Would you live, work or play here? For many creatives, the answer would be yes, yes and yes.  What makes Portland’s Burnside Rocket the kind of building they want to see more of?

On the outside…
1. It’s expressive, authentic and unique. It isn’t called the Rocket for nothing. From the red exterior to the art panel shutters representing 24 emerging local artists, you won’t find anything like it… in the world, really.
2. It’s human-scaled. Framed construction vs high-rise concrete. People don’t

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While trends indicate that emerging generations preferring a world beyond cars will finally spark massive investment in a pedestrian-oriented infrastructure, many in the current generation aren’t going to wait.

From the NY Times article For some, the car is no longer a must-have, “The fundamental difference in car buying now is that it’s a lot more practical, rather than emotional,” says an industry analyst. Emotional attachment is one of the most significant reasons why people have

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For emerging generations, ‘quality of life’ does not mean quantity of life, as “more evidence that ‘not so big homes’ are in” provides evidence for. People are increasingly favoring giving up square footage in exchange for having the freedom to live in whatever neighborhood they choose, like being closer to work, closer to friends, closer to, well, having a life. You can buy space, but you can’t buy time.

Even the Urban Land Institute, the leading organization for real estate developers

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As is often the case, the historic 1900s neighborhood of Shikumen in Shanghai, China was to be razed for new development, until an effort succeeded in convincing city leaders that a brighter future lay in revitalizing the culture that was already there.

Today, Xintiandi is a $170 million remix of century old apartment blocks and courtyards into a contemporary, car-free, shopping, eating and entertainment district, and the heart of Shanghai’s Puxi district, one of its most important

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If you’re selected to speak at TED, it’s because you’re changing the world.  Katherine Fulton, President of the Monitor Institute, whose mission is to “help innovative leaders develop and achieve sustainable solutions to significant social and environmental problems,“, presented “You are the future of philanthropy”, but it could just as well have been titled, “You are the future of city building”.

This is a moment in history when the average person has more power that at any time. She further

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J.D. Power and Associates released a new Gen Y study analyzing discussions on social media that reveals, not surprisingly, that emerging generations have a negative outlook on cars being a fundamental part of their culture.

Generation Y, made up of ‘early careerists’ in their twenties, and teens, will exceed the economic impact on America that the baby boomers had In their teens.  From a recent J.D. Power webinar:
- Gen Y is more about spending big on technology than spending big on a car.
-

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Because crowdsourcing is defined as outsourcing a task to a community using an open call, you don’t necessarily need a community to start with.  American Idol didn’t have a defined community to start, but crowdsourcing helped it create one.

With crowdsourced placemaking, it’s more relevant to use a task to help build a community as an end result, than having a community fulfill a task as the end result.  Why?  Because with placemaking, as they say, it takes a village.  While a completed

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There’s really no way to provide a top ten list of cities for creatives, but here’s a series of city rankings on their interests. It goes to show the top cities aren’t leaders in a few categories, but many of them, with a common characteristic of diversity.

The Next Hot Youth-Magnet Cities” (The Wall Street Journal)
1. (Tie) Washington DC and Seattle, WA; 3. New York City; 4. Portland, OR; 5. Austin, TX; 6. San Jose; CA 7. Denver, CO; 8. Durham, NC; 9. Dallas, TX; 10. Chicago, IL; 11. Boston,

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