As creatives are increasingly preferring a world beyond cars in natural cultural districts that function more like Wikipedia than Encyclopedia Britannica, bureaucracies both corporate and government are largely stuck in management models of the industrial age that will slow the transition on their end.

Enter the government of Geneva, Switzerland and a tri-partisan 2-1 City Council vote to close 200 streets to cars. Or as Geneva’s council member Fabienne Fischer states, “It’s not really to close 200 roads or streets in the center of Geneva, but to open 200 streets to improved life in the neighborhood.“

We’re not talking about the closing of a street or two here and there, this is 200 street blocks that pretty much scale up to an entire downtown. If the proposal is officially enacted (it hasn’t yet, as larger businesses may be opposing it), you can place the City of Geneva on par with the economic progressiveness of Google, Amazon and eBay. In fact, the city government is already there, it’s a question of whether the private sector can match it.

Fabienne adds, “200 places for pedestrian life or relationships corresponds to 200 schools, kindergartens, or even every type of people at home. The idea is to concentrate these pedestrian zones near these places in order to protect the more fragile people, older people younger people. The small shops also need to have a real social life in order to have people coming.“

You can listen to a brief interview with her here.

Also, check out the article by April Streeter of Gothenburg, Sweden on 6 Cities That Could Easily Be Car “Lite” or Car Free .

We all know the economy needs jobs. Not industrial economy jobs, which we’re transitioning away from, but knowledge economy jobs. But where did the Apples, Microsofts and HPs that fuel today’s economy come from? That’s right, startups.

Our entry Gazelles + Economic Gardening = Prosperity highlighted this very trend back in 2003. In 2007, we posted how every neighborhood needs a coworking space. Today we’re in a jobs crisis. The time is right to converge these two trends.

First, Blake Jennelle, founder of Philly Startup Leaders, the “largest and most active entrepreneur community in Philadelphia,“ provides some insight into the world of startups, typically 3-5 employees that are looking to grow based on a predominant product or service:

“Delusion is the hidden startup killer. It leads to self destructive decisions in every aspect of the business. And delusion thrives in isolation.

The bottom line is startups really want to be around startups, and freelancers really want to be around freelancers. They get along and enjoy each other, and they can help each other . But they also need some distance to thrive.“

Second, we present a graph that illustrates the need and opportunity for startup coworking spaces, a much more contemporary version of business accelerators, and more focused on creatives. Because they’re geared toward more creative, innovative startups, these typically aren’t government or university run. They can certainly be assisted by either though, as long as the somewhat irreverent startup vibe stays true. If you know of one, or would like to start one up, please comment below.

One previous entry you may want to look at: the entrepreneurial development system modeled after the A, AA, AAA levels of professional baseball.

If there’s one job creation lesson to be learned here, it’s this: The graph shows there may by a purely psychological reason why solopreneurs don’t want to be startups… unless there was a more socially engaging environment to be in.

Can you say $675 a month to rent your very own newly renovated residence in an up-and-coming neighborhood within a vibrant city? That’s affordable to someone with a $25,000/year salary.

Mini-condos on the rise in walkable urban areas, and developers in Vancouver, Canada agree, announcing thirty 270 s.f. units to be completed in March 2011.

Apparently having City support for mini-residences is a new thing, “We took a position against these kinds of units 20 years ago, but times have changed. We’ve got to support any kind of rental housing,“ Tom Durning of the Tenant Resource and Advisory Council.

Keys to attractive high style/low cost compact design for the $5 million mixed-use building include looking to Asia and Europe for inspiration, higher ceilings, lighter-colored materials and larger windows,kand a fold-out Murphy Bed.

“So many people contact us, not with a specific size they want, or specific amenities, but they tell us where they want to be in the neighbourhood and how much they can pay. So often that amount is just not achievable for anything but a very specialized product like this. By cutting away the non-essentials, that is the only way to get to that price-point in Vancouver. These types of sizes, quite honestly, don’t shock people in other cities. I think it’s a learning curve here,“ John Stovell, general manager of Reliance Properties.

Stovell puts it best, “It’s not gentrification. It’s accommodation.“

However, these aren’t the smallest residences the City of Vancouver will allow you to rent. Check out the 195 s.f. ‘mortgage helpers’, where condo dwellers lease out portions of their homes to others.

For any city taking transit seriously (or not seriously), the video above is a must-see if they care to relate to emerging generations and grow.

The auto industry spends $20 billion in advertising in California alone. The question posed in the video above is, what would happen if the same kind of money was spent on transit? Or perhaps a better question is, what if mass transit was not only presented as sexy as cars are, but as cool as the progressive, open-minded, creative people who use it?

The City of Los Angeles did just that, hiring an in-house creative agency to communicate that transit (methinks the word ‘mass’ sounds too non-individualistic or unique to be associated with its riders) is more appealing and attractive than driving. In other words, to communicate what creatives really do think about it for once.

In the video you’ll see their most successful ‘opposites or problem/solution’ campaign that contrasted transit (known as Metro) with driving: villain/hero; stress/relief; bitter/sweet; naughty/nice. They went with bright vibrant colors to spice up their image, got Mattel to brand ‘Los Angeles’ on a Matchbox replica of their bus, and commissioned 300 professional artists to enliven Metro stations. They chose fonts and graphics for their maps and guides that you’d normally find in designer shops.

Results? Since the design switch, discretionary ridership has gone from 22% to 36% of commuters.

See the full screen here.

Update! Check out Metro’s website here and the Fast Company article, How L.A. Metro Is Enticing Riders With Better Design, previously mentioned in Public, private sectors investing in driving less.

Why is it that the vast majority of new development is at an institutional scale, and we don’t see human-scaled fine-grained urban fabric, the kind that makes historic neighborhoods so desirable? Well, it’s mainly because the vast majority of real estate development investment dollars come from institutional investors, such as pension funds, insurance companies, Wall Street…

As you can see in the long tail diagram above, institutional investors aren’t interested in development projects costing less than $15 million, which on average require about $5 million of their capital. When you’re managing billion dollar funds, anything less than $5 million is too small. However, you can also see that the market demand in the growing knowledge economy is largely left out. Read about the 19 conventional product types of the industrial age vs the 19 urban development/place types of the knowledge age here.

In other words, while many of us would rather live in a multi-unit rowhouse type of building, our only choices may be apartment towers, because only the latter is big enough to finance in today’s investment world. The tipping point is too high, and the result is a de facto built environment of monumental projects like you’ll find at GlobeSt.com, the de facto real estate investment news site.

Hopefully sooner than later, but inevitably, the investment industry will cater to the long tail (ie the masses, or ‘everybody else’) and establish contemporary management structures that can handle a greater number of smaller development projects, as low as $6 million requiring $2 million in capital (ie a multi-unit rowhouse) - see diagram below. At the same time, crowdfunding will provide more financing options from the other end, letting the market finance their own preferences. That’s when you’ll finally see the 19 more creative urban development/place types define the new quality of life that creatives demand.

Thanks to Jamal Williams of Red Dove real estate development for contributing to this entry. Also, see previous entry, Time for real estate investment to catch up to the market.

Check out an extended version on Planetizen.

One of those ‘I wish we had one in my neighborhood’ urban destinations of creatives is the outdoor cafe walk. The Rue des Bouchers (butcher’s street, historically) - Beenhouwersstraat in Brussels, Belgium is one of the most picturesque and popular in Europe.

For several blocks, you’ll find restaurant after restaurant featuring outdoor seating. What makes this area so inviting?

- The streets are narrow and winding, so you feel like you’re in an outdoor room rather than a long corridor.
- These are local, independent businesses. The owners/managers are often ‘greeting’ you outside, beckoning you to come in. Maybe too inviting, sometimes.
- The architecture of the fronting buildings is quaint, human-scaled and colorful.
- Human-scaled elements such as awnings, tables, displays, signs and plants within a pedestrian-only street remind you that humans are more welcome than say, automobiles.
- The buzz of engaged conversation - you know this is a happening place.

Check out a full slate of photos of this famous streethere, and find more vignettes of the outdoor dining scene here.

From a creative economy point of view, are towns, cities and even regions not within a ‘mega-region’ (10 to 50 million people) not worth investing significantly in?

From the Prospect article, Ruse of the Creative Class, responding to the premise behind economist Richard Florida’s upcoming book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity,

In a warm-up to his next book, Florida has been arguing that the recession has so decimated many cities and regions that it’s time for the country to cut its losses and instead encourage growth in places that are prospering, like Silicon Valley, Boulder, Austin, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle. And the rest? In his much-cited cover story in the March issue of The Atlantic - “How the Crash Will Reshape America - he delivered the harsh news: “We need to be clear that ultimately, we can’t stop the decline of some places, and that we would be foolish to try. We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall, and begin building a new economy, based on a new geography.“

Now, if you’re purely focused on getting a job in the creative economy, the bottom line presented here is that you should move to a creative mega-region (pictured for North America above, and click the following for Europe, Asia and the world), and you’ll be hearing about this argument more and more. However, as any regular reader of this blog knows, that’s not the case if you’re a ‘creative’, where quality of life matters just as much, and usually more.

So the question here remains for those in non-mega-regions, ‘How do I bring more of the creative economy to me?‘ While Richard’s new book will advocate an answer along the lines of, “Move, or don’t expect any federal or even state investment,“ what your locale needs to focus on (other than the typical scattershot policy approach) is, ‘Who are the people with the most potential to create jobs in our creative economy, and how can we build a sense of community (virtually and physically) among them? That’s what this site is all about.

Pictures and music are worth more than text, so here’s a deck (generic name for a Powerpoint) sponsored by Washington DC developers (Red Dove, website coming and Gragg & Associates) to crowdsource an urban destination for creatives in Washington DC.

Stay tuned for more info on the proposed development that’ll be the first to utilize the new crowdsourced placemaking tool Bubbly, and check out the preliminary vision here.

The music was custom produced by Yoko K, who does soundscapes for creative places and events.

If you’re going to crowdsource places for creatives, it’s pretty clear you need to start with a core group of creatives. However, if you’re going to crowdsource the planning of urban districts for creatives, often sharing many of the same principles as the Smart Growth movement, it would be highly beneficial if everyone had a copy of the Smart Growth Manual as a reference.

Crowdsourcing a business or building is one thing, but planning urban development on a block or neighborhood level starts to get a bit more sophisticated. Authored by Andres Duany, Jeff Speck with Mike Lydon, the Smart Growth Manual provides what is probably the most effective, efficient way to gain a base education on the principles of good urban design, especially if you’re a creative.

From Andres in an interview today, “The book is a survey of the propositions of the leading Smart Growth resources in one book. It was written for the participant in the public planning process. Only in the last 20 years has the citizen been empowered to participate. It’s all to educate the crowd, including local elected officials. You can read it in 2.5 to 3 hours, or read one page a day for six months (it takes about 30 seconds). It’s a low threshold book.“

It may be easier to explain via diagram why the content of wildly successful services like Facebook, Google, eBay and Amazon are sourced by crowds, yet places aren’t.

Based on economic models presented in crowdsourcing expert Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, the key to whether or not an entity will crowdsource is based on its management and management structure.

On the x-axis, all business models are represented, from the least crowdsource-friendly to the most.  On the y-axis are the costs of managing markets, in other words, the costs of identifying, building relationships with, growing, and maintaining customer bases.  No business will survive if the costs of managing markets get too high, such as employees spending extensive face-to-face time with each and every customer.

However, the fork in the road between companies that are growing and those that aren’t, lies in what happens when the costs of managing markets gets too low.  That is, when just the opposite of extensive employee-customer relationship building time is spent, but rather ever decreasing employee time spent managing an ever increasing amount of time spent between customers building relationships with one another.

Why won’t certain businesses, and industries, embrace this?  Because they want to maintain full control of the content, such as is notorious real estate. Notice the narrow range (red line) of high costs real estate development firms insist on sticking to, which thus leaves a vast untapped market behind.  Our modern built environment reflects this - it literally looks like it was developed by a handful of people with the same ideas, and it was.  Not so with the fastest growing companies whose management structure is designed to allow more and more user-created input, content and participation… amongst themselves... and it shows.

Hope is on the way, when crowdsourced placemaking becomes the norm, and it will, starting with projects with management structures represented on the far right end of the diagram. Stay tuned to hear more from Renaissance Downtowns in New England and Red Dove in Washington DC, or go here to get started yourself.