There’s a plethora of books on crowdsourcing out there, but only one documents the crowdsourcing of a city’s entire downtown. In other words, it shows you how far crowdsourcing has come along, from T-shirts to now cities.

Below is the full excerpt from the book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Crowdsourcing by Aliza Sherman, published July 2011 (sure, we had something to do with it). Two days after the book was released, the NY Times published an article on the crowdsourced placemaking of the

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This is a site for defining, talking about and providing examples of crowdsourced placemaking, but what about actually doing crowdsourced placemaking? That’s what the Crowdsource Placemaking Lab is for.

The purpose of the Crowdsource Placemaking Lab is to assist people who are committed to crowdsourcing a place that they feel should exist in their neighborhood or city, but doesn’t… yet. It’s a place for you to answer the question, What place would you be passionate about creating with others

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If you’re passionate about walking, biking and living outside of the city, then you might want to check out what may be the very first new car-free community to break ground in the U.S. Modeled after remote pedestrian-only towns like Zermatt, Switzerland (see photo above and aerial of town here), it’s called Bicycle City, and its founders would like the initial development 15 miles south of Columbia, South Carolina to be the first of many.

It will be very similar to the Vauban neighborhood in

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What are the coolest, discovered or undiscovered places locally and around the world that will inspire what our neighborhood and cities will look like in the near future? The answer partly lies in our collective experiences. Under development for a year now, a site for crowdsourcing the best of those experiences is finally up at Cooltown Places. See the Cooltown Places button at the top right of this site.

The mission? “Crowdsource a library of favorite places from around the world to inspire

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While they put together the videos for the TEDx in Washington DC yesterday (tedxpotomac.com and #tedxpotomac on Twitter), here’s the basic transcript for the presentation on crowdsourced placemaking. The presentation team included Neil Takemoto speaking, D’Blend (Juan Botero and Lina Almansa) doing the visuals and videos, and Yoko K performing live organic electronica music. Hope this holds you over…

[Intro visuals and music feature open call answers to the question ‘What place would you be

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GOOD Magazine went all out in their 2010 Neighborhoods Issue with well over 30 short articles (with nifty illustrations) on redefining what our neighborhoods may mean to us in a more creative, diverse, connected world.

The stated purpose of the issue? “To fight homogeneity and think of creative ways to preserve or recapture our unique communities.“

Here are some highlights of the many intriguing reads:

- The magazine’s own vision of the perfect neighborhood, by providing a signature event,

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Pictures and music are worth more than text, so here’s a deck (generic name for a Powerpoint) sponsored by Washington DC developers (Red Dove, website coming and Gragg & Associates) to crowdsource an urban destination for creatives in Washington DC.

Stay tuned for more info on the proposed development that’ll be the first to utilize the new crowdsourced placemaking tool Bubbly, and check out the preliminary vision here.

The music was custom produced by Yoko K, who does soundscapes for

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The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) held a video contest to communicate the organization’s commitment to new urbanism, “advancing walkable, bikable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl.“ The winning video (above) will be prominently featured at the CNU’s annual conference along with free admission for its producers.

Produced by First + Main and Paget Films, it’s one of the best 3-minute films out there explaining the value of placemaking, so you may want to keep it

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In order to to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments, Mercer Consulting conducts an annual Quality of Living survey ranking and comparing 215 cities around the world by quality of life and infrastructure.  When you look at the list, keep in mind that Mercer is a U.S. company.

Here’s their ranking of cities with the highest quality of life based on the following criteria: Political and social environment, economic environment, socio-cultural

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Time Magazine has taken the ‘people over cars‘ cultural mindset shift into prime time media. In their 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now, they’ve prominently placed Recycling the Suburbs at #2 on the list.

From the article, which looks at how to retrofit suburbia to become pedestrian-oriented rather than auto-oriented…

“Though creative cities will grow more attractive for empty-nest retirees and young graduates alike, we won’t all be moving to New York. Many Americans will still prefer

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