We’ve looked at what a proscriptive code is, and examples of proscriptive codes, but what’s the proscriptive code for creatives‘ ideal town?

You can check out New York City’s proscriptive code of sorts regarding transportation, World Class Streets, preceding a prescriptive code. You should also peruse a chart of what can be referred to as changing proscriptive codes over time here. As you can see, proscriptive codes can vary greatly over time as cultures and economies change. It can also vary

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In the previous entry, Cities today use ‘prescriptive’ codes, but what came before that?, we looked at proscriptive codes, the framework for rules, being the precursor to prescriptive codes, the rules themselves (e.g. street widths, building setbacks, amount of parking, etc.), and how cities today seem to have forgotten proscriptive codes altogether. Unfortunately, the records for historic cities were not preserved, but one can understand there’s indeed a greater inspired vision that

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All cities have planning codes which predetermine street widths, building heights and volumes, parking ratios, etc. These are known as prescriptive codes, of or relating to the enforcement of a rule. However, those are merely the means to the end, and historians have long been trying to decipher how the most elegant cities (in Greece, Tunisia, Spain…) came to be via such prescriptive codes. Well, the answer, as outlined in the article, Decoding paradise - the emergent form of Mediterranean

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By popular request, here are what I feel are the top 20 articles among the 1400 on this site, influenced by current times. This will be constantly changing, especially as I rediscover previous articles and post new ones (in bold)...

Crowdsourcing and creatives…
The creatives: rengen, cultural creatives, creative class - Identifying the core market itself.
What is crowdsourced placemaking? - The most definitive definition.
The time is now to crowdsource the places you want - Get started now.

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One challenge with establishing a natural cultural district in the early stages, especially one that’s retail-oriented, is reaching a critical mass where it feels like a place. One solution is to build a microcosm of a such a flourishing retail center so people can experience the vibe of the larger district, and for that we have Hollywood’s Space 15 Twenty to thank as a model, to a certain degree.

Featured in the latest Springwise, the concept is brilliant - Space 15 Twenty is a collection of

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When it comes to understanding the fundamental economic difference the Internet provides over the non-digital age, it’s having access to the Long Tail, which is essentially anything and everything else that’s a ‘non-hit’ or ‘non-blockbuster’, but in sum is greater. You can learn more about the Long Tail in our previous four-part series.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, sums of cities pretty nicely in terms of the Long Tail,

“Think

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You hear a lot of talk about city economic development agencies emphasizing the importance of the creative industry, quality of life and the downtowns/main streets, but seldom do you see a program that backs that up as succinctly as Lille, France’s Maisons de Mode (Houses of Fashion).

Essentially, the City of Lille, understanding the economic multiplier of supporting the creative industry and vibrant downtown quality of life, invests in store construction, low rents and free publicity to

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While Ikea is defining an entire generation of furniture buyers with their high style, low cost mass production, there’s still a niche for high style, low cost mass customization. Myfab is a huge step in that direction.

How does it work? Each week, Myfab customers vote on which furniture items they’d like manufactured - you can see the vote tallies in the image above. They then get to buy them direct at near-factory prices, up to 70% lower than retail), plus 10% off if you voted!

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No county outside of New York’s has more single-individual households, at 50.6%. Does that mean New Yorkers are the loneliest people in the country, who tend to be depressed or marriage-challenged? Hardly…

People in New York, and cities overall, tend to be pretty content.  The state of New York’s suicide rate is the third lowest in the country, suicide being recognized as the result of not being able to socially integrate. It’s also a fact that the less populous the county, the higher the

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The old ‘stick’ approach to making a difference in your neighborhood was to boycott a business that people felt didn’t deserve support. However, the organization Carrotmob has an alternatively fun and effective approach, using a ‘carrot’ and a mob to help businesses become what the both the neighborhood residents and business owners want them to be, such as becoming greener.

The idea is simple, Carrotmob lets any number of businesses in a defined area bid on what % of their sales for a

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That’s the headline for a recent USA Today article, as developers go smaller in response to emerging generations of buyers who have a fresher vision of the American Dream than previous ones. “The trend is here to stay”, says Michael Newman, president and CEO of Golub & Co., an international real estate development and investment firm. “In this economy, people still want to be in cool places, and they’ll trade down size for location.“

Ho do developers compensate for less living area? Open

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So if Copenhagen, Denmark is arguably the birthplace of the modern pedestrianization movement, what’s the leading city as far as a contemporary pedestrianization plan? It’d be difficult to beat what Hong Kong has done since 2000.

As you can see in the plans above, Hong Kong’s newly annointed pedestrian streets aren’t just extensive within city districts, but extensive in districts throughout the city. Streets in green are pedestrianized full-time, blue is part-time, and those in yellow are

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With the holidays around the corner and a new level of green consciousness rising among kids, this may be of interest to proponents of natural cultural districts. We know you can build digital buildings and towns with digital lego, but what about the real stuff? Well, when Lego starts providing pedestrian-oriented buildings, streets and even mass transit sets for kids (and kidults) to purchase, that says we’ve turned a corner as far as what’s cool.

Pictured above are the Market Street, Green

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What happens when you combine one of the world’s premiere creative cities with the world’s premiere urban designer for pedestrianized cities?  Specifically, New York City, via their Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), arguably the most innovative government agency in the U.S., hired architect Jan Gehl, who has done more for the pedestrianization movement than anyone, to ensure the city becomes a world class benchmark in that regard.

The first tangible result from this collaboration is the

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Now that the American Dream has come full circle and is once again ready to be defined by you, what would that be for emerging generations? Well, since they seem to be spending so much time on Facebook, maybe it’s worth checking out how that would be manifested in the built environment. Keep in mind that anyone not part of the Facebook generation will probably be just as uncomfortable with the following vision as they are with Facebook ...

- Facebook is a social network that provides more of

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What is the American Dream?

From the Declaration of Independence (in a more religious time): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,“ and from from Wikipedia: “The American Dream is belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work and free

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Quite often, a movement will have a starting point and a champion. If one had to at least nominate some credit in regard to the pedestrianization of streets, then Copenhagen, Denmark and resident architect Jan Gehl deserve some of the spotlight, especially in a city known for rainy cold weather where the common mantra was ‘this is the wrong city for this’.

Jan was a principal figure in transforming Copenhagen’s main downtown street, the Strøget, into a pedestrian zone. The traffic

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For those who relish the pedestrian-only districts that are prevalent in Europe, one need venture a little north to Montreal in the summers.

Twelve blocks surrounding Saint Catherine Street, one of the Canadian city’s busiest corridors in the Ville-Marie neighborhood, were opened to pedestrians (ie closed to cars) for the entire summer, transformed into a grand public square brought to life with outdoor cafes, sculptures and shoppers, creating an overnight cafe society.

What’s most

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For many, the image that first pops into people’s heads who have heard of cohousing is one of boomer hippies sharing communal meals every Sunday in their housing complex. The thing is, it’s a fairly accurate assessment for many of the only 110 cohousing projects in the U.S., and while it’s far from desirable for most people, there are some good lessons from its creation process, which is very relatable to crowdsourced placemaking. Here’s one Brooklyn story:

When a plan to build 40

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While we may be familiar with city policies promoting car-free living, what are the examples in the built world?

That’s where you need to visit the Moda condominiums in the Belltown district of Seattle, Washington. Moda is a model application of truly attainably-priced housing via reducing housing size and eliminating parking spaces. The evidence:

- 83 units have no parking at all, which are $30,000 less than those with parking.
- The units start at $149,950, almost a third of the median

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What are the real, personal financial benefits of going car-free?The friendly folks at the U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) have provided a collective body of research, Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse (RBC), the goal being to help build more affordable, pedestrian-oriented residences, especially in preparation for what they’ve been instructed will be an innovation-minded administration. The following statistical summaries are found within:

- Minimum parking requirements,

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