If you were looking to travel the world to discover and learn from the coolest places, venues and daily cultural events, Travel + Leisure’s compilation of the World’s Best Cities is a good place to start.  See the rankings below, and you can check out the overall top 10, each city’s score, and full profiles here.  Please add your comments below, especially on the happening hot spots in each city.

Asia:
1. Bangkok, Thailand (pictured) - The cool/hip/chic capital of Asia?
2. Chiang Mai,

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Why is it so important to know what a paseo is?  One key reason is that it’s tough creating a kind of place if people don’t even know what to call it… you know, those streets with no cars that only pedestrians are strolling along, lined with casual diners at outdoor cafes, bustling waiters, and an ever-changing diversity of sights, scents and sounds.  That’s what a paseo is.

At dictionary.com, a paseo is defined as:
1. a slow, idle, or leisurely walk or stroll.
2. a public place or path

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...IF they continue to support more developments like Poinsettia Commons, a $55 million mixed-use, transit-oriented urban-style community that was unanimously approved by the Carlsbad City Council.  For a perspective of Carlsbad’s current creative class status, check out the comments to this entry.

Located right next to a train station leading directly to downtown San Diego, this innovative vision by forward-thinking developer Urban West Strategies is a model for mixed-use development and

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Big is out.  Small with style is in, and understandably so given the increase in home prices.  Then again, prices have increased the last few decades because homes are now more than three times the size per occupant.  Seems like practicality ultimately comes through in the end.

From a Reuters article, here are some telling quotes by housing experts and home buyers:

“Ten years back, most people wanted more space - now they want more features.“ Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of research at

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While not exactly fitting in height-wise with the surrounding buildings, developer Scott Kimball’s The Aspen, a $20 million proposed urban mixed-use development in Boise, Idaho has a number of significant innovative, progressive features, including:

- The building site is only 32 feet deep.  Shows how much you can build in the tightest spaces.
- Home buyers have the ability to purchase 600 s.f. modules ($180,000) to build 600 to 2400 s.f. (or more) lofts, in the building locations they choose

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That’s the question answered by the Urban Land Institute, and the answer is that at least for the newly built town-center-style shopping centers, they’re trying.

All five examples provided in the report are unaffordable for most as far as residences and offices are concerned, and largely consisting of chains, but what’s noteworthy is that the developers are providing public spaces for everyone that have the potential for being third places.

In addition to thousands of square feet of window

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Most of the 22,000 residents of Hudson, OH (30 minutes from Cleveland) were no longer shopping downtown, but going elsewhere - a familiar story.  Not so common however, is the level of vision and investment to reverse that trend.

The City and Hudson Village Development; a development company formed by Tom Murdough, a 31-year old entrepreneur who wanted better for his town, formed a public-private partnership to expand its historic 200-year-old downtown and village green.  They sought

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How does the planning of neighborhoods and cities affect your health?  Thanks to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), that’s answered in the first report that comprehensively summarizes the impact of the built environment on public health, and how changes can be implemented.

The study, the LEED-ND Report on Public Health & the Built Environment, measure five areas of health:

- Respiratory and

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Of the accepted applicants to the University of Connecticut each year, about two-thirds decide to go elsewhere. The #1 reason, based on annual surveys?  Lack of a college town.

So, the Town of Mansfield CT, the University, and a visionary real estate developer, Leyland Alliance, partnered to establish the Mansfield Downtown Partnership to build… a college town center.  And a pretty cool one at that.

Next year, the $165 million Storrs Center will commence, with 200,000 s.f. of retail and

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The last two entries covered crowdsourcing 101.  Are you ready for crowdsourcing 201?  This is for when you’re ready to invest $ collectively as a future community of tenants to develop a common product, such as that affordable, green-built, downtown loft building with roof deck and indie ground-floor coffeehouse and restaurant - or even better, a whole block of them (pictured).

The term used to describe this team development methodology is angelic crowdsourcing* (combining angel investing

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