What to do with a desolate, unsafe, blighted industrial district of empty warehouses…

Business leaders in Tacoma knew exactly what to do - transform it into a university village.
Beginning in 1986 using their own private resources, they worked tirelessly to convince state and local officials and University of Washington administrators that this was the perfect site for a new university.
Eleven years later the University of Washington-Tacoma was established on the site.

The 46-acre campus

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If you’re looking for entertainment and a place to stay, then you may need to check into the San Jose Hotel the next time you’re in Austin, giving the Jupiter Hotel in Portland OR a run for its money.  Make sure you have an appreciation for music as well.  Some the amenities of this popular destination…

- Courtyard under the stars, probably the single-most memorable experience of a stay at the hotel
- Located near one of Austin’s active neighborhoods on South Congress Avenue
- Coffeehouse

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In keeping up with yesterday’s new urbanism green building theme, the greenest example of that is in Santa Monica.  In fact, the building is so green, that it’s LEED “platinum”-rated; the highest green building standard out there, and bestowed to just a handful of buildings, ever.

Designed by the acclaimed new urbanist firm, Moule & Polyzoides (who we recognized earlier for Del Mar Station), the Robert Redford Building (yes, that Robert Redford) is nestled in a walkable, urban, mixed-use

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Try searching for images that combine green building with new urbanism.  It’s not easy.  Both movements are lead by visionary developers with strong public interest, yet creating an energy-efficient walkable community has mostly proved a bit too sophisticated to date.

Thankfully, developers like Solar Village (profiled previously and The Lander Group are breaking new ground with just that - green buildings in new urbanist environments.  Some of the green building features in The Lander

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How can a city best create a strong identity for itself, provide that place one can count on for weekend entertainment, set the stage for public gatherings and pass the postcard test?

Project for Public Spaces (PPS) features an ideal solution: Beautiful central public squares, or for more progressive cities, a piazza.  If you’re looking to understand, design, or better yet, develop a square, there’s no better resource than their December newsletter on squares, which includes design

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Detroit is not only known for cars, but also for the mass exodus of people from its downtown, and it’s still bleeding.  However, a focus on creating a masterfully crafted public square in the very center of the City may start the healing.

With the help of a $25M grant raised by a civic organization formed to celebrate the city’s 300th anniversary in 2001, former Mayor Dennis Archer set a goal of creating the best public space in the world - City leaders, are you listening out there?  Out of a

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Small town leaders want to know… which small town can we use as a model?  While it doesn’t quite have the urban fabric of an Alexandria, VA, Boise, ID is running circles around most small towns as far as the level of increase in quality of life and economic performance.

A few months ago I noted Boise’s recognition by Forbes as the Best Place to Work, thanks to low business costs, access to talent, and a high quality of life.  Before that, Boise was listed on Fast Company Magazine’s Next Small

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Looks like home doesn’t it?  With a name like Mrs. Wilkes Dinining Room, in the hospitality of the South (Savannah), it’s no surprise.  It’s communal dining folks, where people join other people (yes, strangers) and start digging in as if they were a personal guest of Mrs. Wilkes herself. It’s a buffet right on your table, and every cool town could use one.

While first-timers may express apprehension about dining at a communal table with people they’ve never met, they often walk away enthused

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A University Business Magazine article on retail states that young people spent $169 billion in 2004 - which is why Universities are taking larger roles in the retail surrounding their campuses.  The article then says that creating that right retail mix to cater to this market is extremely difficult for current administrations to figure out.  Based on the number of suburban, chain-dependent models they subsequently list, I’d say they’re right.  It doesn’t look like they consulted the students

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Concluding this week’s review of The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy by CEOs for Cities, here’s their recommendations on how cities can better compete for talent:

1. Make people the focus of economic development - Cities, like Chicago, are realizing that quality of life is more important to job growth than tax incentives.

2. Become a city where women and ethnically diverse young people can achieve their goals - As each succeeding workforce generation embraces and benefits more

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Now here’s where the The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy report gets interesting…

The following stats from the report provide clearer evidence that the job-creating 25-34 year-old population is not only attracted to 24/7 cities like Austin, Seattle and San Francisco, but specifically to the urban centers of those cities:

Growth Rate of 25-34 Year-Old Population by Distance from Urban Center
1. Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton, WA CMSA - Inside 3 miles: 26.8%; Outside 3 miles:

2.

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Continuing this week’s review of The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy, and a listing of that report’s top cities for young talent:

Percent of Population Ages 25-34 in Metro Areas, 2000
1. Austin-San Marcos, TX MSA 18.2%
2. Atlanta, GA MSA 17.6%
3. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC MSA 17.5%
4. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX CMSA 16.8%
5. Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC—SC MSA 16.6%
Access to recreation year-round (warmer weather) is obviously a major factor. Colder cities need to

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Continuing yesterday’s review of, The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy, significant evidence abounds of a migration to city centers by young adults, but what’s the big deal?

Lots and lots of jobs. As this graph from the report clearly shows, entrepreneurship peaks (by a fairly noticeable amount!) in the 25-34 year-old range.  Entrepreneurs start companies and hire people.  It’s the young companies that grow fastest, while mature companies either stabilize or as we’ve often seen,

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A new report, The Young and the Restless In A Knowledge Economy by CEOs for Cities, looks at how job growth, young adults, and city centers are interrelated.  First the correlation between young adults and city centers:

The 1990s: In this decade, city downtowns start to become cool for young adults to move to - three times cooler.  In 1990, 25-34 year-olds were about 10% ‘more likely than other residents in the metropolitan area to live within 3 miles of the region’s center’.  By 2000, they

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In the short term, the people of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast may have less of a town to return to. But in the long term, they may very well be living in heathier, livelier, more economically stable communities than if disaster never hit.

Thanks to a $1M Knight Foundation grant and $1M gift from philanthropist Jim Barksdale (formerly of Netscape), 120 new urbanists led charrettes in eleven cities over six days in mid-October, assisted by my good friend and renowned town planner, Andres Duany. 

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The Northwest is already considered the Silicon Valley of green building, and industry experts say 100% of all new Class A office buildings will be green building certified (LEED) within ten years.

So, unless you want your city or development firm to be branded as ‘uncool’, it’s time to realize the short and long term benefits of green building now to gain a competitive edge.  Why?  Because green building is on the priority list of trend-setters - the people who create jobs, breathe life into

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Is there such a thing as development that’s good for the environment?  It’s all relative, and if there’s any authority on the matter, the Sierra Club is as good as it gets. Thus, it’s worth taking a close look at their recently pubished Building Better: A Guide to America’s Best New Development Projects.

Leaving out the projects that are a bit too suburban for what this site’s about, here are their favorite developments that benefit the environment by ‘recycling’ urban land and buildings in a

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What good is a college town if the students leave right after graduating?  Quality of life and affordability are major factors.  Jobs is another, and here’s how the University of Georgia (UGA) is establishing an entrepreneurial template for that.

The Athens New Media Synergy Center provides office space and business opportunities to accelerate digital media, wireless and software development companies. It is funded by The UGA Research Foundation as part of the university’s commitment to

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This one’s going residential.  The demand for downtown housing is a lot stronger in many downtowns than the softened office market, mainly because the supply of office buildings dwarfs the number of residential ones.

Office space is more profitable, but… - Yes, building owners make more money off of corporate office tenants than residential ones, but just as rich residential tenants are more profitable than middle-class ones, there are only so much of them to go around.  Downtowns are

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Would you believe there are now so many pedestrians in parts of Manhattan that they have to walk in car lanes?

From a NY Times article:  “In the core of Times Square, there is no doubt about the need to create more space for pedestrians,“ he said. “In one October afternoon a couple of years ago, between 3 and 7 p.m. we counted 4000 people walking literally in the street, in traffic lanes, because the sidewalks were too crowded. It is clearly a safety issue as well as a quality-of-life issue.“

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How do you best understand your customer?  We looked at ethnography (being Jane Goodall) a while back - and it’s time to immerse it in the internet generation.

From our friends at Trendwatching comes Virtual Anthropology - As consumers around the world pro-actively post, stream if not lead parts of their lives online, you (or your trend team) can now vicariously ‘live’ amongst them, at home, at work, out on the streets. From reading minute-by-minute online diaries or watching live webcam

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