As they say, the more things change the more they stay the same. Streetcars ruled downtowns in the early 20th century. Then cars happened. Then a backlash against suburbia happened. Then rising gas prices happened. Now here we are with 40 U.S. cities looking to streetcars once again as a compelling economic development strategy, nicely reported in the NY Times’ Downtowns Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future.

You can read about their myriad economic benefits in a past entry, Romance with streetcars reviving, including the cost advantages over light rail. One significant reason why streetcars are so desirable (no pun intended) is that they’re designed to pass the 5-minute rule, as in, wait any longer than that and it quickly becomes a drag. Three advantages streetcars have over buses? They’re a lot quieter, infinitely smoother, and have shorter stops since people can board on both sides.

A brief snapshot of where streetcars stand:
Up and running: Boston, Portland, Seattle, Tampa FL, San Francisco, Charlotte NC, Tucson AZ, New Orleans, Kenosha WI, Little Rock AR, St. Louis…
Just getting underway: Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, NC, Tucson, Birmingham AL, Miami, Trenton NJ…
Strongly considering: Cincinatti, Columbus, Ohio Denver, Washington DC, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Boulder…

Btw, if anyone knows of a comprehensive list of the above, please comment!

Image: The modern streetcar system in the creative Pearl District of Portland, Oregon, which spurred 10,000 residential units and $3.5 billion in development. Photo by SP8254.

In the 1960s Holladay (within the Salt Lake City metropolitan area) made dubious history by being the first city in Utah to build a shopping mall. In 2008 it’s making history again, albeit a bit more noble, by transforming the mall into a walkable neighborhood.

Not only is the developer, General Growth Properties, redeveloping the 57-acre Cottonwood Mall site into a neighborhood, but as a focal point, gathering place and town center for the Holladay community of 14,000. To be known as Cottonwood, the development will consist of shops, residences, offices, riverside trails, and a grand public plaza that will be the stage for civic life. Specifically, the commercial components of the site include retail shopping, cafes, restaurants, a specialty grocery, cinema, and office space, while the residential is a mix of condominiums, townhouses, cottages, and single family homes. Parking decks are hidden behind buildings.

While this is a model for walkability and public realms, it’s not designed to attract creatives per se. As is typical with new developments, much of the housing, retail and office space has an upscale market in mind, and one can expect a significant number of national and regional chains. What is important though, is to learn from the positives.

$4/gallon has had quite a snowball effect, and one of the rewards for pedestrians outside of car-free days and cities going glorious bonkers to build bike lanes is Google has finally offered walking directions as an option.

The maps above show the same starting and arriving points, but the one on the left is for driving directions and since July 22, 2008 there’s one on the right for walking directions. It’s almost amusing how logical the path becomes. Google says they’ll try to find you a route that’s direct, flat, and uses pedestrian pathways when they know about them, though only if you’re going less than 10 km/6.2 miles. I just found out I’ve been taking the ‘long way’ to my workplace 0.4 miles away.

I actually don’t see Public Transit as an option, which Google says they’ll now give step-by-step walking directions for the portion of your trip on foot. However, they do have public transit directions for mobile devices, and that’s best explained via their YouTube video.

Get an overall demonstration from their YouTube video - it’s worth the two minutes. You’ll notice that in more populated cities you can even view street-level photos of where you are at each turn.

Continuing our look at the best cities that are remixing, reinventing themselves, according to Best Towns 2008 from Outside magazine, here are five more, plus a number of honorable mentions:

Ithaca, New York - Conscientious innovation isn’t far off when you have Cornell University and Ithaca College as residents, and a median age of 22. The town is experiencing a green movement spearheaded by a new ecovillage, and the downtown is finally legitimizing the pedestrian-only district laid out a few decades ago.
Louisville, Kentucky - Much of the positive change in Louisville is being experienced by bicyclists, with new bikeways and bike lanes announced. The downtown is still not quite a creative hangout, anchored by a corporate entertainment center, though nearby Bardstown a couple of miles away definitely is.
Eureka, California - It has become the quintessential wilderness arts town in the middle of nowhere, gathering the community of 27,000 around a new five-block boardwalk.
Columbia, Missouri - First came an indie film house, then a film festival, then artist lofts, studios and cafes, combined with over 200 miles of bike trails, have made Columbia a southern outdoor activist’s haven.

Honorable Mentions:

Oxford, Mississippi - Fueled by its university, Ole Miss and a renowned Double Decker Arts Festival, held each spring and a mayor who runs a local indie biz.
Oakland, California - Oakland’s mayor in 1999, Jerry Brown, is making good on his promise to attract 10,000 new residents downtown.
Sacramento, California - A 240-acre redeveloping brownfield will nearly double the downtown district with 12,000 new homes, and a new 197-room boutique hotel, the Citizen, was named by Sacramento citizens.
Corvallis, Oregon - The second U.S. city (after Moab) recognized as an EPA Green Power Community, with a focus on wind and geothermal power, with a new riverfront park.
Wilmington, North Carolina - The “Wilmywood” filmmaking economy, North Carolina’s Hollywood, has helped direct scenes of a vibrant riverwalk and a historic district over 230 blocks.
Seattle, Washington - Mayor Greg Nickels has signed more than 850 U.S. cities to his U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, higher than Kyoto Protocol objectives, and calling for car free Sundays in August.
Charlottesville, Virginia - Boasts one of the most successful, largest pedestrian-only streets in the country (pictured), and one of the most comprehensive GIS-based urban tree programs.
Brattleboro, Vermont - Home to one of the largest farmers’ markets in New England, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, a predominance of locally-owned businesses, and resident-held nightly potluck dinners, Brattleboro is a sign of things to come.

Image source: Main Street, Charlottesville, Virginia by gargola87.

We’ve seen endless list of best places to live, work, walkable etc. etc., but here’s one that looks at the best cities that are remixing, reinventing themselves - Best Towns 2008 from Outside magazine.

Washington DC - Recently revitalized Adams Morgan, U Street, and Chinatown are attracting creatives in droves, recent mayors have brought strong leadership, and DC just introduced the first bike sharing system in the U.S. Plus the newly formed CreativesDC social network!
Chattanooga, TN - The city rebranded itself as an outdoors destination, investing $120 million in the waterfront, a Renaissance Park, adding 2000 downtown trees and their own Greenspaces green building program. For a big city, Chattanooga has a rare sense of collaborative spirit.
New Orleans, LA - No where in the world is their more grassroots initiative, resulting in inspiring projects from the musician’s village to a celebrity chef Edible Schoolyard program to the Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals and their upcoming CoolTown-assisted beta community focused on a specific neighborhood.
Ogden, UT - In 2000, 38-year-old mayor Matthew Godfrey committed to transform Ogden into the adventure-sports capital of America and the rest is history, which now includes kayak parks; a paved trail network; a rec center with climbing wall; vertical wind tunnel; standing surf wave; holographic ice tower; aquatic centers and a velodrome. Now that’s making good on your word.
Portsmouth, NH - This tiny town of 20,000 between Boston and Portland, Maine is a model creatives destination, attracting emerging musicians and artists via eight indie theaters; a film fest; a slow-food movement; microbreweries; fast-growing young companies (gazelles) and a vibrant live music scene. Yet another story dispelling the myth that small towns can’t attract creatives.
Tacoma, WA - A new University of Washington extension provided the rejuvenation of 1920s theaters followed by new museums and a redeveloping waterfront into what is now a well-known arts town. There really is no better talent pool than a university.

More on the rest of the list in the next entry.

Check out Outdoor’s interactive map and past winners.

Images from Outdoor (clockwise from top left): Ogden, Washington DC, New Orleans, Chattanooga

For a city with such a reputation for bureaucracy, it’s perhaps a sign of the new times that Washington DC is the first city in the U.S. to have a modern, city-wide bike sharing program, open for use as of August 13, 2008. It’s the same system used in Barcelona, and inspired by the 20,000 bike/1400-station phenomenon in Paris.

Ok, so the SmartBikeDC program at 120 bikes and 10 stations pales by comparison to Paris, but that’s 120 bikes/10 stations more than any other bike sharing system in the country. The annual fee is $40 for unlimited use as long as you return the bike after 3 hours, being able to rent a bike immediately after. It’s a better deal than the one in Paris where only the first half hour is free. However, be sure to return it within 24 hours otherwise you’ll be stuck with a $550 invoice.

One question you may want to ask is why are the bikes arguably so darn ugly? Well, who wants to steal an ugly bike?

Check out the Washington Post article, DC Bike Sharing Kicks Into High Gear.

Image source: Trishswishs

You’ve heard about White Nights/Nuit Blanche and Long Night at the Museums in the previous entry, the all-night arts and culture festivals spreading around the world. The U.S. is ramping up with their own versions, with Chicago’s Looptopia May 2008, Sleepless Night in Miami November 2008, and Glow in Santa Monica July 2008.

Check out the video of Glow above, hosting interactive artful experiences in the historic pier district, like a kaleidoscope that reads your emotions; 950 glow sticks stuck in the beach to demonstrate the changing tide to a video projected onto a waterwall. What makes these art festivals truly unique is allowing the crowd to not only participate in the art-making experience (like the kaleidoscope), but as a collective group as well, such as a large-scale outdoor water mist projection that displayed wildly vivid colors and patterns created in response to the “competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby”. See images below.

What do Paris, Toronto, Copenhagen, Madrid, Malta, Montreal, Sao Paulo, Lima, Santa Monica, Chicago, Miami Beach and six cities in the UK have in common? They all host an all night art and cultural festival known as Nuit Blanche (White Night), which lasts from sundown until sunrise on the first Saturday and Sunday in October. While Paris kicked off the Nuit Blanche series in 2002, they were inspired by the ‘Lange Nacht der Museen’ (Long Night of Museums) held in Berlin, Germany since 1997, which goes from 6 pm to 2 am and has since expanded to 125 cities.

These events are focused on the downtown core of the city (streets closed to cars) which becomes an art gallery unto itself, infused with museums, art galleries and cultural institutions offering free admission to a suite of creative events and experiences including art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art) and themed social gatherings. Rome’s Nuit Blanche is one of the largest, attracting two million people via 400 events, while other cities focus on a more manageable 100. Read more about the different themes in this NY Times article, Outbreak of Insomnia is Spreading.

Think of it as a downtown Ciclovia for after hours - on steroids. Every city should have one, and in Europe practically every city does.  It brings new meaning to dancing in the streets - all night.

Thanks to Braulio Agnese of Architect magazine for the reference.

Image: Nuit Blanche in Brussels.

Thanks to Streetfilms!

August 9, 2008 will go down in history as the beginning of Manhattan’s transformation in becoming a truly pedestrian-oriented city. Through their Summer Streets program, they held the first of three street closings to cars along seven miles through the heart of the city. How’d it go? Read the quotes below from participants (shown in the film) below and decide for yourself! Once again, any city that has a DOT (Dept. of Transportation) like New York City will be attracting hordes of creatives - Summer Streets is their idea. See the quote by the Commissioner of the DOT below.

“Every day should be Summer Streets day!”

“We’ve got two more Saturdays to go, and it’s my hope that this becomes an iconic event for New York City for the next 100 years.” Jannette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner, NYC DOT (Department of Transportation)

Tomorrow marks the first day of NYC’s Summer Streets program when 7 miles of downtown Manhattan are completely closed to cars for six hours. Check out the official PSA above, edited by Streetfilms. Check out this map for other streets that will be closed on the Saturdays of August 9, 16, 23 between 7am - 1pm.

Motivated by NY’s program, Seattle will have Car-Free Sundays during the afternoons in three different neighborhoods at a time on August 24, 31 and September 7. The buy-in by businesses isn’t quite there yet, mainly because the mayor was a bit flippant in his announcement, so it’ll be interesting to see how it all turns out in the end.

Also following with enthusiasm, San Francisco just announced car-free Sundays on August 31 and September 14 from 9 am to 1 pm, covering six miles from the Bayview neighborhood, along the Embarcadero waterfront and ending in Chinatown.

All of these programs were inspired by the Ciclovia Sunday street closings in Bogota, Columbia.