It’s true.  There are over a hundred retail venues in downtown Athens, but no fast food chains.  No Gap or Banana Republic.  No TGIF or Ruby Tuesday’s or Baskin Robbins.  The Subway that was here was torn down.  The building owner who leased to the Gap didn’t renew their agreement.

What’s going on?  The most common answer among Athenians was “sense of community”.  It’d be more accurate to say, “extremely strong sense of community“.  But how does this translate quantitatively to no

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The secret to Athens’ vibe?

The people.  Period.  The built environment, music, sense of community and progressiveness are the results.

While in Athens we were extremely fortunate to meet with some of Athens’ creative implementors, the ones a truly cool town can’t do without.  They included:
- Mayor Heidi Davison, as progressive, open-minded and down-to-earth as a mayor can be;
- Art Jackson, Director Athens Downtown Development Authority, helped us understand what makes the downtown

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So of course, tonight we asked the University of Georgia students, especially the ones closest in association to the creative class...

The downtown is centralized, it has a sense of place, it’s different, it’s walkable, it has arty music scenes, a great country scene, bikes everywhere, it has a dense feel, it has people everywhere, the aesthetics are beautiful, it has diversity, a transient population, there’s a wide variety of live music throughout, it’s a liberal island, the streets and

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The biggest criticism to the idea of revitalizing and building neighborhoods and town centers is that they end up looking too new and sterile.  Authenticity comes with an organic nature to development.  Which is why the venue developer is as crucial to an area’s success as a building developer or community developer.  In fact, if the venue developer is good enough, the latter two become followers - and that may be the case in Madison, Wisconsin.

Local entrepreneur brothers Chris and Finn

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Just like in Cambridge, Madison’s creative class has left the national chain-infiltrating main town center in search of more affordable housing and unique independent merchants in more creative, entrepreneurial neighborhoods.

Those Madison neighborhoods would be Willy Street, about a mile away, and Atwood, another mile down the road.  While they have less than a tenth of State Street’s retail, they are no chains and the sense of community is extremely high.  Co-ops seemed to be the norm, from

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Every town needs third places away from home and the workplace.  These are usually coffeehouses, pubs or a bookstore cafe.  While the best third places in the world are outdoor rooms, like Italy’s piazzas, the best in the U.S. often comes in paseos (streets closed down to cars) and waterfronts.  Madison has both.

Madison’s State Street ‘paseo’ was covered in Tuesday’s blog.  Madison’s University of Wisconsin has a waterfront terrace that has probably hosted some of the most inspired

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Madison’s leaders help set the standard

In continuing yesterday’s experience with Madison’s fervent belief that the car takes a back seat…

It should be no surprise that Madison’s leadership is there.  This morning I saw Mayor David Cieslewicz advocating on behalf of Madison’s 2nd Annual Car Free Day, in connection with World Car Free Day.

He mentioned he was able to avoid using his car all but twice during the first two weeks of the challenge.  He also encouraged Madison to step up its

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Madison, Wisconsin regularly tops the Best Places to Live list, and even Forbes’s Best Places For Business.

However, the one thing that’s most apparent when experiencing Madison is that fact that pedestrians, or people rather, take priority over anything else.  For instance:

- The main street, State Street, is only 24 feet wide, and closed to only buses, delivery trucks and taxis.  What you see at night however, is people jogging, walking and bicycling, since the buses are few and far

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Davis Square: Creative, healthy, and fun

While Harvard and MIT each have excellent town centers nearby, the neighboring students at Tufts University enjoy probably the best combination of atmosphere, entertainment and true affordability at Davis Square in Somerville, among our vists to the top four Greater Cambridge squares.

It had the most habitable square of any of the Cambride squares, where people could study, read, meet for lunch or play a game of cards.  It’s Somerville Theater is the

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Inman Square: Isolated, but homey, simple

Inman Square is for the ‘quiet creatives’, those who want a slower pace, but still be able to meet interesting people in innovative third places.  That’s significantly achieved by its location away (but not too far away) from any university or subway stop.

Inman is similar in description to Central Square as far as venues and urban design (it is for the most part a four to five block main street).  Intimate best describes Inman - the restaurants are

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The live music hangout in Cambridge, MA is in Central Square, the place to be for MIT students.  It also has one of the most popular coffee houses (1369 Coffee House), co-op markets and Economy Hardware - where Target meets Ikea meets Home Depot in a small package on your neighborhood main street.

Unfortunately, the main street here is long and continuous, 50’ wide vs. the 36’ wide streets in Harvard Square, meaning the place feels more like pedestrians are secondary to a five-lane street

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Harvard Square: Great place-making, but the creatives are long-gone

Harvard Square is a visual wonder - the streets are alive with students, outdoor seating abounds, the curving streets are picturesque, terminated streets give a feeling of being in grand outdoor rooms, and the buildings are either turn-of-the-century or built with quality brick and stone.  As you can see in the plan, many of the streets are short, organic and end with buildings.  This goes a long, long way in giving the area

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First stop on our five-city tour?

A local pub of course.  In order to know where to go, my associate and I had to ask the locals: Ben and his friend, Deborah, and Jason, followed later by George, Kara and Russ.  Although our heads were swimming with newfound facts and insights, we were able to identify four must-see places:

Harvard Square:  Although this was on our list and the most active, architecturally-rich place in Cambridge, we didn’t realize it had turned into a ‘giant shopping

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This is my neighborhood and this is its day - Adams Morgan Day.

Held since 1978 and organized by the Adams Morgan Main Street Group, this annual event attracts over 20,000 people to one of the only closed-street festivals in Washington DC.

In an effort to improve its business purpose of promoting the neighborhood main street, fewer outside vendors were allowed and 85% of all the local restaurants and stores were open (which isn’t normal for many owners on a Sunday afternoon).

The highlights

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The people in the image are the employees of a company in the UK’s Cambridge, just north of London.  Seems to be no rush to get home…

The current workforce generation is fed up with the 12-hour work day - essentially leaving for work at 7 am and getting home at 7 pm because of traffic.  Smart companies like Patagonia are quickly realizing this and locating offices in the downtown where convenient access to mass transit can literally shorten the work day, while immersed in an entertainment and

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First two CoolTown tour stops: Cambridge MA and Madison WI

Next week CoolTown Studios tour will be documenting Cambridge, MA, and how it became the 23rd largest economy in the world, followed by Madison, Wisconsin, the most creative medium-sized town on the creativity index.

The prelimary word on Cambridge is that it is now suffering from its own success, as the immense popularity of the places has caused skyrocketing rents, rents that only retired executives and national chains can

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That’s the magic number according to Dr. James Hill, keynote speaker at the Obesity and the Built Environment conference, organized by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

He recommends taking an extra 2000 steps a day (measured with a simple $10 pedometer) as a necessary goal in maintaining one’s health.  Unfortunately, most of our communities are auto-oriented rather than pedestrian-oriented, which is known to explain

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The 5-town CoolTown tour

Over the next five weeks, CoolTown Studios will be visiting five of the coolest towns in the North and Midwest in order to help shape the vision of future towns in the same area.  Which ones should they be?

Cambridge, Massachusetts - The 23rd largest economy in the world and host to Harvard and MIT, this direct neighbor to Boston has long been a mecca of nightlife, culture and entrepreneurship.

Athens, Georgia - The near legendary destination often described as the

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Recreation in the city

One of the drawbacks to living in the city is the lack of access to outdoor recreation.  However, with a bit of creativity and ingenuity, some of that outdoor recreation can be had downtown.

Rock climbing companies like this one that set up the rock climbing wall built right into a building wall are adding yet another avenue for fitness and fun for urban dwellers, who are already among the most fit.

There are many of us that are tired of the same ol’ Friday night

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Bringing the campfire indoors

Many of us know campfires as the warm glow around which we share memorable stories with our friends, and s’mores as the ideal way to cap the night from a dining point of view.

Fortunately for urban dwellers, there are some coffee shops that provide some of that charm with an indoor ‘campfire’ complete with all the fixin’s you need for s’mores.

I joined a couple of friends for such an experience tonight, and I must say, through no coincidence, the conversation

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What’s with all those dollar bills on the walls?

The great thing about independent business owners is that you’re often in for a one-of-a-kind experience.  Take Lulu’s for instance, THE hangout for the late-night crowd in Kailua, Kona on the Big Island in Hawaii, my home island:

You can order anything from a hamburger with ‘kalua pig’ (the kind you find at a luau) to a mahi mahi burrito.  The spectacular view overlooks the ocean.  There’s no shortage of paper towels (notice what’s in the

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