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March 2, 2007

Modern workplaces

Every neighbor-hood needs a coworking space

Part of Starbuck's overwhelming success is that in a time when you are the person of the year and more of us as entrepreneurs are looking for creative places to work outside of the home, the coffeeshop with wi-fi makes a pretty good alternative. After all, the CEO of Starbucks will tell you, "We're not a coffee company, we're a real estate company."

At last there's something better. It's called coworking, "the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space." It's defining the modern community-oriented workplace, and unlike coffeehouses, coworking centers allow you to establish a regular workspace, facilitate collaboration among the regulars, and provides the necessities that serious business professionals need, like meeting space, a physical address, and networked printers, copiers, faxes. Most of all, they provide a formal yet community-oriented environment to help you secure new business opportunities or partners.

In fact, BusinessWeek just published the best article yet on the topic, titled Where the Coffee Shop Meets the Cubicle, including a series of image-oriented profiles of coworking places.

To learn more, check out the Coworking Blog and the Coworking Wiki.

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March 1, 2007

Fifth Avenue Court Apartments, Portland, OR

Touchstone example of what the creative class is looking for

This is a great example of what the creative class is looking for - the strange thing is that this building, the Fifth Avenue Court Apartments in Portland, OR, is hardly getting any recognition at all (until perhaps now.) It's not even profiled on the architects' website! It just goes to show the disconnect between what people really want and what gets marketed, but we all know that's going to change soon.

Here's what makes Fifth Avenue Court so appealing to creatives:

- It replaces a surface parking lot.
- It brings residences to the downtown.
- The homes are affordable, with rents ranging from 60% of median income, yet also scaling up to a more diverse income level at 120% of median income. Not only that, the apartments surround an internal landscaped courtyard rather than an endless internal hallway, and near-floor-to-ceiling windows showcased by 13' ceilings.
- It's in the heart of the historic downtown.
- It provides 16,000 s.f. of ground-level retail. Not sure what kind though (the building is at 211-245 NW Fifth Ave.), since it's not publicized anywhere...
- All parking is underground (157 spaces of it).
- The architecture reflects its historic context, yet its color scheme and use of detail materials is distinctly contemporary.
- It's within the transit network, convenient to multiple modes.

All it needs now is some recognition so more people have the opportunity to live in places like this, or even better, places like this...

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February 27, 2007

Kettle chips

What do potato chips and cool towns have in common?

Answer: You can co-design your own.

Regulars to this site are familiar with the beta community process that's still primarily conceptual, but here's how it's currently being implemented by the folks at Kettle Foods:

As the story goes, in Spring 2004, Kettle execs were reminded of the vast opinions by its chips' fans. That Summer collected 16,000 official suggestions for what its next flavor should be, as long as it fit the criteria of being all-natural, tasted good, and was sellable. 10,000 votes and one year later, 'Spicy Thai' and 'Cheddar Beer' were introduced as Kettle's first People's Choice chips. What's the big deal to Kettle? In 2005, its U.S. sales rose 28.1% while the potato-chip market as a whole grew only 1.2%.

The 2006 People's Choice went to 'Buffalo Bleu Cheese' and 'Tuscan Three Cheese', but allowed fans to buy 10 packs of the five top contenders. Hmm, a little shade of American Idol here.

The 2007 People's Choice went to 'Island Jerk', and the makings of a social network came with it, which is fundamental to building a cool town.

So, one company's 'economy' grew because they listened to their fans and actually created exactly what they collectively wanted. Will a city be far behind, manifested via buildings and blocks instead of chips? It won't be long, and you can rest assured their economy will grow at a much faster rate than everyone else's just the same as Kettle's did.

Based on a story in Fast Company magazine.

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Art event, NYC

'America’s Best Places for Artists'

We all pretty much know that wherever the artists go, the risk-averse with the money will soon follow, gentrifying the place and thereby forcing the artists to move out to find the next 'hot spot.' BusinessWeek is the latest to cover this well-known trend, in Bohemian Today, High-Rent Tomorrow.

Here's their top ten list based on these criteria: Art establishments per 100,000 people, percentage of population age 25-34; Arts & Culture Index; Diversity Index and Cost of Living Index, starting with the lesser known cities:

- Carson City, NV
- Kingston, NY
- Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
- Nassau-Suffolk County, N.Y.
- Santa Fe, NM
- Boulder, CO
- Nashville, TN
- San Francisco (eg The Mission)
- Los Angeles (eg Echo Park)
- New York City (eg anywhere outside of Manhattan)

However, unlike in the industrial economy era, just about every city today has such an artist haven - the key is establishing a program that allows artists (that want to stay) to stay via homeownership/rent-to-own programs as well as artist-specific developments.

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February 26, 2007

Future plan for Youngstown, OH

Youngstown, Ohio a lesson in "Change or Die"

The knowledge economy moved on without Youngstown, Ohio, whose heyday was in the midst the steel industry and the industrial economy, peaking in 1962 with a population of 162,000, more than twice today's 82,000.

Pressed with the question, "Change or die," Youngstown's mayoral candidates were unconsciously choosing death for their city. When local leaders established an initiative, Youngstown 2010 to acknowledge Youngstown's shrinking population, invest in new economy industries, focus on quality of life and implement plans for action, the mayoral candidates at the time all but ignored the vision. So purely out of concern for the future of his city, one of the group's leaders, Jay Williams, 34-year-old director of the City's Community Development Agency, took it into his own hands to run for mayor. And won.

Youngstown 2010 has since received an American Planning Association award, Mayor Williams has since been featured on Smart City Radio, Youngstown in USA Today. One of the first acts was to 'accept the death' of underserved neighborhoods, provide incentives for residents to leave, and implement plans to return them to nature or as city parks. These bold quality of live moves, combined with the mayor's plans to invest in the downtown and university, can only lead to economic prosperity (and yes, growth) in the near future.

Read a previous entry on why cities shrink and what they're doing about it to regenerate themselves.

Image: Contrast the future master plan's (above) clearly defined neighborhoods with the current master plan here that is a model of sprawl and lack of sense of place, even within urban boundaries.

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