Each year the Congress for the New Urbanism announces its Charter Awards that best represent New Urbanism. Here are some of the winners for 2007.

The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town:

Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan - Waterfront revitalization. Check out its humanistic-proportioned buildings reminiscent of Amsterdam - those are going to be in immense demand.

Neighborhood, District, and Corridor:

Innovista Master Plan, Columbia, South Carolina - A true live/work/learn community

read more…

Last night, 14 people - Lisa, Angela, Christian, Mike, Sarah, Joey, Justin, Ayari, Raj, Ritu, Heather, Robert, myself and business owner/VIBE Linda - met over pizza, beer and wine to discuss, as a beta community, what Washington DC’s next cafe/bar/coffeehouse should be. It was the first ever VIBE beta community, as well as DC’s first beta community. Two hours later we had laid out the foundation for what very well may be the coolest, most innovative venue in Washington DC.

You’d actually have

read more…

No, this isn’t a good example of housing that ‘normal people’ can afford, but it is a touchstone model for transforming a neglected warehouse into an inspired destination. It goes well with the stylish coffeehouse presented yesterday, and sets a good benchmark for what humanistic 21st Century design could be.

Formerly a UPS factory built in 1936 (see image to the left), the building was renovated into what is now a fresh, contemporary, new residential community, known as the Flower Street

read more…

In contrast to the grungy, bohemian, shabby chic warehouse coffeehouse/bar/restaurant/art gallery warehouse profiled yesterday, I thought I’d present a modest, contemporary, yet progressive coffee stop known as Vic’s in Boulder, Colorado (not hip enough to have a website apparently). It’s one of the few good examples of modern architecture presented at a humanistic scale, but thankfully we’re seeing more of this.

Live music, poetry, free wireless, and legendary coffee, it’s no coincidence

read more…

“It’s not home, it’s not work. It’s that other place. It’s your space.“

That’s the theme at Retreat in DUMBO, Brooklyn NY, and it’s not an exaggeration…

5000 square feet. Free wifi lounge. Coffee bar (Coffee Box). Art gallery. Restaurant and Bar (reBar). Community tasting market (mid ‘07). Those are distinct places with their own unique names, not one venue calling itself an art gallery coffehouse restaurant because it serves coffee and has art on the walls. Not only that, reBar just won

read more…

Continuing yesterday’s entry on the Cool Spaces Report, what are the people behind the relocating companies saying they prioritize?

The single most important relocation factors in the report are:
1. Specific location: 40%
2. Price: 19%
3. Proximity to homes upper management/workforce: 15%

As they say in real estate, location, location, location. The specific location is typically associated with a cool neighborhood to begin with, and the upper management/workforce will be leaning the same

read more…

You ought to look at the newly published Cool Deals Report: Capturing the New Market in Urban Commercial Real Estate, “to learn what the most innovative companies want in an office and how urban and walkable communities provide it.“

If you’re in Pittsburgh, you should call the publisher of the report, Cool Space Locator, a nonprofit commercial real estate service that seeks out cool space for small and growing businesses, with cool space defined as “commercial real estate in walkable urban

read more…

The question for creative businesses is not if a cool place becomes popular and gentrified, but what to do when it is.

One answer is to join an artists cooperative and work with a group like Artspace that provides such attainable housing.

Another is to establish your own cooperative of sorts via a beta community, where you decide with a group what kinds of residential and commercial tenants to have, along the same lines as artist cooperatives do.

The best individual answer for your business

read more…

We all know people are organizing online to get what they want. However, because people are now doing it with such ease, speed and unprecedented influence, our friends at Trendwatching felt it deserved a unique distinction:

Crowd Clout: “Online co-buying consumers revealing their purchasing intentions to make the most of their investments. These efforts target a specific cause, be it political, civic or commercial, aimed at everything from bringing down politicians to forcing suppliers to

read more…

You’ve just seen the study that documents the connection between rising home values and the bohemian index, so what are some examples of such neighborhoods?

BusinessWeek provides a pretty good list (with the help of Zillow) in their recently published, America’s Next Hot Neighborhoods.

Their city neighborhoods with the fastest rising home values yet still affordable are:

Boston: Dorchester, Mount Bowdoin, Grove Hall
Chicago: East Garfield Park, Cicero, Lower West Side
Denver: Civic Center,

read more…