« October 8, 2006 - October 14, 2006 | Main | October 22, 2006 - October 28, 2006 »

October 20, 2006

Celebrities

Celebrities investing in inner cities in a big way

Henry Cisneros. Magic Johnson. Shaquille O'Neal. Oscar De La Hoya. From a member of President Clinton's cabinet to a world title holder, these four have one thing in common - investing in inner cities, and with significant economic and social impact.

Henry Cisneros - Henry founded CityView after his White House service "to help create the highest quality housing for America’s working families", partnered with a $500M revolving fund from California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s largest public pension fund. The firm is just now getting into more urban development. Building housing that people can afford has been very profitable for the fund, garnering a 20% return. That's significant for a pension fund.

Magic Johnson - Magic established the Johnson Development Corporation over a decade ago to bring retail and entertainment to inner cities. Ok, so his idea of retail entertainment consists of national chains, but with a presence in 65 cities and a billion to be invested in three years, that's a good core to leverage more creative development with.

Shaquille O'Neal - This is where too much star power can compromise the vision. While Shaq is contributing to a $ billion in investment in downtown Miami, "I'm trying to give people a better way of living," he says, it also happens to include plans for "the tallest residential tower south of NYC", which I doubt is a result of what the neighborhood really wanted.

Oscar de la Hoya - Oscar's vision is very similar to Cisneros', featured in the NY Times' Fighting for Housing. His mission, backed by a $100M in equity, is to “revitalize Latino neighborhoods by building nice homes that are affordable for people who work in the area, teachers, nurses, fire and police.”

The point of this article is best expressed by de la Hoya's business partner, experienced real estate developer John Long, “The choice of the next generation will be urban. They won’t want to commute.

Posted by Neil | Link to Article | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2006

18th & Vine, Kansas City

Business Week: 'IDEO's Urban Pre-Planning'

The story behind the BusinessWeek article, IDEO's Urban Pre-Planning, is already creating a buzz in the real estate industry.

First of all, who is IDEO and second, what is urban pre-planning? IDEO is like the Apple Computer of the design world. They're experimenting with a new practice called Smart Space (it's not even on their website yet), which is to utilize the wads of dollars wasted on marketing after a development is completed and invest in it before the development is designed.

Much of that is translated into a user-focused document, highlighted here (pictured). “We realized we didn’t have enough experience to actually go in and design the space, so what we decided to do was tell a story about what the space could be that would help guide everyone else to do it,” says IDEO's Smart Space leader, Fred Dust. “We design for time instead of designing for space,” he explains. At 18th & Vine, the Smart Space team imagined different encounters with the neighborhood - a first-time visit, going out on Saturday night, going to church on Sunday morning, a regular weekday - and only then considered what places would support those 'moments.'"

Their steps:
1. Research - exploring, interviewing, photographing.
2. Argument - identiying both the emotional and functional aspects of the planning process
3. Design Brief - translating ideas into themes, and themes into specific, tangible solutions
4. Design Principles - guiding principles become suggested services, places, events
5. Time - identifying the 'when' of rituals in the community, and designing places, activities around that
6. Tone - envisioning what the place could look like with vignettes.

The article ends with this note from the writer, who visited one of the completed projects in Oakland, "For all the nuance of IDEO’s sense of Oakland and all its success at communicating that to Forest City, the project looked like any other project." Ah, that's why you need a beta community to translate those inspired ideas into inspired built reality.

Posted by Neil | Link to Article | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 18, 2006

Ben, Naomi, Joshua

NY Times - What did three college graduates have to do with a $15 million urban village?

That's right, they're the developers, and four years later, they're in the New York Times - Young, Idealistic and Now Developers. Starting out four years ago as 22 to 23-year olds with liberal arts degrees and no real estate development experience, Ben, Naomi and Joshua realized that they already had what it took to take on a $15 million urban village - integrity, motivation and capacity.

East College Street

Located on 2.5 acres in downtown Oberlin, the East College Street green development (after all, the name of the company is Sustainable Community Associates features 49 residences (12 affordable), 12,000 s.f. or retail, 10,000 s.f. of open space for concerts and markets, and underground parking.

Check out a CoolTown profile on the team last year here, or go back two years for a brief interview with Ben here.

Oh, and all five retail tenants will be local independents. But you're talking about next-gen creative class developers here - they would expect no less.


Posted by Neil | Link to Article | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2006

SXSW, Sixth Street, Austin TX

How artists can more formally help vitalize cities

We know there are studies that relate artists to economic impact, attracting other creatives in science, engineering and high tech that create jobs. However, how can a city more formally utilize their talent, and how can artists more formally participate to more effectively enhance their impact?

In a Smart City Radio interview, Ann Daly of Ann Daly Arts Consulting provides some answers with a strategic vision.

She states while it may be difficult to account for artists' economic impact on an individual level, it can be done in other areas, such as building communities, raising the dialogue in social issues, improving education, helping an area think about its identity, and remembering its heritage. It's probably no coincidence that she's based in Austin, a city that has become a destination for creatives despite a less than creative, walkable urban fabric like say, Manhattan or San Francisco.

Her starting point is that the arts as we knew it - non-interactive exhibits and performances - is losing a tremendous amount of the emerging populations' interest in the wake of the digital economy, and this is evident in the lack of traditional arts classes and arts funding.

Her two main recommendations however, seem to be quite exciting for the future of artists, as it is already happening:
1. "Rethink the notion of just giving out grants to individuals, [but rather] to building infrastructure." She adds that investments should help artists develop skills, have work space, living space.
2. Then, establish a plan to integrate arts and culture, finding ways of involving artists in improving education, the environment, housing, transportation and social issues, contributing to city and regional creative economic development programs. "Artists can't solve the problems, but they're absolutely necessary to solving them." There aren't many better examples of this in action than Austin's Keep Austin Weird, Live Music Capital of the World and SXSW music festival creative/economic institutions.

Posted by Neil | Link to Article | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 16, 2006

A Heavy Load Study

Is your city a burden to creatives?

If it doesn't have walkable urban neighborhoods, it could very well be. Based on a recent study, A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families by the Center for Housing Policy, in many ways for creatives, living in an auto-oriented small town is less affordable than subsisting in Manhattan.

The study covered low- to moderate-income (ie including artists, musicians, entrepreneurs just starting out) working families (married with and without children, single parents with children) across 28 major metropolitan areas nationwide. It found that combined transportation and housing costs were extremely constant, averaging 57% of annual income (with a low of 54% in Pittsburgh to a high of 63% in San Francisco.) However, among all household types of every income, those combined costs are only 48%, with just about all of the difference coming from transportation costs (see study table below).

A Heavy Load statistics What does this help conclude? Creatives, the key to job growth in your city, will find ways to make housing affordable, attainable (ie smaller units, shared housing). However, in order to support the creatives in your city that are incubating potential fast-growth companies and cultural destinations, if you don't have urban neighborhoods where owning a car is an option rather than a requirement, that's an unnecessary financial burden that lessens the mystery of why so many creatives aspire to move to Manhattan, as profiled just previously.

Posted by Neil | Link to Article | Comments (7) | TrackBack