It’s true.  There are over a hundred retail venues in downtown Athens, but no fast food chains.  No Gap or Banana Republic.  No TGIF or Ruby Tuesday’s or Baskin Robbins.  The Subway that was here was torn down.  The building owner who leased to the Gap didn’t renew their agreement.

What’s going on?  The most common answer among Athenians was “sense of community”.  It’d be more accurate to say, “extremely strong sense of community“.  But how does this translate quantitatively to no

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The people.  Period.  The built environment, music, sense of community and progressiveness are the results.

While in Athens we were extremely fortunate to meet with some of Athens’ creative implementors, the ones a truly cool town can’t do without.  They included:
- Mayor Heidi Davison, as progressive, open-minded and down-to-earth as a mayor can be;
- Art Jackson, Director Athens Downtown Development Authority, helped us understand what makes the downtown merchants so unique;
- Tony Eubanks,

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So of course, tonight we asked the University of Georgia students, especially the ones closest in association to the creative class...

The downtown is centralized, it has a sense of place, it’s different, it’s walkable, it has arty music scenes, a great country scene, bikes everywhere, it has a dense feel, it has people everywhere, the aesthetics are beautiful, it has diversity, a transient population, there’s a wide variety of live music throughout, it’s a liberal island, the streets and

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The biggest criticism to the idea of revitalizing and building neighborhoods and town centers is that they end up looking too new and sterile.  Authenticity comes with an organic nature to development.  Which is why the venue developer is as crucial to an area’s success as a building developer or community developer.  In fact, if the venue developer is good enough, the latter two become followers - and that may be the case in Madison, Wisconsin.

Local entrepreneur brothers Chris and Finn

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Just like in Cambridge, Madison’s creative class has left the national chain-infiltrating main town center in search of more affordable housing and unique independent merchants in more creative, entrepreneurial neighborhoods.

Those Madison neighborhoods would be Willy Street, about a mile away, and Atwood, another mile down the road.  While they have less than a tenth of State Street’s retail, they are no chains and the sense of community is extremely high.  Co-ops seemed to be the norm, from

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Every town needs third places away from home and the workplace.  These are usually coffeehouses, pubs or a bookstore cafe.  While the best third places in the world are outdoor rooms, like Italy’s piazzas, the best in the U.S. often comes in paseos (streets closed down to cars) and waterfronts.  Madison has both.

Madison’s State Street ‘paseo’ was covered in Tuesday’s blog.  Madison’s University of Wisconsin has a waterfront terrace that has probably hosted some of the most inspired

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In continuing yesterday’s experience with Madison’s fervent belief that the car takes a back seat…

It should be no surprise that Madison’s leadership is there.  This morning I saw Mayor David Cieslewicz advocating on behalf of Madison’s 2nd Annual Car Free Day, in connection with World Car Free Day.

He mentioned he was able to avoid using his car all but twice during the first two weeks of the challenge.  He also encouraged Madison to step up its efforts, as China’s impending demand on auto

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Madison, Wisconsin regularly tops the Best Places to Live list, and even Forbes’s Best Places For Business.

However, the one thing that’s most apparent when experiencing Madison is that fact that pedestrians, or people rather, take priority over anything else.  For instance:

- The main street, State Street, is only 24 feet wide, and closed to only buses, delivery trucks and taxis.  What you see at night however, is people jogging, walking and bicycling, since the buses are few and far

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While Harvard and MIT each have excellent town centers nearby, the neighboring students at Tufts University enjoy probably the best combination of atmosphere, entertainment and true affordability at Davis Square in Somerville, among our vists to the top four Greater Cambridge squares.

It had the most habitable square of any of the Cambride squares, where people could study, read, meet for lunch or play a game of cards.  It’s Somerville Theater is the only venue that you could see recent box

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Inman Square is for the ‘quiet creatives’, those who want a slower pace, but still be able to meet interesting people in innovative third places.  That’s significantly achieved by its location away (but not too far away) from any university or subway stop.

Inman is similar in description to Central Square as far as venues and urban design (it is for the most part a four to five block main street).  Intimate best describes Inman - the restaurants are stylish and average a tiny 600 sq. ft., it

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