This is apparently Seattle’s first transit-oriented development (TOD). If it gets better than this with TODs so come, hold on to your seats, you’re in for a fun ride.

The starting point is a 9-acre parking lot (left of photo), pretty much your standard building block in many U.S. cities, though adjacent to a major bus transfer station with planned light rail access, which means walkable urban village development is a natural next step. However, one half of what makes this a model for the rest

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Most students at university campuses either don’t need to drive, don’t need to own cars. Yet the isolated dormitory, classroom and cafeteria zone form of development, similar to the isolated subdivision, office park and shopping mall model of suburban development, surprisingly hasn’t changed for decades. Until now. Finally.

Thanks to the forward thinkers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, they not only invested $54 million into an open-to-the-public mixed-use

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Each year Fast Company magazine introduces their pick for Fast Cities City of the Year, and while that may be quite subjective, this year they also included an innovator/innovation in each state. Here are the ones most relevant to this urban living:

Places for working creatives
- Washington DC. Affinity Lab. Arguably the first coworking space in the U.S marketed as such., founded in 2001.
- Indiana, Indianapolis. The National Design District. Redevelopment of an old auto factory into a

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Inspired by the Better Block Program in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas that crowdsourced a weekend demonstration of what a downtown street should be like, Memphis hosted their own last November. Located on Broad Street, the event, “A New Face for Old Broad“, attracting 13,000 attendees.

Pat Brown, co-owner of T. Clifton Art Gallery on Broad, sums it up nicely, “It’s easier for any of us to envision what the future can be if you can see it, touch it and taste it as well. Instead of looking at a

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People often ask, “How does crowdsourced placemaking work in the real world?“

This is best answered via real world examples, such as the piazza in Bristol, Connecticut (pop. 61,000) .

As you can see in the December 30, 2010 story, “Blending online and face-face crowdsourcing“, the Bristol survey was just launching, with “A plaza/piazza” garnering a mere 9 likes at the time. Master developer Renaissance Downtowns, which is partnering with the City of Bristol to develop a 17-acre former strip

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When a 20,000 s.f. coworking space receives a $200,000 grant from New York City’s Economic Development Corporation to offer design, technology and business classes to the public, it’s going to need a new adjective, like coworking accelerated, sponsored coworking or gazelle coworking. In fact, it’s an ideal solution to a need we previously stated a crying need for regarding job creation, a startup coworking space.

What makes General Assembly so significant is that it represents how coworking

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We know cities are cool again, and as a result supermarkets now think so too. We also know auto-oriented suburban supermarkets with vast parking lots in urban area won’t fly. So how are the next generation of urban supermarkets fitting in? By getting smaller.

Under 5000 s.f. corner stores, micro grocery stores: These not-so-big neighborhood grocery stores under 2000 s.f. have always fit in just fine, just don’t call them Mom & Pops anymore (an image search will show you why not). Why? Because

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It’s one of the most commonly asked questions regarding downtowns, “What should the ideal mix of local independent retailers be to regional and national chains?“ First of all, let’s list two instances when chains generally aren’t appreciated.

Is your neighborhood a natural cultural district?
In other words, if the neighborhood organically developed with human-scaled buildings, often in historic districts, and already predominantly consists of local businesses, then keeping it that way not

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Why is it even important?

The words plaza, place and piazza have the same Greek origin, with plaza being the Spanish adaption, place in French, and piazza the Italian one. However, while these spaces retain their community-centric car-free heritage in each respective country, the U.S. chose the term ‘plaza’ to define its own urban public squares, which have since become auto-oriented models that have almost nothing to do with its Spanish origin. For instance, the New Urbanism Lexicon, the de

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As the 1600+ entries in this blog provide evidence for, emerging generations are moving into downtowns, driving less, walking more, living in smaller homes they can actually afford, preferring local businesses and slower food, prioritizing health,going green and valuing community and social networking like never before. It keeps coming up again and again, that the one amenity that does a remarkable job of fulfilling these values is the timeless piazza.

Based largely on the introduction in the

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