There is not a desirable city that exists that doesn’t have a lack of attainably-priced housing, and it’s been covered pretty extensively. Smaller homes have been one of the most logical answers, and developers are starting to agree to the point investors have termed the smallest end of these offerings…

Microhousing is defined as very small one-two bedroom units, 300 to 500 square feet, with an emphasis on shared amenities like fitness facilities, party rooms with kitchens, libraries, laundry

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Say you live in a walkable city and want walking directions as opposed to driving directions to a destination across town. You’re in luck if you live in London and perhaps soon in Boston, thanks to Walkit, a Mapquest for people on foot.

Check out the map above - notice how the suggested walking route cuts right through several parks and with no regard for one-way streets.  It even calculates calories and CO2 saved based on walking speed and compared to other means of transportation. You can

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If you want to know which New Urbanism projects New Urbanism architects were most inspired by in 2008, check out the Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) annual Charter Award winners.

While these fall on the opposite spectrum from crowdsourcing and tend to be more baby boomer/upscale, they still provide important design lessons learned. Here are ten of the fifteen winners that are more urban:

Region, Metropolis, City, Town Scale:
Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan; Louisiana
A Civic Vision for

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Continuing our look at the contemporary Remixing Cities: Strategy 2.0 paper profiled in the previous entry, author Charles Leadbetter defines city problems as two different kinds:

Clocks - Manufacturing or fixing clocks is complicated, focusing on hardware and professional skills, with measurable inputs and outputs using tried and true tools. Clock problems include increasing the supply of affordable housing, improving mass transit or implementing bike sharing programs.

Clouds - They are

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If there’s one research document to read to better understand how crowdsourcing can be applied to cities publicly, peruse Remixing Cities: Strategy for the City 2.0, published by CEOs for Cities.  As you can see on the cover and the paper’s official description, “explore how co-creation and innovation can transform public services and unleash the talents of all citizens”, it’s based on the principles of crowdsourcing.

The author, Charles Leadbeater, advises companies, cities and governments

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Who is sourcing the growing popularity in walkable urban areas and city downtowns?

Chris Leinberger is an industry leader in defining financial models for urban developments and the author of The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream. He’s also a baby boomer, which is significant in his answer to the Smart City Radio interview question, “Why is there pent up demand for walkable urbanism?“

“It’s basically being driven by the Gen Xers, and I’m sure the Gen Xers will be happy to

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In 2003, two employees of Klein-Dytham Architecture (KDa) in Tokyo felt there was a profound need for a place that young creatives could socialize, network and present their work publicly. Thus was born Pecha Kucha Night, which has since spread to 103 cities around the world.

Each month a group of designers, creatives, artists meet in, well, a creative space to view peer presentations of their work. Ah, but what makes it all so compelling is that ego is factored out of the equation - each

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Cities love having an event followed by the sentence, “Only in ____”, even if it’s just for that year. It provides them with a unique cultural identity that sets them apart from every city in the world, such as the Running of the Bulls, only in Pamplona.

Speaking of which, who knows if that was part of the inspiration behind Crashed Ice, where four gutsy padded-up skaters fight through elements of roller derby, hockey and the bobsled as they race close to 40-miles an hour on a one-third

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Every district wants a music scene, but not every district has one. Creative class author Richard Florida, a music fan to the nth degree, is spending a lot of research time providing the answers why, the first findings of which can be found in his recent report, Music Clusters: A Preliminary Analysis.

First of all, one needs to understand that only this with music as primary employment are defined in this study, not self-employed musicians, secondary musicians (in addition to their day job),

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Sure, it’s yet another green city list, but we try to cover ones that have something to add. The last one we covered, Best Green Cities in America, provided a top ten ranking of smaller cities that seemed to best measure green consciousness per capita.

This list, Popular Science’s (U.S.) America’s 50 Greenest Cities covers cities with populations over 100,000 using the following green criteria:

Electricity from renewable energy - 10 points.
Transportation regarding mass transit or carpool;

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