Why is that Seattle’s grungy Pike Place Market is celebrating its 100 year anniversary as the longest running public market in the U.S., while the beautiful new Portland Public Market couldn’t stay open for ten years even as public markets are flourishing?
Simple. Pike Place had a public partner in the city and is run as a nonprofit, while the Portland Public Market was completely private sector. Pike Place Market was founded by the city in 1907 after citizens who were tired of being taken
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In the heyday of cities, indoor public markets were as popular in U.S. cities as they are in most other cities around the world. After a few decades of the suburban experiment, they’re making a return along with emerging populations of downtown residents. Perhaps a little too soon on the scene of this next generation fresh economy renaissance is the Portland Public Market in Maine. It broke ground in 1997, but wasn’t been able to remain open despite award-winning accolades on its design. In
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Cool towns are all about local indie businesses, and that’s why it’s important to listen to author Katya Andresen’s message in her book, Robin Hood Marketing: Stealing Corporate Savvy To Sell Just Causes. You may not want to live among a herd of national chains, but it’s wise to learn from them since they spend so much on market research and innovation.
One such business is Nau. Speaking of robin hood marketing, more than half of Nau comes from Patagonia, a long-time triple bottom line
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First of all, what is the triple bottom line (3BL)? It’s a business, organization or community that accounts for financial as well as social and environmental bottom lines - people, planet, profit. To answer the next question, how does a company know if it’s indeed triple bottom line, check out the B Corporation (Benefit Corporation), which has a rating system.
Now, what does this have to do with cool places? Let’s look at each of the bottom lines:
Economic/profit: If it doesn’t make money,
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“Have you explored how beta communities would incorporate affordable housing and/or economic integration aspects, or is that not at all a focus?“
The CoolTown beta community program starts with identifying the most progressive, creative, entrepreneurial, triple bottom line individuals in the neighborhood. That typically means housing that is affordable is extremely important to their well being since their jobs aren’t focused on maximizing their income, or are just starting to grow their
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A major reason why developers find strip malls and office parks so enticing is that the tenants are predetermined, and thus are easier to finance because investors see the same predictability, which leads us to why 95% of development churns this out instead of the ‘good stuff’. Subdivisions and apartment towers are not far off, being marketed to as a mass audience who think and act the same.
So, in the same vein as what made YouTube, Wikipedia and American Idol drive millions to a passionate
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We’re all familiar with the public market as either a large regional market, or a small neighborhood famer’s market. The public market originated in Europe, and here’s a reader’s account of how they still provide an ideal model for markets elsewhere.
“Pictures of San Gimignano, Italy (all images) show how the market comes to the people vs. people needing to drive to the market. These markets sold everything from produce to panty hose. Although San G is kind of a tourist town, these trucks
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The more our everyday products and experiences, restaurants and stores, are offered globally (ie Starbucks, Subway, The Gap) the less many of us get a sense of place or feel authentically connected to our own neighborhood. What can those who are fed up with in increasingly faceless, commoditized culture do about it?
Continuing our review this week of the local-first (Still) Made Here trend, here are some business ideas that community-seeking consumers are supporting as alternatives:
- Pop to
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Are you on the ‘in’ or ‘out’ list? Are you with the times, or behind them? Are you considered socially conscious, or perceived as ignorant? Our status affects us more than we think. Many readers of this website who are at the forefront of improving their community are known as progressive thinkers, and they’d rather not be known as ‘old economy’. So let’s refer to that as their progressive status, which is often associated with the truly unique and the authentic, which is then associated with
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How valued is the word local in the modern economy? A lot.
Last week’s entries on the importance of local investment is covered extensively on Trendwatching.com this month. The report, (Still) Made Here, documents “the comeback of all things local, all things with a sense of place, and how they’re surfacing in a world dominated by globalization… where a growing number of consumers are seeking out the local, and thereby the authentic, the storied, the eco-friendly and the
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Balancing a sense of community vs. financial wealth isn’t a known inversely proportional correlation, but probably more so than you think.
Based on the recently published book, Deep Economy by Bill McKibben, here are some interesting perspectives:
- From a study measuring happiness, increases in incomes produce large hedonic gains in developing countries, small variable gains in Europe, and negative gains in the U.S., while companionship “yields more happiness in individualistic societies
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No, coffee culture did not originate from that corporate chain based in Seattle, but its history is indeed rooted in the ‘kaffeehaus’ of Austria, where it’s been a fixture of Vienna’s everyday life since the 17th century.
Like today’s coffeehouses in the U.S., Viennese coffee houses are meeting places not only for fresh brews, but also intellectuals, politicians, businesspeople. They’re famous for their laid-back atmosphere and the now familiar reputation as a third place.
“Let’s have a
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What do investors think of TODs? (Transit-oriented development) The Wall Street Journal is reporting that “in many cities, the hottest development is taking place along the train lines” and “mass-transit lines are the new frontier in urban development.“ You’d better check out the article, The Little Engine That Could before it gets archived.
The evidence?
- There are 100 TODs in the U.S., with 100 more in the pipeline.*
- By 2030 the number of households near transit stations will rise to 16
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Downtown Migration |
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A common question is how does one build a sense of community? Here’s a CoolTown take on that, based on the article, The Top Ten Ways to Kill a Community, from the infinitely resourceful work-life blog, Lifehack.org.
Local investment
- Support economic gardening where cities invest economic development dollars in growing their own companies vs stealing them from other cities.
- Invest in local lenders that care and know how to assist in the development of local businesses vs attracting only
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A year and a half ago we profiled Pasadena’s Central District Specific Plan as a model for visionary urban planning. A year or so later the city welcomes Westgate Pasadena, some of the fruits from that labor, in the form of a 12-acre urban village emerging from currently abandoned brownfield industrial buildings and parking lots.
Located right at a transit station, the award-winning three-block development consists of 22,000 s.f. of retail and 820 new condos and apartments, 110 of them
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...and that’s an Eve Picker. Trained as an architect/urban designer, Eve is probably Pittsburgh’s most innovative, entrepreneurial real estate developer with a reputation for transforming undesirable buildings into loft-oriented residence and office works of art.
She’s completed twelve developments from 2 units to 40,000 s.f. via her No Wall Productions real estate development company in Pittsburgh. Pictured is her 4920 Penn residential loft rentals, which has never had a lease vacancy since
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A year ago we profiled how human-proportioned buildings not only provided a more welcoming urban fabric, but higher property values as well. These were generally in historic neighborhoods, but seldom in new developments.
Well, it took an Italian urban designer with a tremendous amount of respect for historic Italian neighborhoods to design these new buildings (pictured) in the Shiodome Italia, Tokyo development. The 30 Italian-inspired buildings in Japan’s new Little Italy surround a piazza
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I guess it’s not a coincidence that the architecture magazine Architect, where you’d most likely find case studies of the kinds of buildings profiled on this website, would feature this site in its pages.
The new periodical has a regular column called Screen Capture (pictured) which highlights architecture-related websites, and CoolTown is presented in its June 2007 issue here.
My favorite part was being asked about the future role of architects, especially regarding how they relate to
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With all the press and writings on the creative class, what sometimes gets lost is the economic bottom line of its impact on cities. These graphs, produced by Creative Class Group research partner Kevin Stolarick based on 2000 data, show it as clearly and succintly as anything out there.
The graphs show regional per capita income as it relates to % of the creative class workforce. The top one represents all 331 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and the lower one shows only regions with
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Rockville, MD may not have a reputation for being a creative urban city in the Washington DC area, but it’s certainly looking to change that in a hurry. It’s Rockville Town Square makes a noble attempt at replicating a piazza, and its upcoming Twinbrook Station is garnering prestigious awards for sustainable urban planning.
The 26-acre Twinbrook (pictured) is a transit-oriented
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‘Make art not war’ is the literal theme at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, located in the heart of Alexandria, Virginia’s vibrant downtown waterfront.
Originally built in 1918 as a torpedo factory and used as such until the end of World War II, the City of Alexandria bought the buildings from the U.S. government in 1969. Marian Van Landingham, President of the local Art League at the time, proposed renovating the buildings into artist studios. Long story short, the Torpedo Factory Artists
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