With the holidays around the corner and a new level of green consciousness rising among kids, this may be of interest to proponents of natural cultural districts. We know you can build digital buildings and towns with digital lego, but what about the real stuff? Well, when Lego starts providing pedestrian-oriented buildings, streets and even mass transit sets for kids (and kidults) to purchase, that says we’ve turned a corner as far as what’s cool.

Pictured above are the Market Street, Green

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Alternate titles: Library 2.0, Not your father’s library, Redefining the library…

Based on Project for Public Spaces’ How to Make Your Library Great: 14 lessons from local libraries all over the continent, here are the unique ones that will attract creatives:

1. The contemporary library is no longer a repository for books, nor even just a community center, but also an edutainment center as well.  In other words, it doesn’t always have to be so quiet.

2. They act as a town square, hosting

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...it’s healthy for just about everyone else, and communities in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have been conducting such audits for 25 years.  The public health term for this is a health impact assessment (HIA), which measures the potential impacts of decisions on health (physical, emotional and mental), and identifies actions that can improve the results of those decisions”. 

According to Neal Kaufman, MD, MPH*, an HIA on our schools would result in:

- “Siting it where the

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g src=“/images/edibleschoolyard.jpg” align=left alt=“Edible schoolyard” As the economy evolves from goods to services to experiences, schools are too. In a world inundated with information, teachers may find it harder to keep kids’ attention. Fortunately, there are places like the Edible Schoolyard.

About ten years ago chef Alice Waters sparked a Berkeley middle school to plant an organic garden where students would grow their own vegetables as part of their school lunch program.  What’s the

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g src=“/images/school-johnson-stpaul.jpg” align=left alt=“John A. Johnson Achievement Plus Elementary, St. Paul” What a waste that a beautiful school for kids by day becomes a closed-down building at night, especially if the spaces look like the ones in the last couple of blogs.

I blogged about this almost two years ago in Schools as Third Places, and the schools as community centers idea is becoming increasingly popular.  In fact, there is such an organization by the same name that focuses

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g src=“/images/schools-orchardgardensk8-bo.jpg” align=left alt=“Orchard Gardens K8, Boston” So, there was that urban, city, downtown schools are getting better.

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g src=“/images/minneapolis-wmep.jpg” align=left alt=“WMEP Interdistrict Downtown School, Minneapolis” Ask just about any parent-to-be why they feel compelled to eventually leave the active, pedestrian-oriented urban neighborhood they desperately want to stay in and head for the ‘burbs… “It’s the schools.  The suburban schools are simply better.“

Could they finally be wrong?

- “This is no less than one of the biggest turnaround stories of any urban school system in the United States,“

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g src=“/images/federalhill.jpg” align=left alt=“Federal Hill, Baltimore MD” Baltimore Sun: Kids and the City (registration needed)

Federal Hill in Baltimore, MD is well known for attracting the creative class, but who knew kids (and their parents) would think it’s cool too?

The number of Federal Hill children under age 4 grew by 16% between 2000 and 2003 while the neighborhood’s overall population increased just 7%.  Why?  The main reason is that the parents who make up the creative class

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g src=“/images/kids-townplanning.jpg” align=left alt=“Town planning kids at Prospect Elementary, Ohio” The most innovative charter schools study the principles of informal learning to teach their kids.  Lucky them.  It sure beats the daily grind of structured learning I hated so much as a youngster.

Since lack of good schools are the main reason why people with children are repelled by the city, here’s a quick look at how to reverse that trend - the 10 Characteristics of Successful Charter

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g src=“/images/schoolwsva.jpg” align=left alt=“Rachel Carson Elementary” OK, so there’s grand visions of what future CoolTown schools could be, and existing models of how they could be today.

How will they be paid for?

‘Facilities’ (physical construction) is the biggest expense that often derails the best laid plans, and land is the largest expense within that (especially in urban areas).  Thus, the best place to start when financing a new school is to find a land donor, and some of the more

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What if every sixth grader had a laptop?  What if every seventh grader knew they had college paid for?  What if every K-12 student could walk to school and back home?

It’s happening here and there, and hopefully it’ll all come together at one school.

- The state of Michigan is seeking a contract to provide all 130,000 of its sixth graders with laptops to be used in classrooms with wireless internet by January 1, 2004.

- The Department of Education is establishing a national program to

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What better way to get a community involved in its schools, than to transform its schools into community centers.  Here are some examples across the country:

-The K-5 Tenderloin Community School in San Francisco has medical and dental facilities, counseling rooms, adult education facilities, a family resource center, and a community garden and kitchen.
-High school academies in Michigan and Arizona are built within museums that provide real-world applications.
-The Big Lake Public School

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While kids love people-oriented*, walkable, entertainment-rich towns, their “bosses” (parents) won’t have any of it if the schools are sub-par.

CoolTown prosperity revolves around lasting community building bulit through relationships (e.g. guilds, third places), and good schools are no different.  Just as guilds focus on groups of people with common interests, so are the “academies” at Edison Schools, where groups of kids are taught by the same four-six teachers over two-three years in

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Can a town designed by and for creatives, gen xers/yers and knowledge workers be any good for kids?  Actually, very much so.  Not only is this audience ready to have kids on their own, they were kids themselves not too long ago, and the following guidelines for children can apply to them as well.

Given a fair start, kids above all need to be able to freely explore their environment and learn how to spontaneously relate to other people of all ages in order to develop happily and healthily,

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Sometimes, even better than those who are making decisions in how we plan and build our communities.  The more we listen to a diversity of people, including age and gender, the healthier our places will be.  For instance…

In the industrial age, mass production allowed only a few lucky managers to make the decisions of many.  This is quite evident in one of the greatest mass production results of all time:  suburban sprawl - which has little reflection of the needs of children, teens, the

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