That’s according to a 2007 Johnson Gardner study, based on 2006 numbers in Portland, Oregon, commissioned by Oregon Metro, as only recently reported on in this recent article, Trendy shops put a shine on home values.

Their study concludes that property values within a block and a half would be affected accordingly by the following businesses:

- Neighborhood theater - 14-30% higher property values. Some positives cited by the study include an increase in pedestrian traffic (safety) at more

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Perhaps too many people buying homes they couldn’t afford wasn’t the problem behind the Wall Street collapse, but a symptom. The real problem may be that there are too many homes out on the market that people could never afford in the first place. In other words, the average U.S. American can’t afford $300,000 for a home, as is the going rate in many cities. So rather than lend out more money to buy homes people can’t afford, that banks can’t back, perhaps the real solution is addressing the

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While this site provides you 1400 vignettes on what crowdsource placemaking can create, it doesn’t provide you with the direct means to actually crowdsource these places. That’s no longer the case.

Join the CoolTown Network (see new green button in the right column) and create a new Group to start crowdsourcing the kind of place you’d like to see in your city or neighborhood. Is it a coffeehouse? A coworking site? Attainably-priced lofts? You define the vision, then start attracting people to

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