Community profiler ePodunk ranked the top college towns in their College Town Index.  Focusing on the community rather than the colleges, some of the criteria include restaurants; book, music and periodical stores; entertainment offerings; and publishers, recording studios and other information-oriented companies, among the usual economic demographics.

A summary of the rankings:

Big Cities
1 Boston-Cambridge, MA
2 Minneapolis, MN
3 Denver, CO
4 Columbus, OH
5 Seattle, WA

Medium-Sized Cities …

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So what can the private sector do to invest in infill neighorhoods in cities and towns when public sector legislation favors sprawl?

Find out if City Hall is ‘cool’.

1. If you’re in one of those cities that is legislated for sprawl (ie disallows mixed-use, higher densities, low parking ratios and tax reinvestment back into the project’s infrastructure) - find another city to invest in.  You’ll have a very low ROI, if any, otherwise.

2. If you’re in one of those cities that is thinking about

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The Washington Post: Retailers Embrace the Great Outdoors

There’s no better way to make a case for this week’s blogs on investing in infill, than providing evidence of both the economic benefits and market demand:

- An International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) survey found that ‘outdoor malls’ (urban-oriented town centers) produce better sales than enclosed, typically suburban shopping malls.  Last year they reported median retail sales of $270 per square foot of total area vs. $242

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To answer the previous entry’s questions:

Municipalities (economic development agencies in partnership with planning agencies) have the power to reverse the ‘greenfield easier’/‘infill-harder’ reality.  The overwhelming desire to truly accomplish this is years away unfortunately.

What municipalities can do to help build CoolTowns:
1. Property/site identification and assembly assistance.
2. Tax increment financing (TIF) program to fund public infrastructure, namely project-killing parking

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To answer yesterday’s question:  Why is it easier to build greenfields/sprawl?

Because it’s legislated that way, and the private sector has followed.  How’d this happen?  A quick history:

Early 1900s to 1934:  A group of home builders lobbied the government relentlessly to allow them to mass-produce homes just like Henry Ford mass-produced automobiles.  Of course, people lived in villages, which were anything but.

1934:  As a result, Congress passed the FHA (Federal Housing Administration)

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Greenfield/sprawl developments are easy for the private sector to do, but not economically, socially and environmentally beneficial.  Meanwhile, infill/urban/redevelopment projects are difficult, but highly beneficial economically, socially and environmentally.

Greenfields/sprawl vs. infill/urban/redevelopment impacts, as it relates to the creatively entrepreneurial CoolTown audience:

Economic:  Workers are increasingly bolting office parks to work for companies (and themselves) in cities

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