Crowdfunding is what happens when $ are applied to crowdsourcing, such as when fans raise money to record the first CD for an unknown band. It’s a matter of time before people are allowed to formally crowdsource either the buildings they live in, or buildings in their neighborhood they believe in.

One major step in that direction is Crowdfunder, started by a pair of Boulder, Colorado entrepreneurs who formed the company simply based on what they felt was one of the biggest needs in the

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I don’t know what it is, but this seems to be the year of the bicycle…

Based on criteria (see below, which are very U.S. oriented, thus skewing the rankings significantly) provided by the League of American Bicyclists, Virgin Vacations presents the 11 most bike friendly cities in the world:

1. Amsterdam, Netherlands - You have to check out the video on the site - amazing, though it may help to ignore the rather nerdy-sounding narrative. 40% of all trips are by bikes, and there are more bikes

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How can you tell a city really cares about bicyclists? By spending the money to design and install the world’s first and presently only bike lift to encourage biking to popular, but difficult to reach places. In this case, it’s a steep hill between the city’s main university and its downtown.

Built in 1993, the ‘Trampe’ (bike lift) has been averaging 46 uses/day since. Cities today can build one for $450-$550 foot, or as the company website says, “the same building costs as an ordinary

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Sweden’s Bo01 development, aka City of Tomorrow, is designed to be a model urban village of sustainability for 1000 residents.** The 27-unit Tango (pictured) was designed to set a standard for the rest of the development.

The centerpiece of Tango is a courtyard (see oval) surrounded by a series of transparent buildings. At night, the buildings resemble a collection of colorful internally lit lanterns, providing a warm, inviting atmosphere and a welcoming sense of security.

The 33,000 s.f.

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In the industrial age people had a choice of either a mass-produced suburban home or a mass-produced apartment. In the knowledge age where

individual expression as a community is the norm, these lucky residents in Amsterdam were able to fulfill that notion.

...and lucky is right, for people had to win a lottery for the right to buy one of 60 ‘free parcels’, as in ‘free to design their own building’. As you can see in the image above, it shows, and compared to the rest of the 2500-unit Borneo

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Almost two years ago we profiled the wildly innovative, stackable, electric City Car, designed via the MIT Smart Cities program.

Think of it as a cross between car sharing and bike sharing, where you have the access to a dual-passenger car, but parked in a space not much larger than a bicycle.

It was pretty difficult for people to understand the concept based on images, so the folks at MIT finally produced a video to show how it works.

Considering most people rarely drive with more than two

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CooperBricolage (CooBric) is a coworking site company without a coworking site. They’re working on finding one, they say, but in the meantime they’re in the same dilemma as a lot of other entrepreneurs, free agents and home-workers who want a shared workplace to share ideas and conversation, but don’t have a common place to meet.

So CooBric found a cafe to serve as their interim coworking site, at Gramstand in Manhattan. Of course, it has to meet the coworking criteria: Progressive

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Recording artist Ani DiFranco wanted to energize the downtown of her hometown of Buffalo with some creative spirit. So she did what any other person would have done - transforming a doomed 19th century church into a 21st century destination that houses a concert hall (pictured), a record studio, an art gallery and bar/lounge.

The city slated the 1871-built church for demolition in 1995, and within a year DiFranco and her record company president launched a community-wide effort to save it,

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Who are the creatives?

Many of you in the know have heard about the Creative Class, the Cultural Creatives, and now, the Renaissance Generation. What is the difference between these groups, and if there is, how are they interrelated and what do they have to do with cool towns?

Cultural Creatives - 50 million in the U.S., aka the New Progressives, introduced by author Paul Ray in his book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. These are the people who care, and

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It is happening in our cities now, and it rivals the Renaissance of the 1300s, according to author Patricia Martin in her new book, Rengen: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer - and What It Means to Your Business.

Who are the Rengens? Patricia says it’s more of a mindset than a specific demographic - “a thirty year swath of individuals who are living comtemporaneously”, fueled by a large group of boomers and a very large group of 16-28 year olds.

Why is there a renaissance happening now? At

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