The beta community is well underway in Louisville, KY, allowing future tenants to co-design and co-develop a key downtown block.

However, sometimes it’s easier to explain this customer-led, co-design, crowdsourcing at a much smaller scale, which is what CrowdSpirit does for us.  The basic concept is straightforward, as defined in their image above (excluding the urban village elevation, developed by Urban+West+Strategies). The goal is to co-design and manufacture any electronic product under

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Need some inspiration for inner city job growth?  Want to know what the fastest growing inner city businesses are? Inc Magazine and Initiative for a Competitive Inner City provide an annual Inner City 100 list to answer just that. Inner cities here are defined as economically-challenged core urban areas excluding central business districts, and the candidates must be independent businesses.

The top ten, which seem to serve more than just the financial bottom line:

1. Commodity Sourcing

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Why are cities so focused on attracting and retaining 25-34 year olds?  According to the NY Times article, Cities Compete in Hipness Battle to Attract Young, “by 2012, the work force will be losing more than two workers for every one it gains.  Cities that do not attract them now will be hurting in a decade.“

The cities with the greatest % of young adults seem to be doing quite well, while the cities with the largest gains from 1990-2000 are (% gain, followed by 2000 overall % of total

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True piazzas (pedestrian-oriented plazas completely enclosed by buildings, ringed by restaurants and shops and offices and housing above) are everywhere in Europe, but nowhere to be found in the U.S.

Rockville in Maryland is doing their part with its upcoming Rockville Town Square, a new $360 million, 15-acre town center for their rather suburban town just north of Washington DC.  It’s not a true piazza in that there are auto-oriented streets on two sides, but if you take a look at the map,

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The Conflict. Take one look at GlobeSt, the portal for real estate news and see for yourself. A vast majority of real estate investment dollars are held in institutional funds (trillions, via banks, insurance funds, retirement funds) and not surprisingly, they don’t invest in projects less than $10 million, preferraby much higher. What’s worse is that in the past they’ve advocated against human-scale development in order to ensure there’s enough large-scale developments (ie office parks,

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Hard to believe, but according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and its evaluation arm, Conservation Services Group (CSG), 53 Standish Street in Cambridge, MA is the first multi-unit residential building to be LEED-certified, which is the criteria for green development.

Constructed by AEDI Development, 53 Standish scores high with the following green building features:

- Within walking distance of public transportation and shops.
- Designated as an Energy Star-labeled home by CSG

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The map above, from a Choices Magazine article, displays U.S. counties’ competitive share for college-educated population as a percent of total population over age 25 from 1970 to 2000 - in other words, brain gain vs. brain drain.

The accompanying study concluded, not surprisingly, that major metropolitan areas enjoyed a relatively large brain gain in every region while the nonmetropolitan, nonadjacent counties suffered brain drain. New England is an exception, with rural areas gaining

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Why is it that one look at the image above tells you this is not in the U.S.? The bigger question is, why not? How about a place like this in your own town, with your own local, independent cafes and shops below, entrepreneurial offices above, and lofts above that? Or perhaps a section where the whole street is full of outdoor dining? Wi-fi everywhere. Nightly happy hours and live music, weekly poetry readings and plays, monthly international socials and cultural events, a genuine sense of

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Did you know Paris, unlike New York, London and Tokyo, is not a 24/7 city? Most restaurants close on Sunday and do not serve after 10:30 pm in the evening; supermarkets close at 9 pm; long working hours are unheard of; the subway closes between 1 am and 5 am…

Does that make a difference? Tremendously, according to Christian Sautter, the deputy mayor in charge of economic development and finance, “When we came into office in 2001, we had a city proud of its history, its beauty, its tourism,

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Media economy - “an economy based on media, mass communication and services over mass-produced goods, no longer based on large, centralized companies. Instead, it flourishes amid a decentralized network of small businesses and entrepreneurs and the creative, urban places that support them.“

What better way to illustrate and understand how cities can compete in the information age than to co-publish a report with someone from the millennium generation, its emerging target market. CoolTown

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