What makes a CoolTown unique is that the people who will actually live and work there get to be involved in its design from the very beginning.  Fair huh?  Typically today, a community’s stakeholders use the charrette to plan the town from the ground up.  Once the project is approved by the City several months later, only then would it be marketed to future tenants, already designed.

Now, suppose a number of employers desired a main street of loft offices, or if half the residential tenants didn’t want any parking at all, or if most everyone supported a true Italian piazza**?  Unfortunately, developers/municipalities won’t invest in such innovative amenities if the market demand isn’t there, and the market won’t demand them if they don’t even know they exist.  It’s a vicious cycle, but we’re working on it.

**Just this Saturday I was strolling through my neighborhood when I came across a rockin’ swing dance on the neighborhood center plaza.  I even discovered I knew several people, and some of us went out to dinner afterwards.  So for social reasons, what if a number of future tenants wanted an outdoor ballroom (eg piazza)?

One of the country’s leading institutional investment groups, Federal Realty came upon a progressive city, San Jose, resulting in the European-inspired, pedestrian-oriented Santana Row.  They even made sure it had a state-of-the-art fiber optic infrastructure.  However, there is little local economic development focus (fundamental to a CoolTown):  no office space, no mixed-income housing, and no emphasis on entrepreneurial/local retail tenants.  However, it’s a great project for what it is, and one can only innovate so much.

Still, municipalities take such a long time figuring out how to approve even this level of innovation (so maybe San Jose isn’t THAT progressive) that Federal Realty has since stated that they’re going back to investing in easily-approved shopping centers with big-name anchors again.

The key obstacle to building these towns is NOT financing.  At least, that’s what progressive institutional investors are telling me.  It’s finding progressive governments that allow, and better yet, encourage the development of these kinds of towns.  The investors’ challenge is that they will provide the financing if municipalities present such opportunities.  I’m working with a collaborative of such investors that are committed to bringing the CoolTown concept to reality as vibrant urban neighborhoods in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods near universities.  Email me if you know of any municipalities that are up for the challenge!

Here’s one such trendsetter who’s living that what-rush-hour? New American dream standard, with an office full of employees by day that transforms into a home by night. Owned by nationally-renowned marketing guru Faith Popcorn, in her words, “I used to rush to and from home and work and never be happy with whichever place I was in. It felt as if I was always supposed to be in the other place. I finally gave up this idea of a line between office and personal.“

In continuation of yesterday’s blog, a few years ago I suggested to Richard Florida that he name his book The New American Dream. Why? Because he asked. It was actually the working title until his publishers went with the more targeted title of The Rise of the Creative Class.  However, this lofty vision is fleshed out in this recent article of his that crystalizes the true American Dream of working for ourselves (or at least under our own terms), and how that requires evolving the country’s mass-production-based infrastructure.  In the meantime, fellow Washingtonian Dan Pink pain-stakingly researched this shift in his own terms, and one of my long-time good friends and mentors, Andres Duany meticulously articulates how better planning in our cities and towns can accommodate this in his book Suburban Nation.

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.  That’s the name of economist Richard Florida’s signature best-seller that’s defining economic plans for cities, states and countries.  The message behind the numbers is simple: if you want to create jobs, you’ll have to find creative people, and those people gravitate towards creative industries and creative amenities (nightlife, restaurants, entertainment, recreation).

The book is filled not only with hard economic evidence, but delves into the workforce and cultural trends that can help revitalize our cities and small towns.  What happens when creative people and businesses concentrate on one place?  Check out these two Fast Company magazine articles for the big picture: Where are you on the talent map? by Florida, and the small picture - a brief article about a truly creative woman who is indirectly transforming her neighborhood.

Prove it?  Some people already have, and it’s much easier to explain this visually via the graph below, where the dots represent the country’s cities.  On the x-axis, creativity is measured via creative class workforce (science, engineering, architecture, design, education, arts, music, entertainment), innovations (patents per capita), high-tech industry and diversity.  On the y-axis, overall economic performance is measured by job and population growth, high-tech growth and changes in per capita income.  In summary, the more creativity you have in your city, the more prosperous you’ll be.  Perhaps this applies to you personally as well, so here’s something to get you started.

These findings are pioneered by Kevin Stolarick, Creative Class Group research partner, and Richard Florida, nationally renowned economist and author of the best-selling The Rise of the Creative Class. His associate research firm, Catalytix provided the graph.

It’s partially a combination of the experience economy (below) and the Not So Big House movements.

People are realizing that there’s more to ‘experience’ than what’s in the confines on one’s home and TV set, and that involves rich, interesting and diverse layers of life and activity in the immediate neighborhood.  Maybe that explains the popularity of reality TV?  Anyway, that intensity of life can’t exist without a critical mass of concentrated residences, and a loft is one of the most space efficient home designs that allows that.

However, Americans still have that frontier mentality and demand space, which is where Not So Big House author Sarah Susanka’s principles come in handy.  What the loft gives up in square footage, it more than makes up in ceiling height AND perceived space - that is, the large wall-sized windows literally extend the visual horizon of the room by miles (I can see the US Capitol a few miles away from my window).  The main point of her book can arguably be the loft’s greatest asset - the home as medium for self expression.  It’s open floor plan and extensive vertical volume is a virtual blank slate for interior masterpieces.

I’d post a link to some loft books, but the only ones I’ve seen so far are upscale versions designed for executives, and that’s not what fits here.