Would you believe that’s a city campaign slogan?  Excelsior, Minnesota.

“We’re just against the proliferation of sameness,“ said Linda Murrell, the city’s Chamber of Commerce director.  Not surprisingly, the first ads were geared to a younger audience.  Also, downtown Excelsior activity is reported to have increased noticeably as several entrepreneurs are now interested in locating there.

Sure, you say, but Excelsior is a town of only 3000 people. Read

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Buying in your local community

If you believe that what goes around comes around, you may think twice about shopping at a big box.  A CoolTown’s ‘coolness’ stems from being expressive of the people who live, work, play and employ there, not from a corporation on the other side of the country looking to mass produce its product.

A recent study tracked eight locally owned businesses and a major big box retailer in Maine.  The results:

Revenue spent within the state:
Local businesses: 53.3%

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Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program...

Phase II:  Building the Physical Community

Successful talent attraction comes down to providing three key elements:  Entertainment, jobs and affordability, in that order.  Fulfilling just one, or even two elements won’t make it happen.  All three must be brought together, and that requires building a CoolTown.

Why is entertainment (& arts) first?  Most young professionals won’t take a dream

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Phase I:  Building the Human Community

Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program...

OK, we’re committed to becoming a CoolTown.  What are the next steps?

Phase I:  Building the Human Community

The first phase is building the community of people that are not only going to lead the effort of becoming a CoolTown, but who will actually live, work and grow new businesses there.  This CoolTown Market Creation program envisions a five-step process:

1. The CoolTown 100 - We’ll

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Do businesses believe in CoolTowns?

Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program...

Do businesses believe in CoolTowns?  Absolutely, as long as CoolTowns attract creative talent.  The world’s largest companies understand this: 

“Keep your tax incentives and highway interchanges, we will go where the highly-skilled people are” - Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in a presentation to the National Governors Association in 2002.  It shouldn’t be a coincidence that HP’s slogan is

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Got Talent?

Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program...

Why isn’t my city attracting growth, excitement and prosperity like Austin?

Does your city produce and retain talent?  Major universities produce talent.  A creative city retains it.  The tipping point to prosperity occurs when the two combine to form a formidable one-two punch:

1. Talent-Producing Universities
The SF Bay Area has Stanford; Cambridge has Harvard and MI; Austin has the 49,000 student University of Texas and

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The CoolTown Program

A great vision doesn’t really matter if it can’t be implemented.  Implementation doesn’t mean much if it no one cared for the vision.

The key to the CoolTown Program is to combine a great vision with the financial capacity to implement it.  That means letting the people who will live/work in the community design it, and finding investors who will finance it.

The program summary, which is downloadable, begins:

“The San Francisco Bay Area, Denver and Charlotte made

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So what does it take to build a place where people quickly realize that vibrant pedestrian life is more appealing and healthier than streets filled with moving vehicles, or a sterile parking lot?

1a. You need a progressive government that’s willing to enable legislation to eliminate minimum parking requirements.  If the people don’t want all that parking, the government shouldn’t require themselves to spend money to supply it.

1b. You also need,

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Yesterday’s blog diagrammed the concept of hiding cars on a neighborhood scale.  Today we show you a real such neighborhood.

Uptown District is a relatively new urban village in San Diego that creates a pedestrian-oriented destination and economic model for success, aided by its progressive parking layout.

1. The parking in the retail area of Uptown (right of photo) is located mid-block - that is, all the parking is behind buildings.  The only building facing

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Hiding a lot more than 17 cars

Yesterday’s blog demonstrated how to hide 17 cars.  But what about 500 cars?

Town planners Dover Kohl illustrate how to do this, which is a textbook method of parking in the New Urbanism movement:

1. Parking is placed behind all the buildings, forming a parking core in the middle of the blocks.  Thus, pedestrians only see people-filled streetscapes and streetfronts (ideally a paseo with no cars at all), not a parking lot/garage.

2. The entire site is built

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Find the parking for 24 tenants

Can you find the parking for the 24 tenants who live here?  Hint: It’s not behind, to the side or in front of the building.

1. First of all, not everyone who bought a home here at the Shattuck Avenue Lofts needed, or wanted a parking space.  The first downtown housing in Berkeley in fifty years, only 17 parking spaces needed to be provided.

2. Secondly, the 17 parking spaces take up the same space as 9 parking spaces, as illustrated in yesterday’s

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Making cars disappear

In business terms, cars are a pure expense.  They’re also expensive for a city: The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune published an article on Sept. 7 stating that only 24% of its roads are paid for by the people who directly use them.  Cars also take up a lot of space while often adding negative value to the area they’re parked in.

Now, while the coolest (and as a result the most desirable, and thus most expensive) towns are walkable to the point of not needing a car

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Investing in comeback cities

While the San Franciscos, Austins and Iowa City’s continue to prosper on their entertainment and quality of life strengths, what are the next generation cities and what are they doing to initiate growth today?

In the Milken Institute’s Knowledge-Value Cities in the Digital Age, authors Joel Kotkin and Ross DeVol identify the following as “comeback cities”: 

Philadelphia PA: Philly is finally benefitting from city-sponsored revitalization of its urban

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Iowa City?!  Ever heard of it?  You should.  Not only did the acclaimed Milken Institute name it as the best small city in economic performance and job creation in the country in their annual report, but here are a few other accolades:

• One of the ten most enlightened towns in the U.S. - Utne Reader
• Listed in the book The 100 Best Small Art Towns in America
• Number-one place to live in the nation by Editor

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The Creative Index: San Francisco #1

First of all, it’s important to realize that creativity produces jobs, attracts people and increases income.

The Creativity Index, pioneered by the Richard Florida Creativity Group, is measured via creative workforce (science, engineering, architecture, design, education, arts, music, entertainment), innovations (patents per capita), high-tech industry and diversity.

#1 on the Creative Index is the San Francisco Bay Area (Austin is #2).  It’s also #1 in

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Best Places for Business and Careers: Austin #1

Forbes ranks Austin as the Best Place for Business and Careers in their annual report.  What are the key ingredients for its success?

Entertainment:  As mentioned on this site previously, Austin is indeed the live music capital of the world.  The proof is in asking just about anyone who’s been to Austin - “It’s so cool.  There’s always something going on and the people are so nice.“

Affordability:  The second annual Affordability Index from

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Look at the image above… to an employer, that’s a potential gold mine.

“Keep your tax incentives and highway interchanges, we will go where the highly-skilled people are.“ Carly Fiorina CEO, Hewlett-Packard

“What’s the secret to power hiring? Location, location, location. If you want to attract the right kind of people, it’s not enough to be the right kind of company. Your company needs to be in the right kind of place.“ Richard Florida, author of The

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Investing in a recreation entertainment town

Recreation: “Refreshment of one’s mind or body after work through activity that amuses or stimulates; play”

Thus, a recreation town is a place for play - for adults that is.  One that extends this into the nightlife could be referred to as a recreation entertainment town.  Such a destination, oriented toward an active, entrepreneurial, creative audience would have:

A natural greenbelt for joggers, bikers and skaters to go from one town to the

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Recreation in the city (naturally)

Many joggers would love to run through a scene like this every morning.  In Washington DC, you’d have to live in the heart of the city to do so.

CoolTowns are not all about urbanity - it’s about balance, diversity and yes, entertainment and recreation.  The best towns have a greenbelt corridor, usually along a natural waterway, that allows the most urban dweller a job, skate or bike ride for 25 miles completely immersed in nature, just like Rock Creek Park

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Wheels on your feet that is.

One of the most popular outdoor recreational activities is exploring, whether it’s by foot, kayak or cross country skis.  In the city, especially San Francisco and Paris, it’s by skate.  When you bring hundreds of them together on a Friday night, it turns into entertainment as well.

Let me describe the Friday night skate in San Francisco:  In the early evening an average of 300-400 skaters (beginners and advanced) get together at

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The best kind of entertainment, in my opinion, is the kind that keeps you fit:  Dancing, rock climbing, roller-blading, sports and again, dancing.  Dancing deserves to be mentioned twice.

In the bestseller Tuesday’s With Morrie”, Morrie, who is terminally ill, describes his perfect day (evening) from the point of view of someone who cherishes his last few days: “In the evening, we’d all go together to a restaurant with some great pasta… and then we’d dance the rest

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