The university town of tomorrow looks to combine the concepts of open universities*, the Stanford/MIT model of pre-graduation job placement, location in a vibrant neighborhood with quality nightlife, and the living/learning environment, such as the University of Maryland Hinman CEO program.

What would an open university in a community look like?  See tomorrow’s entry.

*Open universities in the U.S. are essentially distance-learning schools, but overseas they are much larger and focus on a

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Other than quality of life, providing great jobs upon graduation is a key reason a city won’t lose its university-generated talent.  The question is how?

The concept of learning communities involves integrating learning with the real world, and Stanford is a model for creating a business learning community.

Stanford’s Office of University Corporate Relations offers a corporate dream guide for its students - not only is there an ongoing research partnership with the hottest Fortune 500

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Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The presence of MIT and Harvard is really only telling half the story.  Places like Harvard Square and programs like the MIT Media Lab play a major factor in that ranking.

The bottom line is that the top engineering and biologist graduates from Harvard still want to date, party or at least meet interesting people.  That just doesn’t happen if the area around even the most prestigious school isn’t happening.

Harvard Square is a mecca for nightlife, entertainment and

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It doesn’t take rocket science to realize that the wealth of cities is often directly related to the wealth of talent graduating from its local universities, such as Silicon Valley and Stanford, or Cambridge/Boston and Harvard/MIT.

However, it doesn’t take much to realize it’s not a sure thing either, as students from Carnegie Mellon and Univ. of Penn. will attest there’s not much incentive to stay once they graduate.

Ask just about any student and there’s two things that will keep many of

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Investing in third places

Progressive investors are hard at work to provide next generation communities where third places are the rule, not the exception.  Here are some of the prerequisites for attracting third places:

1. Build an attractive environment for creative entrepreneurs, the very people who start third places.  That’s essentially a CoolTown.
2. Make tenant space as affordable as possible.  The more creative, the more risk is involved, so a little financial support is vital.
3.

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Does your local third place have its own CD?

You would if you’re the Third Place Coffeehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Their “Local Honey” CD is a compilation of local artists that have played at Raleigh’s favorite third place, which is also featured in Ray Oldenburg’s Celebrating the Third Place.

The popular watering hole is also known for its staff’s musical compilations, that is, whoever is working the current shift gets to play their own music.  So the place isn’t only a venue for

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The third place and the communal table

What’s the equivalent of the piazza in Italy when it comes to third places?  Maybe the communal dining table.

In the heart of Old Town, Alexandria, VA, The Best Coffeehouse in the Washington DC Area (as voted by the readers of Washingtonian Magazine), Misha’s takes its coffee more than seriously.  However, its popularity largely permeates from the sense that you can spend the whole afternoon there free of guilt, especially at their communal table

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Celebrating the third place

There’s no better way to communicate the concept of the third place than to experience one.  The author of the book on third places wrote a sequel, Celebrating the third place: Inspiring Stories about the “Great Good Places” at the Heart of Our Communities to help you out.

Here are the following third places listed in the book:  Annie’s Gift & Garden Shop, Amherst MA; The Third Place Coffeehouse, Raleigh NC; Crossroads, Bellevue WA; Horizon Books, Traverse City

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The first place is your home.  The second place is your workplace.  The

third place is where you hang out in between.  Ray Oldenburg wrote the book on it.

A cool town is full of great third places.  If you aren’t motivated to leave home or your workplace, chances are you don’t live around too many successful third places.

The UK has long had the concept of the third place down pat.  While staying with a friend in the small town of Streatley-Goring in England, I’d usually find him at “The

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Investing in a local economy

Here’s where CoolTown-oriented institutional investors are putting their capital to create sustainable job growth:

1. $1 million in matching funds (another $1 million to be matched by a public entity) for development of a specific industry, an existing local strength.
2. $1 million in matching funds for a venture capital fund to invest in that specific industry.
3. Substantial affordable office space and living units for the entrepreneurial-minded.
4. Numerous

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CoolTown guilds

I foresee the economies of future CoolTowns run through guilds, loosely defined as an association of common interests.

Imagine working in a neighborhood that established an arts & entertainment guild, a high tech guild, and a main street guild.  If I were a musician, I’d frequent an affordable community recording studio, with 20-30 fellow musicians I’d know within walking distance that could help me record a song.  If I were a techie, I’d be able to network with dozens upon

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Communities of Commerce

A business is only as good as its strategy, leadership and talent - and a community of commerce (eg a network of local businesses working together with a common purpose) is no different.

The first step to creating strong, sustainable job growth is strategizing what your city’s business talent is good at and where the growing business opportunities are.  This is the clustering of strengths, as described yesterday.  The next step is to identify the leaders by assembling

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Can a CoolTown help create jobs?

Yes, yes, yes.

To create jobs, CoolTowns focus on the intersection of three trends: 

1. The clustering of local industry strengths, executed by Michael Porter and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City;

2. An investment in creative people, businesses and industries to generate economic performance, as is statistically proven;

3. The Smart Growth/New Urbanism movement of investing in live-work environments that enable social interaction and community

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When everyone else is on their morning commute…

This week’s blog focuses on jobs and worklife, ending with what our investment associates are doing about it.

Perhaps it’s easiest to illustrate what worklife will be in a CoolTown by comparing it to working in an office park:

1a. Instead of getting up at 6:00 am to beat the rush hour, you’ll be getting up at 7:00 am to walk or transit to work, or at 8:00 am if you work at home.

1b. Instead of getting home at 7:00 pm because of rush hour,

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Sex and the City

It’s not called Sex and the Suburbs for a reason.

The popular HBO series is based on the dating adventures of four women.  Quite simply, there wouldn’t be much to write about if they all lived and worked in, say, a subdivision and an office park, and socialized at the local Walmart power center.  The bottom line is that the city is where you go to meet people, the burbs are where you go to avoid them, and one of these choices probably isn’t going to advance society as we

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Only in New York City

Where else can you have a #1 show about nothing?  Where else would the #1 comic book hero reside?

If you want to know if you’ve got the makings of a CoolTown, see what people are willing to associate with your town.  It’s not a coincidence that the biggest TV hits of the last three decades: The Cosby Show, Seinfeld and Friends, were all set in New York.  Why?  Because not much happens in the suburbs, except the 10:00 local news headlines, and that to me isn’t worth

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The CoolTown movie test

A few days ago I was listening to a traveling sports announcer exclaim that San Francisco and Seattle were two of the country’s greatest cities (New York goes without saying).  Sure, I agree.  Then today I saw some evidence of that.

I came across three movies during the day on my travel day from Hawaii to Washington DC:  Life or Something Like That, A Guy Thing and The Rock.  They were set in Seattle, Seattle and San Francisco, respectively.

Watch a lot of movies if

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Distance learning will help the small to trump the big

Small businesses can’t compete financially with larger corporations, but the can move quicker and smarter.  So can smaller city governments and universities.  Distance learning can help.

In my last full day in Hawaii (stopping over in Honolulu), I visited the largest university in Hawaii, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, to learn more about their distance learning program as a means of exporting their local cultural assets.  One

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Make your own rules

When you have an abundance of local culture, you start breaking mass-traditions in favor of something more meaningful.

Hawaii is well known locally as almost being another country since its diversity of food, customs and even conversation language is so unique compared to the mainland United States.  This pervasive diversity breeds an openness to new ideas, where it’s not so much that one of the signs pictured here reflects the local cowboy community in this central

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Aloha Tower is Hawaii’s CoolTown spot

I remember visiting Honolulu (a few islands over from Hilo) years ago and meeting up with friends at the nightlife hot spots - The Point After and Masquerades.  For a city of a million people, that was it, and we had to drive between them.

Honolulu now has a CoolTown spot (elements of a CoolTown) at Aloha Tower and there’s no question where I’d have gone every night back then: dozens of places to drink, eat, dance, listen to music, shop, or just walk

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At a restaurant in Washington DC, an associate from Alabama told me about this amazing store in the small town of Hilo, Hawaii (my hometown).  I never heard of it at the time, but now I know where the buzz is coming from.

Sig Zane is a local fisherman, surfer, dancer, artist and cultural practitioner (his bio is a must-read) who translated his deep understanding and practice of local culture into art that can be experienced by everyone, especially

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How to overcome the Walmart dilemma

In the small town of Hilo, Hawaii, the nightly hot spot (by far) is… Walmart.  While most everything is closed by 11 pm on a week night, the parking lot is full at the “Fortune 1” big box.  Walmart is the town’s effective community center.  Is this how it has to be?

As they say, if you can’t beat ‘em (and that’s tough with the largest company in the world), join ‘em.  The idea is that if Walmart is inevitable, then make it inevitable in the downtown.  A

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