Those lucky Macromedia employees

Where do Macromedia’s 600 employees work?  Not in a suburban office park coupled with traffic congesstion.  Not in an economically struggling city downtown.  They happen to work in what is the fastest growing, increasingly popular area (Mission Bay) of one of the most desired cities in the country, San Francisco.

Granted, word is that the transformed warehouse could have been a lot cooler rather than its cubicle-driven layout… and there could be more nearby

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What makes San Francisco, San Francisco

There is no other San Francisco, and that in itself is the secret to its success.  No other city has such steep hills, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, etc., but to a resident, those icons become invisible after a while - they’re not representative of the uniqueness that makes it one of the most desired cities in the world.

A place like El Balazo, in the Upper Haight (my old neighborhood), San Francisco, is.  Now it’s a crime to single out any one

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Now that’s some healthy convenience

For those who like to cook and commute by transit, it doesn’t get much better than this, that is, if you can afford to live here in Mission Bay, San Francisco.  At least 28% of the housing in this progressive new neighborhood is supposed to be below market, though in this particular development, a good portion of it is above market (pun intended).

Thanks to Portland’s innovative urban planning heritage, which hosted the first Safeway with housing above,

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SF’s new ‘city’ taking shape one unique development at a time

Disneyfication - the term given to developments that look a bit sterile because it was built by one developer, in one style, all at once (ie non-organically.)

So far one of the most noticeable and admirable traits about the first signs of construction in Mission Bay is that it doesn’t look like it was built by one developer, which is so often the case (like many of the new developments recently reviewed here.)  Part of the

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Mission Bay - SF’s contemporary city within a city

With 303 acres in what is already one of the most desired cities in the country, Mission Bay is one of the most significant urban redevelopment projects ever.  Its key features include:

Moderately affordable housing:  Of the 6000 housing units, 1700 (28%) will be affordable to moderate, low, and very low-income households
High-tech focus: 6 million sq. ft. of office/life science/technology commercial space
A university: A new UCSF research

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Bay Meadows - another beautiful, unaffordable new community

Of course, the more expensive/unaffordable a place becomes, the less of a destination it becomes for more people as well.

Bay Meadows in San Mateo, CA is lauded by nonprofits (including the Sierra Club) for its smart growth principles of compact, pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use planning with public spaces, and rightfully so.  However, like at Santana Row a little south of it, the average homebuyer will need to be making well above

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Two restaurants short of a destination

Continuing our cooltown audit of developments across the San Francisco Bay Area, our next stop is in San Mateo, north of San Jose (and Santana Row, as reviewed just previously.)

The historic main street downtown is coming around with new, independent restaurants and stores, though it’s still missing some sense of identity that an active, grand pedestrian-oriented public place would provide.  They were very close with the plaza fronting the Century

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This plaza passes the ‘postcard test’

Yesterday I made a comment about the plaza in Santana Row, that with a bit of imagination you could feel like sitting in a piazza in Italy.  Maybe not so much based on the bird’s eye photo yesterday, but more so from the perspective in this image (minus the palm trees.)  While the average person can’t afford to shop or live here, there’s a lot of positives in seeing more of these truly pedestrian-oriented, ‘Europeanesque’ piazzas built that are free to

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A quick review of San Jose’s Santana Row

Santana Row in San Jose, CA does not have any housing that can be afforded by a majority of the creative class, nor does it sport independent businesses, favoring upscale chains instead.  For those two reasons alone, it’s nowhere close to being a ‘cooltown’.  However, it does have some of the best new placemaking and urban design anywhere in the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and for that it deserves merit.  In other words, just imagine how amazing

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But where are the people?

While the Fruitvale Village development profiled yesterday is indeed a success story in that a visionary developer transformed it from a parking garage proposal into a beautiful, walkable community of residences, offices, and shops, it hasn’t quite succeeded on the retail just yet.

Businesses like a florist, take-out restaurant, and chiropractor are struggling, wondering why all that pedestrian traffic from the busy transit station commute doesn’t translate into

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Oakland’s inspiring Fruitvale Village

In continuing a look at the most innovative new developments in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, our last stop is at Fruitvale Village in Oakland, and one of the most meaningful success stories.

The local latino community in Fruitvale felt the parking lot adjacent to the neighborhood’s ‘BART’ light rail station (the East Bay’s 4th busiest) had a better fate than a parking garage as was originally planned in 1991.  The savior?  The nonprofit

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Berkeley’s 4th Street - a destination with destinations

Great retail entertainment districts not only provide a strong sense of place, as Bay Street Emeryville does (profiled yesterday), but must-visit restaurants and stores as well, which it does not.

Berkeley’s 4th Street does on both counts.

While not as spatially dramatic as its neighbor (Bay Street), 4th Street has become known as an artistic, creative and increasingly chic main street of about 130 businesses.  Transformed from an

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It’s now a common evolutional trend where retail is merging with entertainment.  In fact, downtown needs to in order to survive, as the economy moves from a goods/services economy to an experience economy.

There are three essential components to ‘cooltown-certified’ retail entertainment districts:  great placemaking and unique venues, both of which become destinations unto themselves, and a good supply of attainable housing.  Of course, other factors like tenant mix, location, etc. are

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The mark of a neighborhood to watch - the cool indie coffeehouse

Other than the prolific amount of loft-type housing going on in Oakland’s Jack London Square (profiled yesterday), you know it’s a place to invest in once that funky, independent coffeehouse opens, the one that qualifies as a third place.  In Jack London Square, it’s the World Ground Cafe, and in fact the only indie coffeehouse in the neighborhood.

The East Bay’s signature alternative weekly, the East Bay Express, determined

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Lofty new neighborhood rises in Oakland

If you’re an entrepreneur, artist and/or associated with the creative class in the SF Bay Area, you may want to check out the neighborhood surrounding the Jack London Square waterfront.  The area has already attracted a number of architects, consultants and media-related firms.

Oakland’s Mayor Jerry Brown and former presidential candidate was a pioneer in helping transform what was a dormant, underutilized industrial district (much of it centered

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Checking out the SF Bay Area

Over the holiday break I revisited the San Francisco Bay Area to see what its cities had built to attract creatives and entrepreneurs in the eight years since I last lived there.

Here’s my basic assessment based on what’s under construction - the East Bay will have the greatest population gain in this group by far, San Francisco will continue to attract them as well albeit at a much slower pace, and the West Bay/Peninsula - the heart of Silicon Valley - will

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Cities cool enough for a cutting edge website

In keeping up with our impromptu focus on media & resources this week, one must-see site for a cooltown/creative class point of view of four European cities is this informative, dynamic website at coolcapitals.com.

I’m not aware of any website that better communicates the creative, progressive highlights of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Vienna and Zurich, using animation, sounds, imagery and descriptions of only the most relevant restaurants, lounges,

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Alternative reading for alternative places

As you may know, the target audience for cooltowns can be classified as the creative class, early adopters, cultural creatives, entrepreneurs, bohemians, progressives, influencers… an alternative to the mainstream.  Utne Magazine is the quintessential alternative publication, and thus it’s worth noting that their 2005 Independent Press Award for newsletters goes to New Urban News, the leading publication for developing walkable communities, a major

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You know how you can count on your friends to tell you about, say, this great new affordable restaurant, or a must-go sale, or a free concert with a favorite band…?  Well, if your city isn’t lucky enough to have a Buffalo Rising, then you should check out Daily Candy if you live in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, London, LA, SF, NY or DC.  Think of it as a daily ‘experience tipster’ for the creative class.

In Washington DC, the very last daily ‘tips’ were:
- A new eco-friendly store, the first of

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What happens when you cross car sharing with a shopping cart?

The people at MIT have an answer that poses such a question - the city car... and it’s set to be built as a prototype by GM.

Stackable like a shopping cart to save space, the electric two-seat city car is designed for pedestrian-oriented communities (ie cities) that suffer from single (or double) occupancy vehicle congestion and a dearth of parking.  With independent wheels, it ‘drives like a computer chair’, thus making parallel

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