A year ago we profiled the conference bike from the Netherlands, which allowed seven people on one bike together - and have a ‘conference’ at the same time. Be it no surprise that the Dutch now bring us the Fietscafe (pictured above), or the PedalPub as it’s known (and distributed) in the USA. If the world has a biking scene, it’s hands down in the Netherlands.

This time instead of seven, there are fourteen people that can ride at the same time, each of them pedaling at their own leisure,

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How important is live music to the city of Austin? How many cities do you know of that have a Live Music Task Force? Not only that, the city-funded group won’t consist of the usual suspect government bureaucrats, but local musicians, music venue owners and regular music-loving Austin residents - all deciding how to spend the government’s money to keep Austin’s Live Music Capital of the World reputation thriving.

The final report will come in October, but here are the four areas they’re

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This is a question I’m often asked - how can crowdsourcing help develop and/or revitalize a commercial district, especially a natural cultural district?

It starts with preparation, understanding crowdsourcing as a solution to a ‘cloud problem’, and recognizing the importance of third places, scenes and events. Read more about their roles here.

The first action step involves establishing a creative community, which will then crowdsource the scene for the district, such as as arts and

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This diagram illustrates how crowdsourcing is used to solve a cloud problem, that diffuse, difficult to pin down dilemma such as how to establish a creative scene in a designated district.

In the graphic, note how creatives and ‘sponsors’ (those who contribute significant investment dollars or buildings) work from the ‘clouds’ (via a physical and virtual social network), collaborating on a specific problem with a common vision - a clock problem; a clearly definable situation, like how to

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My favorite category on this website is Reader Experiences. What better way to profile inspiring places than to have readers relive such moments. Today’s such person is Christian MacAuley, CEO of FabApps. Her experience:

“Philz Coffee in San Francisco makes your coffee one cup at a time. It feels special and tastes awesome. After waiting in line to be served, a staff member makes your coffee with you one-on-one, asking for your exact preferences so you’re getting very individualized attention

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As stated in a previous entry, the primary reason why an overwhelming majority of new retail developments lease to national chains rather than local independent businesses is that chains can pay higher rents.  They’re able to do so because they already have an established customer base before they open.  This makes it extremely difficult to establish a natural cultural district, which is why we have ‘Anywhere USA’ instead.

How can local indie shops and restaurants compete with such a

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We know third places are that familiar social gathering place away from home and work, and we’re thankfully witnessing a renaissance of them in neighborhoods everywhere. So, it was inevitable that as more creatives turn to more natural means of transportation we would start to see third places for biking commuters, aka urban bike stations (thank you Springwise).

You’re in luck if you live in the following cities with urban bike stations, all of which offer secure covered bike parking, on-site

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If you live anywhere near Notting Hill in London you may never have to shop anywhere outside of Portobello Road, where the Portobello Road Market comes to life each day.  Over a half mile long and closed to cars, it features three distinct public markets:

Monday-Friday, 9am-6:30pm with half-day closing on Thursday, 1pm:  Fruit and vegetable market, with flowers and food vendors, primarily serving the locals.

Friday, Saturday, 9am-6:30 pm:  Flea market, with a strong emphasis on fashion new

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Every once in a while a checklist is highly beneficial to remind one of the fundamentals. Today we bring you a civic-minded one from Project for Public Spaces*, Is Your City a Great City?

PPS’s checklist has seven principles with three to four action-oriented steps each, as you can see here. Below are those principles with the most cool town, natural cultural district-focused tactic to achieve each one:

Community goals are a top priority in city planning
Utilize crowdsourced placemaking. 

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Looking for a solid, short read on crowdsourcing? The best book to date to satisfy that would have to be We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business (at least until Crowdsourcing: ‘Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business’ comes out July 2008). For the concise-minded, not only is We Are Smarter a mere 147 pages, but it’s full of pictures as well.

A look at the chapters, all of which provide lots of real world examples.

1. Look What ‘We’ Can

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