There are few better authorities for comparing the thousands of neighborhoods, streets and public spaces than the American Planning Association, especially since their vast membership represents just about every one of these destinations. Thus, special attention should be applied to their annual Great Places in America, with ten designees in each of the three aforementioned categories. However, they choose new recipients each year, and this is its second year, so you may want to check out

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The online world centers around conversation, via discussion forums, chat rooms, comment threads, Facebook’s ‘Walls’… many of these mediums didn’t exist ten years ago, even five years ago. That’s not difficult to fathom, given that today it doesn’t take more than five minutes to set up an online community with all these things. However, an internet minute is equivalent to a real estate year, so if you’ve subconsciously wondered why walking through your built environment lacks the spontaneity

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In May 2008 the NYC DOT (Department of Transportation) announced plans for the Broadway Boulevard, a pedestrianized street from 35th to 42nd avenue.

By the end of August 2008, a mere three months later, the pedestrian plaza is completed. That’s a rare sign of a government bureaucracy defying being a bureaucracy, opting for a more effective people-oriented decision-making process, such as their streets to plaza program.

The public-private partnership is a model of sharing

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How do you top Maryland’s first pedestrian-only street in several decades and its first pedestrian-only mixed-use lane? Easy, its first real piazza, which we profiled while in the planning stages here.

The $360 million, 15-acre Rockville Town Square has literally become the city’s center stage overnight, hosting concerts, movies, a farmer’s market and even a rock climbing wall. Being in the space feels right - it’s like an outdoor room, enclosed on four sides, filled with outdoor dining

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Manhattan is on a roll - first there’s Summer Streets where major streets are being closed to cars on August Saturdays, then talk of a bike sharing program, and now the rather mundane announcement that they’re turning two of four lanes on Broadway in Midtown into a pedestrian and bicycle zone - to be completed in mid-August 2008, permanently.

To be known as Broadway Boulevard between West 42nd and West 35th Street, the project will feature a Euro-style designated bicycle lane and a host

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There really is no better model than Europe for walkable neighborhoods, so it should be of special note when Europeans recognize the top urban developments of the last 25 years! The International jury of the 2008 Philippe Rotthier European Prize presents their ten winners via this A Vision of Europe website and forthcoming book.

Here are the true benchmarks of walkable urbanism (note the European flavor in the descriptions), and remember, these are recognized as the best within the last

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How do you breathe new life into a city waterfront? Check out San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace.

Built in 1898, San Francisco’s landmark clock tower was the West Coast’s Ellis Island, but by the mid-20th century had become obsolete. After decades of mundane office use, it reopened in April 2003 as a cosmopolitan marketplace, with its Farmer’s Market attendance doubling and merchants consistently exceeding sales goals.

It’s lessons for success? The San Francisco Chronicle lays

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The newly christened pedestrian-only Mint Plaza in San Francisco is worth the two headlines.

First, as you can see in the images to the right, what was once a seedy automobile alley is now a pedestrian-only gathering destination. Opened a year ago near Fifth and Mission Street, the plaza is starting to become a vibrant scene with restaurants and outdoor seating. It was funded through a public-private partnership and is maintained by a nonprofit.

Mayor Gavin Newsom used Mint Plaza as the

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First of all, one principle that our crowdsource-based beta communities agree with is that ‘design by committee’ - a true democratic design process - isn’t effective (see Apple). Another way to look at it is this quote by designer Yves Behar, “Never ask the consumer about the future. You can ask them what their aspirations are, but you will not get an answer about what you should do. Design will bring those stories to life.” In other words, good design needs a leader and isn’t something

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Near the top of many progressive, creatives‘ lists one will find San Francisco or New York City. Why? Because there’s raw excitement in living in a trendsetting city - experiencing the future in the present. From Smart cars to Yelp! to flash mobs - you’ll find them first, exclusively or most prevalently in such a city. So what’s the latest sign of things to come? Weekend pedestrian-only streets.

Spurred by an international movement to close major urban thoroughfares to cars and allowing only

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Kansas City’s new outdoor ‘living room’

It’s not a model for supporting local independent businesses, certainly not a natural cultural district, and its website opens with the words “Greed, lust and gluttony… and that’s only dinner”, but Kansas City’s new $800 million ‘corporate cultural district’ does provide clear evidence that there’s a growing market for pedestrian-only districts in downtowns.

The nine block Power & Light District is a one developer, formula-driven entertainment zone

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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

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Continuing our look at Richard Florida’s new book, Who’s Your City?, one eye-opening study Rich’s team conducted was their Place and Happiness Survey.

The survey received 27,000 responses on what things matter the most to U.S. Americans in their communities, which were later organized into five major categories: economic and personal security (jobs, perceptions of crime and safety); basic services (schools, affordable housing, transportation); leadership (business and civic, opportunity for

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CNU’s placemaking 2008 ‘Charter Awards’ announced

If you want to know which New Urbanism projects New Urbanism architects were most inspired by in 2008, check out the Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) annual Charter Award winners.

While these fall on the opposite spectrum from crowdsourcing and tend to be more baby boomer/upscale, they still provide important design lessons learned. Here are ten of the fifteen winners that are more urban:

Region, Metropolis, City, Town Scale: …

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Beach in the city

Paris’ Mayor Bertrand Delanoë wanted to make summer vacation accessible to people unable to afford leave town, so he brought the vacation to them.  Voila!  Paris Plage (Paris Beach).

Since 2002, three million people sun themselves along a two-mile stretch along the Seine between late July and August.  An expressway is temporarily replaced with two tons of sand, grass, wood decks, lounge chairs and palm trees, creating a pedestrian-only paradise in the heart of a

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The tagline for this blog, ‘Crowdsourcing cool places for creatives’ is essentially the same thing as crowdsourced placemaking. Now what exactly is crowdsourced placemaking?

Crowdsourcing - “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” Alternatively, “the application of open source principles to fields outside of software.” Definitions are from

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The hidden ‘indoor’ outdoor patios of Key West

The essence of Key West’s vibrancy, located along the very public Duvall Street profiled previously, was often very hidden via outdoor patios behind and alongside buildings.

Take Croissants de France (pictured) - at first glance you see a traditional front porch leading up to the entrance of the cafe, but as you walk up you notice a side patio followed by a tree-shaded courtyard, triggering an inkling to want to sit down and order a chocolate

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Bikes come first in Key West

Key West, Florida is both a city and an island hosting a few facts you may already know: it has a population of 25,000; is a cruise destination; has phenomenal weather (except when I visited it); is among the Florida keys that originated the key lime pie; is only 90 degrees from Cuba; has the nation’s first and oldest continuous gay and lesbian chamber of commerce; was home to Ernest Hemingway; and maintains 200 of the 300 liquor licenses in the keys - half of

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The hidden public courtyards of Buenos Aires

Hidden to tourists that is. The locals know where the public courtyards in their city are, and they make some of the best third places around, especially given that you can enjoy a little sun and warmth in the experience.

This particular one is in San Telmo, off Defensa Street, which is open only to pedestrians on Sundays (see previous entry). You’d never know it existed walking down the street (left image), demonstrating the value of exploring

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A design guru speaks on architec-ture

Continuing a look at world-changing design from the annual Fast Company series, 2007 Masters of Design, we introduce to you Philippe Starke from France, one of the elite who brings extraordinary design to the masses via Target.

He is currently garnering an international reputation for the emotional connections people have to the apartments and workplaces his company develops, many of which are historic renovations. No, they are not affordable by any

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How does the customer fit in with design these days? From the annual Fast Company article, 2007 Masters of Design, here are some notables from their featured designer, Yves Behar, followed by how it could apply to design in your neighborhood.

- Companies that focused on customer-experience design outperformed the standard (S&P 500) by 10 to 1 from 2000 to 2005. Yves, founder of Fuseproject and arguably the ‘LeBron James of design’ states, The simplest definition of design is how you treat

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The sounds of high urban quality of life

There’s endless research on what makes a city look good, but what about what makes a city sound good? Is there a body of research that complements the visuals of well-designed streets and buildings with how to create a more enlightened experience by what is heard?

Five universities jointly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK may very well be the first to provide that. Their Positive Soundscapes project aims to

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Redwood City looks to lose ‘Deadwood City’ nickname

Once one of the largest cities in Silicon Valley between San Francisco and San Jose, most people today have never heard of Redwood City, much less visited there for any particular reason. If current plans stay on track, that’ll soon change.

Public and private leaders recognized that their city was being left in the dust as the neighboring towns of Mountain View and Palo Alto initiated dramatic investment in their downtowns. Shrewdly, they

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A postcard portal for post-Katrina city

What to do when your city is devastated by Hurricane Katrina?  The government and city leaders of Long Beach, Mississippi, a city of 17,000 people, allowed its citizens to reshape the city’s future into a postcard portal, facilitated by an urban design firm familiar with the creative class, Ayers Saint Gross.

The result is the Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan, a regional master plan the recently received a CNU Charter Award for New Urbanism,

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The 2007 New Urbanism Charter Award winners

Each year the Congress for the New Urbanism announces its Charter Awards that best represent New Urbanism. Here are some of the winners for 2007.

The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town:

Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan - Waterfront revitalization. Check out its humanistic-proportioned buildings reminiscent of Amsterdam - those are going to be in immense demand.

Neighborhood, District, and Corridor:

Innovista Master Plan, Columbia, South

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