...is on Wikipedia’s list of car free places.

Now the first thing to keep in mind is that a true list would literally consist of thousands of entries. So to present a more meaningful register, the following two criteria are applied:
- They are unusual for their country or region (which explains why there are so many entries from the U.S. and only two from Africa)
- They make up a sizeable fraction of a city, town, or island, though this seems to be relaxed a bit when it comes to the U.S.

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...which is why in Europe they call them trams, apart from ‘light rail’ which is associated with those clunky, boxy trains you see in the U.S.  The tram in the video above debuted in November 2007 in Nice, France.

The Strasbourg, France line pioneered the sleek look in 2006 and has been an overwhelming success ever since, not to mention a favorite photo subject for tourists - now how often does that happen? Notice in the video above how its futuristic silhouette contrasts with the historic

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A picture is worth a thousand words, which is why the folks at the GIS savvy planning firm Criterion created a tool to not just analyze  where to best invest in low-carbon development, but to illustrate it.

The concept is referred to as Cool Spots, and is described as “places where land use, transportation and energy data converge to create the best places for low-carbon development.“

The process, as described in more detail here:

1. Analyze the region’s energy usage, from CO2 building

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The most straightforward measure of the creative class in any city is by density; the number of creative class per square mile. You can download the
Creative Class Group’s rankings with each of their creative class densities here (it only consists of four top ten lists).  Below are the top three in each of the population range followed by their creative class members per square mile, with some unexpected cities outside of the usual suspects listed below.

Over one million
1. Los Angeles, CA -

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The essence of Key West’s vibrancy, located along the very public Duvall Street profiled previously, was often very hidden via outdoor patios behind and alongside buildings.

Take Croissants de France (pictured) - at first glance you see a traditional front porch leading up to the entrance of the cafe, but as you walk up you notice a side patio followed by a tree-shaded courtyard, triggering an inkling to want to sit down and order a chocolate crepe or afternoon mojito.

Then there’s Blue

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Key West, Florida is both a city and an island hosting a few facts you may already know: it has a population of 25,000; is a cruise destination; has phenomenal weather (except when I visited it); is among the Florida keys that originated the key lime pie; is only 90 degrees from Cuba; has the nation’s first and oldest continuous gay and lesbian chamber of commerce; was home to Ernest Hemingway; and maintains 200 of the 300 liquor licenses in the keys - half of which are on Duvall Street

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Hidden to tourists that is. The locals know where the public courtyards in their city are, and they make some of the best third places around, especially given that you can enjoy a little sun and warmth in the experience.

This particular one is in San Telmo, off Defensa Street, which is open only to pedestrians on Sundays (see previous entry). You’d never know it existed walking down the street (left image), demonstrating the value of exploring a city with a local (How to experience the

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Local, independent businesses that are just starting out typically can’t compete with the chains that already have an established national customer brand. However, as profiled previously, the best local, indie businesses can outperform any chain given a loyal community brand.

Even better though, is to enjoy that success on day one, which is a little unexpected given that it’s a new business.  That’s where crowdsourcing comes in, with the ability to not only develop a loyal customer base on

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How serious is the commitment to building more vibrant cities? This whole creative city thing isn’t confined to just cities - entire states are taking such a proactive approach to modernizing their economies, from Michigan’s Cool Cities Initiative to now, Vermont’s Creative Communities Program (CCP):

“Communities apply to participate in the Creative Communities Program. Successful applicants receive technical assistance in the form of a community visit process that moves quickly from

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Utilizing the Fifth Discipline principles of systems thinking, we bring to you a representation of why cities, especially their economic development departments that manage the largest of budgets, choose to invest in the outdated practice of landing ‘the big one’ rather than cultivating its own creative economy that is known to create jobs more effectively.

The Context:  First of all, it’s important to understand the long tail. The vertical axis in the graph to the left is economic output,

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While not every city can be classified as a recognized global city, one can take the spirit of its characteristics and apply it to becoming a global-minded neighborhood. This is especially relevant given that diversity is linked to economic growth.

The following are the elements of a global city, followed by how a neighborhood can apply its mentality:

- International, first-name familiarity - “Paris” (pictured), not “Paris, France”. Neighborhoods that don’t need the city’s name attached

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If you want to know the metropolitan areas with the greatest number of ‘walkable urban places’, this is a respectable list. However, if you want to know the metropolitan areas that are the most walkable urban places overall, this is not the list to look at (it counts Midtown in Manhattan as ‘one’ walkable urban place, and say, Reston, Virginia as ‘one’ walkable urban place, which is questionable unto itself, and with no weighted difference to account for it being 1/30th as dense) - otherwise

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While green cafes are being crowdsourced in Washington DC and New Orleans, they’re not being crowdfunded, mainly because the concept is so new. Thankfully there are companies like nvohk (pronounced ‘invoke’) that are providing models for that inevitability.

nvohk is a crowdfunded, eco/green clothing company based in L.A. with the following structure:
- It will be community-managed by a minimum of 20,000 members, no more than 40,000 (currently at 400);
- Each member invests $50 for the

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Apparently that was the attitude of New York’s (DOT) Department of Transportation, a powerful entity in any state, when approached about turning this street into what you see above.

According to Streetblog’s Ethan Kent, “They’ve created a destination for downtown office workers, for people from all over Brooklyn, to come and spend some time in a way they hadn’t been able to before. They great thing about this is they just went ahead and did this. It wasn’t a lot of studies. It wasn’t a long

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Today’s entry will be a little uncommon, but rather extraordinary as we present Urban Cultures’ detailed presentation behind their Cultural Quarters: Necessary Conditions and Success Factors checklist. There really are few if any firms that have such fine-grain knowledge in helping cities invest in such places, and we’re glad to be associated with them.

The treatise follows:

An essential prerequisite for a vibrant cultural quarter is the presence of cultural activity, and this should include

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Continuing our understanding of natural cultural districts, here’s Urban Cultures’ (profiled previously) Necessary Conditions and Success Factors checklist for what makes a vibrant cultural quarter:

Activity
- Extent and variety of cultural venues
- Presence of an evening economy, including café culture
- Strength of small-firm economy, including creative businesses
- Access to universities and education providers
- Presence of festivals and events
- Availability of workspaces for artists

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‘cultural clusters’ and Tilburg in Holland).

The first two of these are oriented towards art as a good thing, an expression of civilization and of ‘cultural consumption’. The third is more closely related to urban-place making and mixed-use city diversity. The fourth is directly linked to the notion of the new economy and mixed media, and therefore the generation of new work, businesses and employment. However, there are many examples of planned cultural precincts that fail as urban

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...that is, unlike an unnatural one where most of the buildings are large-scale - designed, funded and run by city governments and corporations… and feel that way?

Continuing a look at the research of professor Mark Stern, profiled in the previous entry, natural cultural districts:

- rely on self-organized local players, organized from the bottom-up;
- are cultivated, as in economic gardening (a few examples listed here), not master-planned (this is where cities usually stop paying

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Maybe you should think twice about investing millions in that fancy new performing arts building to revitalize your city. While Richard Florida has long de-emphasized such large-scale investments, professor Mark Stern, Co-Director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania provides a detailed answer below to the question, “Well then, now what?“

“While the arts are commerce, they revitalize cities not through their bottom-line but through their social role. The arts build

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.“ Margaret Mead

A few months ago NOLA’s (New Orleans, LA) young urban rebuilding professionals (YURP) established a social network for the purpose of building a sustainable New Orleans, now at 1688 members.

Within a couple of months, a hundred of them established a beta community to identify development opportunities they could crowdsource into a model of what New

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That’s ‘ugly’ in terms of design and craftsmanship, not so much style, which I’m sure many of you may be partial to.

When nonprofit developer Mercy Housing completed its 96-unit SRO (single-room occupancy) building for very low income residents in the Near North neighborhood of Chicago, president Richard Banks reiterated the group’s vision that the building would be “a statement that affordable housing doesn’t have to be ugly or look like a warehouse.“

Essentially, if very low income

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What does a thriving music scene have to do with a city’s economic growth? According to economist Richard Florida in his recent study, “It signals the rise of regional ecosystems that are not only open to new sounds and new ideas, but have the size, scale and commercial oomph to retain key talent and turn their ideas into global commercial successes. Once music scenes of this scale get going, they produce a logic and momentum of their own and signal that more entrepreneurship is on the