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December 29, 2006

Top 10 Eco Business Ideas 2006

Springwise's Top 10 Eco Business Ideas 2006

So you want to think global and act local? Check out Springwise's Top 10 Eco Business Ideas in 2006. Springwise's list may be UK-based, but the implementation doesn't have to be. Here's their list - visit via the link above to see full profiles of each one.

1. Hailing a hybrid: greentomatocars's taxi fleet consists only of hybrids.
2. Consumer generated power: Buy a wind generator for your building or neighborhood.
3. Household recycling plant: Save time with an indoor recycling plant - , designed by BMW to be the ultimate recycling machine.
4. Green rentals: Rent only hybrids from EV Rental Cars, and it's based in the U.S.! Why is this #5 instead of #1? Probably because people in #1 drive less.
5. Eco-chic entrepreneurs: Fashionable recycled handbags from ECOIST.
6. Innovative olive farmers: Adopt an organic olive tree from Nudo and receive organic olive oil from your own tree. Easily applied to local community gardens.
7. Retail approach to recycling: Convenient recycling drop-off for your computer/electronics' junk via Green Citizen in Palo Alto, CA. Every city should have one.
8. Carbon offsets by sms: Text message at $3 a pop, worth 140kg of C02 offset, to the World Land Trust's program to regenerate rain forests. Imagine a similar program to improve quality of life in your own neighborhood.
9. Zen approach to cleaning industry: Eco-home cleaning combined with aroma therapy, via ZENhome Cleaning in Brooklyn, NY.
10. Hot nightclub, minus global warming: Organic beer and energy-generating dance floors at the Sustainable Dance Club in Rotterdam, Netherlands. This one's worth a more detailed look. Every city is hiding an entrepreneur who would be inspired to open such a place. That's what beta communities uncover.

Check out their website to see their other Top 10 lists that reflect an evolution to a higher quality of life: Tourism & travel, financial services, fashion & beauty, automotive, and life-hacking business ideas.

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December 28, 2006

Indies on Congress Avenue, Austin, TX

Wow - City to establish significant fund to invest in local venues?!

A local institution on Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, Las Manitas, a Mexican restaurant and crowd favorites, must say goodbye after 25 years. It's lease was up, and the building owner already signed a new one with Marriott. However, Austin's city government isn't your typical city government, and its leaders proposed to do something about it.

They're proposing the Congress Avenue Retail Retention and Enhancement Fund to invest in the kinds of businesses they feel reflect the local culture and character of Austin. This is no obligatory facade improvement or forgivable loan program totaling a few hundred thousand, the equivalent of a needle in a haystack. Based on development fees, three pending projects alone on Congress, including the hotel complex, could generate $1 million or more in fees.

In other words, the City of Austin is proposing to significantly invest in its local businesses, something completely supported by residents, but rarely executed. That's the wow factor. Can you think of any City contributing such amounts to preserve and attract indie businesses? Hopefully the answer is yes, and please do tell.

As far as Las Manitas, which inspired the Fund, the program's leaders are looking at helping the owners open its doors down the same street in a historic building. The restauranteurs own the building, but the City is looking to assist with the hundreds of thousands required to renovate it.

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December 27, 2006

Traffic fatalities

'Give me walkable or give me death'

Those people who think they're more likely to die from sharks than deer (you're 300 times more likely to get killed by a deer via car collision), are probably the same who think you're more likely to get hit and killed by a car in New York than in Arizona or South Carolina. See the graph above - not true.

Yes, there are a lot of cars in Manhattan (and Boston), for instance, but there are way more pedestrians. Not only that, only half of Manhattanites have a driver's license, and there are efforts to close streets since pedestrians are beginning to spill off of the sidewalks.

U.S. cities are heeding the growing demand for more pedestrian-oriented cities, investing in piazzas, paseos, and finally...

Have you ever driven through a city's downtown trying to get to your destination (or parking space) and one-way street after one-way street gets you further away from where you simply want to go? Frustrating huh? The reason? Traffic engineers wanted cars to go faster. They were right, but this was in a time when many people didn't live in cities and commuters just wanted to get in and out of the city as fast as they could.

So yes, two-way streets are returning, pioneered by former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, "I think people started to realize that the city was more important than the road that runs through it."

Chart source: International Road Traffic and Accident Database

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December 26, 2006

'The Long Tail' city - 'Netflixing' it into profitability (4 of 4)

As explained in the three previous entries, especially with this graph, The Long Tail represents the present and future of profitability in the internet age. But what about cities? Are they once again left out of the fun?

Cities are rarely mentioned as Long Tail examples, unlike Netflix, but they actually have the most potential to reap significant economic benefits via quality of life and job growth from this business model. If you imagine movies as live/work/play experiences, a truly 'Netflixed' city would have every such experience available at any time. New York City and London are among the closest things to it as far as places go.

However, when you get to smaller cities or towns, not every single movie in the entire library would be requested. Yet that demonstrates what makes 'The Long Tail' model work... Netflix knows exactly which movies the residents of say, El Paso, Texas do want, and has the capability of making sure they're available, especially if it happens to be a documentary on the city itself.

Cities should provide the same for its residents - formally ask (via a beta community for instance) them which live/work/play amenities they want to experience, then set up an RFP for the private sector to build them.

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