for prospective home buyers (and renters) to crowdsource their own affordable green place to live.

In partnership with a sponsoring developer per specific project, GreenHomes DC is a joint venture between Green DC Realty and CoolTown Beta Communities.  Approximately $1000 will be contributed to environmental organizations that refer eventual green home buyers, including Green Drinks DC and Live Green.

The launch event took place on July 8, 2008 (last night) at Lofts 11, a 27-unit green residential building completed by Taurus Enterprise Group. It’s pioneering president, Gail Montplaisir, spoke to a crowd of a hundred on how she’d been supporting green development for decades without any industry support back, and was heartened by the green tipping point sweeping the country. She was enthused that there were so many people interested in green building, and was open to crowdsourcing their next green development.

In response to a time when commuters are looking at alternatives to spending hundreds more each month in gas, Forbes presents their America’s Most Fuel-Efficient Neighborhoods list.

Owning a home in a walkable neighborhood saves residents $300 to $400 a month, according to research by the Congress for the New Urbanism, compared to exurban neighborhoods where costs top out at $1000/month. The list below, with costs ranging from $600-$800/month assumes you still have an auto-oriented commute of some sort, because we all know the costs drop to a $100 if you’re taking mass transit or near zero if you’re walking, like yours truly.

Forbes’ list, with average monthly transportation cost:

1. Brooklyn Heights, NYC - $643
2. Koreatown, Los Angeles - $658
3. Logan Square, Chicago - $742
4. Arlington, VA, Washington DC metro - $747
5. The Mission, San Francisco - $746 (pictured)
6. Fishtown, Philadelphia PA - $674
7. Jamaica Plain, Boston - $728
8. Woodward Corridor, Detroit MI - $728
9. Greenville, Dallas TX - $745
10. Montrose, Houston TX - $760

Image source: Mission District, SF by Sutanto

Is there a third place you’d like to see in your neighborhood? Wish there were affordable green loft residences in your city? Think it’d be cool to have a pedestrian-only district brimming with outdoor dining? In the industrial economy there was little we could do about it. However, in our current knowledge economy, that feeling of helplessness is gone - the power to realize our collective intelligence manifested via inspired built places is now.

Here are a few resources to get informed, in increasing order of commitment:
- Crowdsourcing Cool Places for Creatives (13 pages)
- Remixing Cities: Strategy for the City 2.0
- We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business (176 pages)
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (338 pages)
- Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business (August 2008)

Bookmark this entry URL for when people ask you what resources they can read to better understand how they can crowdsource the collaborative vision of creatives into real places, events and scenes.

This entry also marks the introduction of the CoolTown wiki and forums, though I’m still getting the bugs out. Please do post your thoughts via the discussion thread link below.

Image source: Shanhai, by YY