For anyone who doesn’t know Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, it is his market and economic research that largely qualifies signficant investment in CoolTowns.

Since being published in 2002 (with its sequel, The Flight of the Creative Class due in 2005), his work has helped either validate or inspire the creative mindsets of the mayors of Austin and Denver, the governor of Michigan, and the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to name a few, to strongly support CoolTown-oriented

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The Department of Labor released a study stating that 70% of what we learn about our job is done informally.  Meanwhile, economic growth is also being tied to community.

First, the CoolTown visual of what that looks like (see image).  Individuals doing their own thing, representing a variety of interests, yet working together with a common vision, learning and interacting in the process.  Chaos with a purpose if you will.

Second, the CoolTown example.  Tonight, the Affinity

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Last week the blog illustrated the virtues of the Not So Big House.  Yesterday the blog profiled the picturesque town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.  Today, a combination of the two.

The most immediate and noticeable value of these homes is that they’re within walking distance of the town center.  They just wouldn’t seem half as charming otherwise.  On the other hand, if they were all twice as big on much larger lots, there’d be half as many people walking and half of these specific neighborhood

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I happened upon the quaint little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada today, and understood why the locals talked it up so much.

While it’s not necessarily a CoolTown per se since it’s not very affordable, there’s some very cool things happening there.  I didn’t notice a single national chain on the entire main street, as all the merchants were unique Mom & Pops. 

The town was very walkable.  There seemed to be a fair amount of offices and residences above the stores and

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Motion picture studios know why some of their movies become hits - positive word-of-mouth that becomes viral.  Great critical reviews do not correlate with box office returns.  In this knowledge age, that buzz is being used to make better movies via test screenings before they’re released, and online fan review boards for sequels and related genre films.  This is especially becoming more prevalent in TV show production, where fans have increasingly more say on the content of upcoming shows,

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McMansions are out.  Small is in.

Smaller homes.  Smaller schools.  Small towns.  Smaller workplaces (ie home office nooks vs. corporate campuses), roads, stores, cell phones, laptops, ipod minis, cars, egos, etc.  Going from the industrial mass production age to the knowledge age, we’re finding we can do a whole lot more with a whole lot less.

In the coming weeks, I’ll take you back to the future through a tour of the kinds of places that represent this trend.  In the meantime, here’s a

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OK, so the images are a bit Martha Stewartish, but one of the key principles of The Not So Big House is to make the place your own.  As the author states, a well-designed personalized home can have more truly livable space than a home twice its size.

Just at its more interesting to walk into a restaurant with the ducts and pipes exposed under a tall ceiling compared to a low, flat, plaster hung ceiling with fluorescent lighting, a home that shows what makes it ‘tick’ is that much more

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Now here’s an example that takes full advantage of Not So Big living, courtesy of the Tag Front architecture firm.

Work at home?  Live at work?  Would you believe this loft is so space-efficient that it’s nestled right in the middle of the firm’s architecture office?  Brings new meaning to the words ‘commute’ and ‘late night at the office’.  It’s really most appealing if the architecture office is already in a cool neighborhood.

Kitchen or dining room?  Since we really only need one of these

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By the way, in reference to yesterday’s blog, here’s Sarah’s link to the not so big house as applied to communities.

While the examples in The Not So Big House (NSBH) are generally single-family homes in the countryside, the not so big design principles are ideal for CoolTowns:

Open floor plan  As in the rooms not being ‘compartmentalized’.  The kitchen blends into the dining area, blending into the living room.  At parties, people gravitate to the kitchen anyway - it’s the hearth of the

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A few years ago while running the National Town Builders Association (NTBA), I hosted a round table with Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House.  Her book was just starting to gain notoriety (it was #1 on Amazon at one point), and I felt she should meet members of the NTBA whose mission as a trade organization was (and still is) building entire communities of not so big homes.

A few months later, the sequel to her best-seller, Creating the Not So Big House, featured the very members

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