What happens when a lawyer has a career change?

There’s nothing more important to a great downtown/main street than the entrepreneurs who open that signature restaurant or venue that starts a chain reaction of quality venues behind it.

Warren Brown had dual degrees in law and public health from George Washington University, but hated his work as a lawyer for the federal government.  Meanwhile, friends and family loved anything he baked.  So he did what most lawyers do - quit his job and

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Do you live in a CoolTown or CloneTown?

Is it a place full of cool, or clones?

The people at the New Economics Foundation, an economic think-tank in London, put together a great tool for finding out, and you can get the pdf survey via the link at the bottom right of their website.  It’s more or less giving 5 points for every town center shop/venue, 5 points for every clone (ie chain), 50 points for every independent, then dividing that total by the number of venues.

The five towns we

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CoolTowns - urban biodiversity?

If you ever wanted a concise read on how biodiversity relates to urban diversity, read this article that relates the necessity of genetic diversity for our survival, to the need for a diversity in our downtowns (ie one less Starbucks, one more cool independent coffeehouse) for its own economic and cultural survival.

“Where loss of genetic diversity threatens the survival of species and leaves ecosystems vulnerable to collapse, clone shops and towns imperil

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‘Go for the ‘Madonna effect’‘

That’s the advice of downtown consultant Susan Nigra Snyder of CivicVisions, in this so-titled article on the revitalization of a small college town main street.

“It’s how Madonna reinvents herself every few years,“ she says in the article. “You have to transform the way people see it and use it, so it gets connected to the contemporary buzz.“

That means think like an entrepreneur, and entrepreneurs focus on how to use their existing assets to provide

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Why are we great at designing software, not so much cities?

In this edgy ChangeThis manifesto, Made In USA, the Paul Graham, the author of Hackers & Painters claims, “Americans make the best software and films, and the Japanese the best cars and consumer electronics. There’s a reason for this, and it goes far deeper than cultural differences or the quality of autoworkers, it has to do with who’s in charge.

...and it’s the people in charge and/or the prevailing culture that prioritizes

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Alternative nightlife: Dodgeball

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High tea at the workplace

What are one of the benefits of being in a workplace full of entrepreneurial, creative people?  You get something entirely spontaneous like High Tea at the Lab.

Take one very creative person recently inspired by a trip to London (no coincidence that London is a compelling place to be), and watch them do the following:

Provide an announcement for “high tea” after work at 4 pm, and play some rather English-oriented music.  Then provide everyone with a menu for tea,

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‘Developers target ‘creative’ class with infill projects’

is already one of the coolest cities in the country, so it’s no surprise that it has some of the most progressive developers as well, such as Interurban Development, documented in this business article, Developers target ‘creative’ class with infill projects.

Their first two projects are Bel Air - ‘urban lofts on South Congress Avenue’; and SageBrush, ‘bungalows in the heart of Round Rock’.  What makes them especially cool

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Q: Can individuals invest in CoolTowns as well?

Here’s the exact question someone just posed, “Can I invest small amounts of money in this fund or other New Urbanist projects? There don’t seem to be any ‘socially responsible’ mutual funds that screen out sprawl.“

The short answer is yes, but… The industry hasn’t matured enough to the point where large sums of money (ie billions in pension funds) can be trusted to be invested in what is considered a relatively new market, however, that

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“Spending at neighbors’ stores changes the world”

That’s the tagline of this article on why independent businesses rock, and Wal-mart, uh, doesn’t.
It notes that “in Iowa alone Wal-Mart wiped out 555 groceries, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women’s clothing stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drug stores, and 111 men’s and boy’s clothing stores in 10 years.“  One of the premier business consultants in the world, C.K. Prahalad, states “The world’s largest

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$150 million equity network for CoolTown redevelopment projects

Got a cool project that needs capital? Need a project to invest in? CoolTown Investments is assisting a diverse network of real estate investors across the country ($150 million to date) to invest in medium and higher risk, medium-high return urban rehab/developments.  One such fund focuses on investments of $3-$10 million each, which translates to $10-$30 million developments. The underlying philosophy of the investment

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What would be an ideal equity fund for CoolTowns?

I get the feeling that there’d be a lot more CoolTowns built if the capital were there for them, because there’s certainly enough demand for them, from either the tenant or city government’s point of view.

What would be an ideal source of capital?  It would have to come from visionary people, and managed by visionary people.  It’d need at least $20 million or so to start off with, then grow as more and more projects were successfully

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Update on New Economy Town investment initiative

A few years ago I assisted in the founding of an investment group, The Town Builders Collaborative (TBC), that was looking to invest in university towns via new urban villages that focused on the post-graduate crowd - what they referred to as ‘new economy towns’.  They sought cities that were interested in such investment to build places like this image that’s used on their website.

The TBC ‘plate is now full’, as they are involved in four

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Cool in 1924, cool again in 2004

Can you believe they were thinking of razing this building?  It’s a good thing it’s in DC.  If it were in Detroit, it’d probably be gone.  That’s not a slam on Detroit, that’s an all-too-well-known fact.

Built in 1924 as a 2500-seat grand theater, the Tivoli was left for dead after the 1968 riots, which pretty much left most city downtowns in the same condition until recently.  This is why diversity is good not only for social well-being, but the economy as

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Sign of the CoolTown times: Condo mania

It’s become common knowledge in the real estate industry that people are buying condos like crazy.  Condo buyers make up 13% of the housing market, a 33% percent increase over the past ten years, and more noticeably, have appreciated in value at an unprecedented double-digit pace for the past four years, according to a recent real estate report.  I know - I bought a condo five years ago.

Why?  The report says that traditional homes are too

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Placemaking from an artful perspective

What would a city look like from an arts point of view?  That question was answered in detail by Jeff Speck, long-time associate and director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversees the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, and presented by Planetizen.  Here’s our synopsis of his top ten principles:

1. Design Streets for People - That’s people, not cars.
2. Overrule the Specialists - Traffic engineers prioritize cars, not

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If you haven’t been to Savannah…

You should.

This historic Georgia town, made pop culture famous by its prominent roles in Midnight in the Garden of Evil and Forrest Gump, has what is arguably the most beautiful squares in the country; a green, albeit slightly more auto-oriented version of Europe’s piazzas.  You instantly know where in the world you are, and that’s not very easy to do in 99.9% of our built landscape.

Not only that, but they’re also implementing a wireless downtown using

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Creative Class listserv being formed

If you are involved in attracting the creative class to your city or project, you may want to join the newly formed creative class email listserv, sponsored by the Richard Florida Creativity Group and

Town Studios.  The focus will be on implementation of the creative class vision, with the ultimate purpose of expediting the transition from concept to reality.

Email me (see right column) to get on the listserv.  Both CoolTown Studios and the Richard

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Building a creative community (part 2)

Continuing yesterday’s blog, here’s the rest of Fast Company magazine’s rulesfor establishing a creative community.

6. Teach them a new language - The creative community needs to learn the ‘language’ of placemaking and economic development in real estate and economic terms (ie new urbanism, economic gardening, so that they can apply their market insight into the built environment.

7. Allow time for blue-sky thinking - This is the importance of third

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Resolutions for a new year, new community

Hope you enjoyed your vacation.

Here’s a set of resolutions for building a creative community that sparks investment, vitality and positive growth around it when there is none to little to begin with, based on Fast Company’s magazine’s rules for establishing a creative community (at a smaller scale.)

1. Recruit for diversity, hire for philosophy - Start with a diverse group of risk-takers who relish the idea of initiating a new community of

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