Talk to any urban real estate developer and you’ll quickly discover their goal is to sell their units at the highest price possible for whatever property or site they’re developing, which is why you often see the adjective ‘luxury’ attached. Fortunately, the urban luxury housing market is nearing saturation at the same time a young generation of developers are emerging that empathize with their peers who can’t afford what boomers can, yet still want quality construction. I guess you can call

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This is how to do it.  Think of the micro compact home (pictured), mc-h for short, as the Smart car of homes.  For more practical living, check out the MINI Cooper of homes.

As you can see by this graphic, household size is dropping dramatically, and with that comes a migration back to city centers from suburbia where people no longer need all that space (and isolation). As the hyper-popularity of places like London, Paris and Manhattan make it near impossible to find affordable places to

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Real is in. Fake is out. We profiled the rise of authenticity over a year ago, and how it applies to towns. Now Fast Company magazine helps answer the question of what it takes to be authentic with the following four primary elements of being real:

A sense of place - You either leverage your brand through replication (ie Starbucks) or the community (local popular coffeehouse). Only the latter is considered genuine by the locals.

A strong point of view - You’d be hard pressed to find a

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People know a home with a large tree in front of it sells for more (nearly 1% more according to a 1988 study in Athens, GA), but what are the collective trees in a city worth and what’s their return on investment?

New York City knows, according to this NY Times article. Their trees provide an annual benefit of about $122 million, receiving a return on investment of $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on trees.

Dollar values are assigned based on:
- How much carbon the trees absorb that

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A lot of businesses like to call themselves triple bottom line (economic, environmental and social accounting), but one third place that’s 3BL without question is the White Dog Cafe in downtown Philadelphia.

The evidence starts with its extraordinary owner, Judy Wicks, who not only founded White Dog, but she is also the co-founder of the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and founder of the local Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia (SBN). You can

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How does one combine history with contemporary culture while revitalizing a financially neglected commercial district?  Check out Washington DC’s Rock & Roll Hotel in the up and coming H Street Corridor.

The live music nightclub’s website best frames its historical context: “Places like The Savoy in London and the Inter-Continental Hotel in Paris have established themselves throughout their history as bedrocks of prestige and luxury service. The Chelsea in New York City, originally built in

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We know more than enough stories of creatives being priced out of the neighborhoods they helped revitalize, but what about examples of how they’re being protected?

Bookmark this page, and I’ll keep it updated with city programs to support creatives. The list to date:

City-led programs:

-  Portland, OR amended its housing regulations to enable artists to live, work and sell under one roof.

- Toledo, OH put in place tax-abatement incentives for developers who lease space to artists and

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Car sharing has become standard equipment in many cities, but what about those of us who want something even quicker, less expensive, more convenient and healthier? Well then, there’s Cyclocity.

First of all, the caveat is that you have to live in Lyon (France’s third-largest city) or Paris (coming this summer), but this is just a sign of things to come. Perhaps it’s easiest to compare how it is, and isn’t similar to car sharing:

How it’s like car sharing:
- There are permanent parking

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Why is there such a frenzy to score a Trader Joe’s in one’s neighborhood? To sum it up with a quote sourced amid the hysteria of NYC’s first Trader Joe’s ever last year (pictured above), “It’s kind of like the Grateful Dead of supermarkets.“

Yes, it’s a chain, but for the neighborhood that isn’t able to organize its own co-op supermarket, finds Whole Foods too pricey for normal shopping, detests the suburban chains, and can’t get everything it wants from the smaller neighborhood groceries,

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Where do you put your city’s most innovative companies?

Well, in Greenville, SC, the answer is easy. They’d obviously go into the Innovate Building.

What makes it worthy of the name, and more importantly, the companies?

The loft-like building is located downtown in a former textile mill built in 1908 with hand-molded brick, exposed timbers, and stunning solid maple flooring, yet it features state-of-the-art audio and visual communications systems; open, flexible floor plans; and daylighting

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