It’s a familiar scene - you find housing you can afford near a mass transit line on the outskirts of a city, and the reason it’s affordable is because few people will visit you. There’s no there, there.  For decades, Collingswood, New Jersey, neighborhood of 15,000 just outside of Camden, was just that. It suffered massive downtown vacancies like most other cities, even though it was served by a major transit line to Philadelphia.  It hasn’t helped that many are still averse to living or

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It starts out as a vastly familiar story. As the industrial economy grew and manufacturing jobs moved to the outskirts, many of Wichita, Kansas’ historic downtown buildings were boarded up, with vacancy rates up to 70%. Now an evolution to a knowledge-based economy is bringing people back to the city center, and as we know, the creatives will seek out the natural cultural districts first.

The premiere natural cultural district in Wichita (which may surprise you in that it’s the 51st largest

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Cincy’s new ‘Q’ for contemporary urban living

That’s ‘Q’ is in ‘quarter’, as in the newly renovated Gateway Quarter for Urban Living in Cincinnati’s once down-and-out Over-The-Rhine neighborhood.

The Over-The-Rhine neighborhood suffered a population loss from 40,000 to under 5000, but the 70-acre, 100-loft, indie-retail-driven Gateway Quarter looks to reverse that trend soon.

Much of the renaissance can be credited to the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC), a nonprofit

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WSJ: ‘TOD’s are hot

What do investors think of TODs? (Transit-oriented development) The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “in many cities, the hottest development is taking place along the train lines” and “mass-transit lines are the new frontier in urban development.“ You’d better check out the article, The Little Engine That Could before it gets archived.

The evidence?

- There are 100 TODs in the U.S., with 100 more in the pipeline.*
- By 2030 the number of households near transit

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New urban demo-graphics point to urban housing (1 of 2)

What will the housing market be like 10-20 years from now?

Robert Puentes, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program provides some answers in his presentation, A Review of New Urban Demo-graphics and Impacts on Housing. It’s essentially a slide show displaying key demographics and how they will shape residential development.

As you can see in the first slide on the left, urban downtown populations have grown

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‘America’s Next Hot Neighborhoods’

You’ve just seen the study that documents the connection between rising home values and the bohemian index, so what are some examples of such neighborhoods?

BusinessWeek provides a pretty good list (with the help of Zillow) in their recently published, America’s Next Hot Neighborhoods.

Their city neighborhoods with the fastest rising home values yet still affordable are:

Boston: Dorchester, Mount Bowdoin, Grove Hall
Chicago: East Garfield Park, Cicero,

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Nashua’s downtown boom

With a #1 ranking in Money magazine’s Best Places to Live in both 1987 and 1997, Nashua, a small city of 87,000 on the southern border of New Hampshire, aims to become even more livable.

Within the span of just a few years, the downtown is expected to have 885 new housing units built: 158 that are already completed, 445 approved, and another 440 being planned.  One of the most notable is the proposed Cotton Mill Square which will offer 32 of its 162 new condominium

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Celebrities investing in inner cities in a big way

Henry Cisneros. Magic Johnson. Shaquille O’Neal. Oscar De La Hoya. From a member of President Clinton’s cabinet to a world title holder, these four have one thing in common - investing in inner cities, and with significant economic and social impact.

Henry Cisneros - Henry founded CityView after his White House service “to help create the highest quality housing for America’s working families”, partnered with a $500M revolving fund from

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Not enough downtown to go around in Southern town

What happens when a small city invests in attracting the creative class?  You have a city like Columbia, SC with a population of 117,000 adding 7000 new residences downtown within the span of a few years.

How so?

- It has a major university, and is building a university research village (Innovista), not a university research park, that will create 8700 knowledge-economy jobs.
- Developers are building appealing, human-scaled lofts and

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If the nation’s economy is at stake, should cities and companies invest/locate in the city center or surrounding communities?  Based on findings (and title) of the highly respected Conference Board of Canada’s recent economic study, , the answer is: