The story behind Boulder’s open source development (1 of 2)

If you’re familiar with the open-source form of business development that’s becoming the standard for the fastest growing companies, and read the entry introducing the Holiday Neighborhood’s application of such in Boulder, CO, you may be interested in the story behind it all.

Here’s a brief timeline, with a more detailed summary in the American Planning Association article, They’re Bolder in Boulder:

- 1969-1989: Drive-in theater

read more…

Pittsburgh investing heavily in a creative identity

How important is Pittsburgh’s creative future?  $460 million worth, in what is
billed as the nation’s first master-planned,

, mixed-use neighborhood, referred to as the Cultural District Riverfront Development.

You know the times are changing when the following words are spoken by a state governor (Ed Rendell):

“Working together, we’re funding projects that will draw people back downtown to live, work and play. It’s the same

read more…

Cities prosper with open-source approach to development

Continuing yesterday’s entry, what happens when a city takes a more open-source approach to real estate development?

New Urban News features two such stories in one article, More developers, better results: A lesson in orchestration.

In each example, the city established an RFP competition for multiple sites, selecting multiple developers.  The primary reason?  Diversity and variety, which speaks to authenticity, which is paramount

read more…

SF increasingly pro indie, NYC becoming pro chain?

According to the NY Times, the word on the street is that New Yorkers are worried that “it’s getting boring around here.” “The chain proliferation and the sameness they have brought to so many blocks has become a pet peeve for many New Yorkers, and the butt of jokes for others. On a recent episode of the NBC comedy “30 Rock,” a character sent to pick up a prescription was stymied by the presence of “Rite Drugs” outlets on all

read more…

Small town of Renton smartly evolving from industrial to knowledge economy

The city of Renton, just south of Seattle, has long been synonymous with Boeing.  However, visit their website today and there’s not only no mention of the airline giant on their home page, but missing from their economic development and vision, mission, and business plan pages as well.  There’s just a picture of a jet on the business home page, but no mention of Boeing when listing the city’s assets.

Why? The City

read more…

‘The Long Tail’ city - ‘Netflixing’ it into profitability (4 of 4)

As explained in the three previous entries, especially with this graph, The Long Tail represents the present and future of profitability in the internet age. But what about cities? Are they once again left out of the fun?

Cities are rarely mentioned as Long Tail examples, unlike Netflix, but they actually have the most potential to reap significant economic benefits via quality of life and job growth from this business

read more…

How can a City establish a ‘beta community’ to attract the creative class?

A City can plan itself to death if it doesn’t attract real and significant private sector investment dollars resulting in compelling, vibrant buildings and places on behalf of it, not to mention the events, creative class and jobs that follow. I know for a fact that a lot of cities are going through this.

Based on the previous two entries on our evolution to a customer-led economy, the answer lies with the City’s

read more…

The ‘projects’ - 2006

You’ve heard of stories of people who ‘escaped the projects’, but clamoring to get in them?  First a little history:  When suburbia was taking off post-WWII, the federal government’s urban renewal program built hundreds of public housing projects in the city that were so universally ill-designed (and probably purposely so) that they became known as the projects, synonymous with crime, vandalism and drugs.

It’s a good thing people evolve, because the project pictured

read more…

Prolific downtown - Pasadena is thy name

Look at all those downtown development projects - who needs a study to prove people are moving downtown?

There’s something in the water in Pasadena.  They have one of the most successful new pedestrian malls in the country.  They have one of the most progressive new urban villages in the country.  85% of all building permits are going downtown, totaling 2500 new homes.  So I guess when the City’s Central District Specific Plan won a coveted annual

read more…

Why great neighborhoods lose their character

You’ve all heard the story over and over again - creatives move into an undesirable neighborhood, it becomes cool, then they’re priced out of it as it becomes gentrified (before the chains move in.)

How does this happen?  Let’s take business owner Linda Welch, who owns Dogs By Day in MidCity, Washington DC.  Last year she paid $9000/year in property taxes.  In the meantime, she’s volunteering 30/hours a week to revitalize MidCity as a diverse,

read more…

‘Free money’ for CoolTown projects

Say you want to develop a $10 million

Town development - transforming a number of historic buildings into contemporary loft offices, residences and indie (independent) businesses.  Say you have only $6 million.

It can be done without giving up any equity.  The federal government already has two programs in place to provide that other $4 million, and they are:

Historic Tax Credits:  Provides up to 20% of the rehabilitation costs (essentially all the

read more…

The dawning of public-private partnerships in innovative development

Let’s face it - creative urban development is costly, much more so than in suburbia, for reasons previously explained.  Land and parking provisions are simply too expensive for the private and public sectors to handle alone - which is why public/private partnerships (PPPs) accounted for $75 billion in real estate last year - ‘creative alliances’ if you will; meeting both financial and social bottom lines.  There are ways to

read more…

West Palm Beach’s second encore

As presented yesterday, first came the renaissance of the downtown, then CityPlace, now West Palm Beach’s first transit-oriented development (TOD).  The buildings in the bottom right of the image make up CityPlace - notice the pie-shaped ‘square’ that is the epi-center of free entertainment in the area.

With three times more housing than CityPlace (2000 residences vs 600), a million s.f. of office (CityPlace has none) and 100,000 s.f. of retail (a third

read more…

Success spreading in West Palm Beach

In 2000, downtown West Palm Beach had no more than 2000 residents with only 20% of its main street occupied.  Today the main street is at 90% and the downtown population is on track for 10,000 in a few years.

“I’ll have what they’re having.“

Leadership, vision, and more leadership.  It starts with one forward-thinking mayor, Nancy Graham (pictured), initiating a form-based planning code that guides what the urban fabric will look like (i.e. think San

read more…

‘The projects’ - 2005

Everyone knows what ‘the projects’ are - ugly, federal-government-financed, high-rise stand-alone buildings surrounded by parking lots in neglected regions of the city, or low-rise concentration-camp-looking complexes.  No defined public or private spaces, just leftover space in between the structures.

Thank goodness for evolution.  This is an image of Bradenton Village, a $70 million ‘garden urban village’ replacing failed federal government projects (the origin of

read more…

Why do cities die rather than change?

You’ve heard it before, “There aren’t any young people here.“ “This place has no women.“ “This town is so dead.“ Perception is reality.

Why do 90% of us choose death over changing for a prolific future - socially and economically?  In continuing the series that began yesterday, Change or Die, the answer is perhaps that the brains of city and business leaders have become physiologically incapable of change, unless…

Contrary to popular belief.

read more…

How did St. Louis’ downtown attract $2.5 billion?

It started with public-private leadership.  City officials, business groups, banks and nonprofits formed a public-private partnership, Downtown Now! in 1997 to develop a 5-7 year plan to revitalize downtown St. Louis. The City of St. Louis officially adopted this Downtown Development Action Plan in December of 1999, directing $1.5 billion in public (one-third) and private (two-thirds) investment into four clearly distinct areas (see

read more…

Elements of a city code for CoolTowns: Building height

Continuing our look at how CoolTowns are supported via city codes, beginning here, building heights are one of the most noticeable features in any built environment.

While the code pictured above shows height limits of up to six floors in T6 zones (see transect), that’s the default if one was building a town from scratch.  It would certainly change over time, or if it were applied to an existing area like downtown Chicago.  The point

read more…

Elements of a city code for CoolTowns: Residential, office uses

In relation to the previous blog on retail and civic uses, today’s will illustrate why CoolTowns are walkable and suburbia/rural neighborhoods aren’t - by law.

Understanding that higher densities and mixed-uses are key elements in walkable neighborhoods, notice in the CoolTown-friendly zones (T4-T6) (see transect), every single house type is allowed except the estate house (mansion with extensive greens) and manufactured

read more…

Elements of a city code for CoolTowns: Retail, civic uses

Continuing our look at what a city code needs to allow CoolTowns, it’s amazing to realize how many uses (retail, civic) are often illegal in a majority of what’s built today.  Using the transect image in the blog two days ago, you’ll see what kinds of uses are generally not permitted in ‘T2’ (rural) and ‘T3’ (suburban) zones, or even ‘T4’ (borderline suburban/urban).

No fooling, shops and restaurants aren’t permitted in suburbia!...

read more…

What are the elements of a good city planning code for CoolTowns?

As explained in the previous blog, today’s modern, progressive, people-oriented city planning codes are graphical-based.  However, what are the graphics of, and are they supportive of CoolTowns?

Building frontage standards: The idea is to create great public rooms, so a uniform setback of buildings best achieves that, and sometimes further back to establish a grand outdoor dining plaza.  Burlington, Boulder and Barcelona do

read more…

So what does a legislated city plan look like?

The results of the planning process described in the previous blog below are transformed into a city code or ordinance, usually in hundreds of pages of legalese. Like how Apple evolved command lines into graphical user interfaces, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has done the same for these piles of text, turning them into just a handful of graphic-based codes - SmartCodes, although it could still be less car-oriented.  The code is based on the

read more…

So how did the City of South Miami’s Hometown Plan that led to investment in model development happen?

It began in 1992, when South Miami Hometown, Inc., a nonprofit, was established by local visionaries that raised funds to create a blueprint for an uninspired 55-acre area in the city, with the cooperation and matching funds of the City.  Through a charrette process that involved key business associations (very important), government agencies, nonprofits and citizens facilitated by Dover

read more…

Legalizing CoolTowns begins with the City

As you know, most of what has been built in the last 80 years looks like what’s pictured in the top left-hand corner of this image.  Here’s a summary of how it happened, and how it literally became illegal to build anything else, no matter if developers and investors wanted to to build, say, cool urban villages.

The rest of the image is what cities and developers are beginning to invest in, as highlighted in Dover Kohl’s HomeTown Plan in the

read more…

South Miami’s inspiring “100% Models” idea

The

Town approach to bringing economic and social vitality to an area via a compelling pilot project doesn’t have a better legislated example than South Miami’s HomeTown Plan: “The “100% Models”  idea was to choose an area (however small) then totally transform it to create as dramatic and visible an impact as possible.  Instead of spending precious funding across large areas, public funds are to be concentrated on these 100% Models.“

The best

read more…