Here’s the other master plan proposal for the Upper Rock District.  While it has the same level of affordability and job creation opportunities, the entertainment experience has a few subtle differences:

This has a more traditional grid layout, maintaining the fabric of the adjacent King Farm community, so it’s a little more car-oriented.  The urban plaza (the CoolTown piazza) isn’t as well defined as in plan #1 - it only has buildings fronting two sides of it instead of three and one corner

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The newly planned Upper Rock District, covered in the blog this week, came with two alternative master plans.  Here’s the first one.

Affordability:The highlight, as described yesterday, is the entreprenerial marketplace, designed for ‘starving entrepreneurs’.  The urban plaza terminating one end of it provides a stage for free entertainment.  The majority of lofts comprising the project are open floor plan with little finishings to keep costs low.

Job Creation:  The entrepreneurial

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Here’s the result of the ‘entrepreneurial village’ charrette being covered since the beginning of this week (scroll down to blog entries below): The new Upper Rock District.

The highlight of the proposed project is a two-story entrepreneurial marketplace designed for the utmost in affordability (buildings on right side of leftmost image).  Simple in design with an open floor plan to save costs, and positioned as a cultural amenity by the developer to keep rents below market, this unique

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Stay tuned to see the results of the week-long charrette to design an entrepreneurial village.  It will be revealed at a formal presentation tonight, images posted here soon after.  You can also keep track on the charrette web site here.

In the meantime, this week’s poll asks if you’d live in an entrepreneurial village.

Click here to vote, add your own suggestions or view results. You need to register (just once!) to vote.

Image: That’s Nancy Regelin of the entrepreneur village development

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Welcome to the cool way to plan a town - the charrette - designing an entire community (complete with prospective engineering drawings and housing floor plans) in one intensive, collaborative week.

I happened by one of these today, but this is no ordinary charrette.  It was being designed by one of the world’s preeminent town planners, DPZ & Company, and ‘produced’ by a development team with no less than the following vision, in their own words…

“...a place must be created that captures the

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This is a common response by real estate developers today who see a place they like in one town, hoping to copy its success in another.  When the local market and culture are blended with the spirit of the original, it’s often a winner.  Otherwise, as is usually the case, it’s mainly transplanted and a failure.

Unfortunately, city leaders often think the same way, as Michael Young of Stepner Design Group has witnessed:

“I can attest to the problems of transplanting an idea from one city to

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Yes, as this blog has aluded to here and here, referring to the North End in Boston (popular with women) as an example.

Since financial attainability is fundamental to CoolTowns, they often have their earliest beginnings in the up and coming creative, artsy, edgy, entrepreneurial urban areas (what the upper class refers to as economically ‘distressed’ before they find themselves moving there in droves).  Thus, the following women’s group position is key to supporting the genesis of future

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We all have our favorite eating establishment, the place where we depend on as our second dining room… or for many of us, as our primary dining room. What’s yours? Or, if it doesn’t exist in your neighborhood, what would it be?

Click here to vote, add your own suggestions or view results. You need to register (just once!) to vote.  Results will be used by visionary institutional investors to design and build future CoolTowns.

See the blog below to read more about the slow food …

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If suburbia and sprawl are about fast food, then what are CoolTowns about?  Slow Food USA, part of a vastly growing international movement, put it best:

“People have responded to the growing movement, because they have become tired of buying the same things, eating the same foods and living the same lives. With these interests in mind, our mission is to create a robust, active movement that protects taste, culture and the environment as universal social values. Slow Food programs are

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People who know view her as a hero.  People who haven’t heard of her need only read her classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, to understand why.

The book helped government officials and residents alike understand for the first time why some places felt safe and vibrant, while others were neglected and abandoned.  The lessons still ring very true today, which explains why the book is still in print since 1961.

She recently to one of the

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