Each year the Congress for the New Urbanism announces its Charter Awards that best represent New Urbanism. Here are some of the winners for 2007.

The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town:

Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan - Waterfront revitalization. Check out its humanistic-proportioned buildings reminiscent of Amsterdam - those are going to be in immense demand.

Neighborhood, District, and Corridor:

Innovista Master Plan, Columbia, South Carolina - A true live/work/learn community

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Last night, 14 people - Lisa, Angela, Christian, Mike, Sarah, Joey, Justin, Ayari, Raj, Ritu, Heather, Robert, myself and business owner/VIBE Linda - met over pizza, beer and wine to discuss, as a beta community, what Washington DC’s next cafe/bar/coffeehouse should be. It was the first ever VIBE beta community, as well as DC’s first beta community. Two hours later we had laid out the foundation for what very well may be the coolest, most innovative venue in Washington DC.

You’d actually have

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No, this isn’t a good example of housing that ‘normal people’ can afford, but it is a touchstone model for transforming a neglected warehouse into an inspired destination. It goes well with the stylish coffeehouse presented yesterday, and sets a good benchmark for what humanistic 21st Century design could be.

Formerly a UPS factory built in 1936 (see image to the left), the building was renovated into what is now a fresh, contemporary, new residential community, known as the Flower Street

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In contrast to the grungy, bohemian, shabby chic warehouse coffeehouse/bar/restaurant/art gallery warehouse profiled yesterday, I thought I’d present a modest, contemporary, yet progressive coffee stop known as Vic’s in Boulder, Colorado (not hip enough to have a website apparently). It’s one of the few good examples of modern architecture presented at a humanistic scale, but thankfully we’re seeing more of this.

Live music, poetry, free wireless, and legendary coffee, it’s no coincidence

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“It’s not home, it’s not work. It’s that other place. It’s your space.”�

That’s the theme at Retreat in DUMBO, Brooklyn NY, and it’s not an exaggeration…

5000 square feet. Free wifi lounge. Coffee bar (Coffee Box). Art gallery. Restaurant and Bar (reBar). Community tasting market (mid ‘07). Those are distinct places with their own unique names, not one venue calling itself an art gallery coffehouse restaurant because it serves coffee and has art on the walls. Not only that, reBar just won

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Continuing yesterday’s entry on the Cool Spaces Report, what are the people behind the relocating companies saying they prioritize?

The single most important relocation factors in the report are:
1. Specific location: 40%
2. Price: 19%
3. Proximity to homes upper management/workforce: 15%

As they say in real estate, location, location, location. The specific location is typically associated with a cool neighborhood to begin with, and the upper management/workforce will be leaning the same

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You ought to look at the newly published Cool Deals Report: Capturing the New Market in Urban Commercial Real Estate, “to learn what the most innovative companies want in an office and how urban and walkable communities provide it.“

If you’re in Pittsburgh, you should call the publisher of the report, Cool Space Locator, a nonprofit commercial real estate service that seeks out cool space for small and growing businesses, with cool space defined as “commercial real estate in walkable urban

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The question for creative businesses is not if a cool place becomes popular and gentrified, but what to do when it is.

One answer is to join an artists cooperative and work with a group like Artspace that provides such attainable housing.

Another is to establish your own cooperative of sorts via a beta community, where you decide with a group what kinds of residential and commercial tenants to have, along the same lines as artist cooperatives do.

The best individual answer for your business

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We all know people are organizing online to get what they want. However, because people are now doing it with such ease, speed and unprecedented influence, our friends at Trendwatching felt it deserved a unique distinction:

Crowd Clout: “Online co-buying consumers revealing their purchasing intentions to make the most of their investments. These efforts target a specific cause, be it political, civic or commercial, aimed at everything from bringing down politicians to forcing suppliers to

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You’ve just seen the study that documents the connection between rising home values and the bohemian index, so what are some examples of such neighborhoods?

BusinessWeek provides a pretty good list (with the help of Zillow) in their recently published, America’s Next Hot Neighborhoods.

Their city neighborhoods with the fastest rising home values yet still affordable are:

Boston: Dorchester, Mount Bowdoin, Grove Hall
Chicago: East Garfield Park, Cicero, Lower West Side
Denver: Civic Center,

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You’ve all heard the qualitative stories about how artists and creatives move into a neighborhood and the property values start rising (then unfortunately, get priced out). However, we finally have quantitative evidence, as you can see by the chart above.

The hard proof comes as a result of a study released just this month by no other than Richard Florida, along with Charlotta Mellander, called There Goes the Neighborhood: How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Regional Housing Values

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Tired of the office park, your home office or the downtown corporate office building? What kind of workplaces would you find in a cool town? One would think the author of a book called Happy Hour is 9 to 5 would have some answers, and Alexander Kjerulf does in 10 Seeeeriously Cool Workplaces.

His top 10 list with pictures and descriptions, in no particular order (though location-wise, they may not necessarily be in a cool neighborhood:

1. Pixar (pictured)- You can’t get more creative than

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When you live in a cool town, this is how you have your business meetings.

Hey, it’s not called the Conference Bike for nothing.

It’s probably the only way to have a meeting, exercise, and get outdoors at the same time. 7 people share the pedaling, while one steers.  It’s got some heavy-duty specs, including Porsche rack-and-pinion steering and automotive disc brakes, so the rental rates aren’t cheap (up to $20/person/hour), but as far as providing a one-of-a-kind kinetic meeting experience,

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On one hand, there are thousands of architectural innovations that could be shared, but are used once and lost forever.  On the other hand, there are only so many ways to design a building and there’s a lot of reinventing of the wheel.  Both of these inefficiencies and missed opportunities have existed for decades.

As of March 8, 2007 those problems began to diminish, as architectural design has finally gone open source, and with a triple-bottom-line (3BL) to boot.

Armed with a $100,000

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By far, the most effective way to inspire city and business leaders to invest in cool places is to have them visit such places in person. Unfortunately, this is where the ‘rich get richer’ rule applies, as oftentimes the cities that would benefit the most often don’t have the budget to do so.

Google is doing their part via their latest innovation, starting with the ability to fly through Berlin in 3D, via their free application, Google Earth. Not only that, they’re preparing to allow you to

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The most economically, culturally competitive cities will be the first to transition from an industrial-economy auto-oriented infrastructure to an information-economy digital one. Who’s in the lead? According to Daily Wireless’ 10 Most Connected Cities in the World:

1. Seoul, South Korea (pictured) -  The second most populated metro area in the world (22 million) plus a reputation as the world leader in modern technology helps make Seoul the undisputed leader.  With 10mbps broadband (four

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Words used to describe Condesa, a turn-of-the-century neighborhood in Mexico City: urban, eclectic, diverse, bohemian, chic, indie, cafe culture…

Types of people who characterize Condesa: Movie directors, novelists, soap opera writers, musicians, painters, architects, academics…

Venues you’ll find: Outdoor cafes, art galleries, exhibits, hotels w/ ipod-furnished rooms, the largest bookstore in Latin America, innovative restaurants and bars with avant-garde architecture…

Architectural styles

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If there’s one thing that separates ‘cool town’ developer vs a conventional one, it’s the ability to see an exciting destination where others see an eyesore.  How does one acquire this ability?  Here are a couple of tips…

1. Look at buildings constructed before 1930, the last era of pedestrian-oriented development before the auto-oriented suburbia was invented. Anything built after that was increasingly affected by the mass production/industrial age’s facscination with machines, and the

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We’ve gone through a series of very practical, tangible descriptions, profiles and case studies of the creatives, open source communities, and placemaking, but what’s missing perhaps is a more philosophic, abstract description of what kinds of communities this all represents.

For that I present the definition of open creative communities by Mark Kuznicki, a researcher, writer and strategy consultant in the areas of creative industries, economic development, innovation and cultural policy. 

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Each year 100,000 people attend the annual International Builders Show to get a headstart on homebuying trends. So what did they walk away with this year?

For the first time ever, it’s quality over quantity as U.S. homes have finally hit their peak size. ‘Not so big’ is in, though that’s been already covered here.

More homes are going green as costs go down and environmental awareness goes up, but for our readers, that’s nothing new either. By 2015, we should have house-wide lights and AC

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Part of Starbuck’s loyal following consists of entrepreneurs seeking creative places to work outside of the home, where the coffeehouse with wi-fi makes a pretty good alternative. After all, the CEO of Starbucks will tell you, “We’re not a coffee company, we’re a real estate company.“

At last there’s something better.  It’s called coworking, “the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are are interested in the synergy that can

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This is a great example of what the creative class is looking for - the strange thing is that this building, the Fifth Avenue Court Apartments in Portland, OR, is hardly getting any recognition at all (until perhaps now.)  It’s not even profiled on the architects’ website!  It just goes to show the disconnect between what people really want and what gets marketed, but we all know that’s going to change soon.

Here’s what makes Fifth Avenue Court so appealing to creatives:

- It replaces a

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