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,

read more…

So, what does a creative economy strategic report for a city look like? One example is Creative New York, now a few years old (December 2005), published by the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy organization focused on the well being of New York City’s low-income and working class.  Being that this is an implementation-oriented site, let’s cut right to their recommendations on what NYC should do to grow its creative sector.

Create a centralized coordinating body modeled after

read more…

If you’re looking for a model of a government agency that’s looking out for creatives, your first stop should be New York City’s Department of Transportation (DOT), as has been stated several times on this site. Behind every progressive organization there’s a leader, and that’s DOT Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, who not surprisingly commutes to work by bike. Kudos to Streetfilms for providing this interview that every transportation decision-maker or advocate should watch.

There’s no

read more…

Manhattan is on a roll - first there’s Summer Streets where major streets are being closed to cars on August Saturdays, then talk of a bike sharing program and there Streets to Plazas program, and now what has become a rather mundane announcement that they’re turning two of four lanes on Broadway in Midtown into a pedestrian and bicycle zone - to be completed in mid-August 2008, permanently.

To be known as Broadway Boulevard between West 42nd and West 35th Street, the project will feature a

read more…

How important is live music to the city of Austin? How many cities do you know of that have a Live Music Task Force? Not only that, the city-funded group won’t consist of the usual suspect government bureaucrats, but local musicians, music venue owners and regular music-loving Austin residents - all deciding how to spend the government’s money to keep Austin’s Live Music Capital of the World reputation thriving.

The final report will come in October, but here are the four areas they’re

read more…

The knowledge economy moved on without Youngstown, Ohio, whose heyday was in the midst the steel industry and the industrial economy, peaking in 1962 with a population of 162,000, more than twice today’s 82,000.

Pressed with the question, “Change or die,“ Youngstown’s mayoral candidates were unconsciously choosing death for their city. When local leaders established an initiative, Youngstown 2010 to acknowledge Youngstown’s shrinking population, invest in new economy industries, focus on

read more…

So how did Boulder Housing Partners (BHP) bring together seven different developers to work together on a common vision for the Holiday Neighborhood in Boulder?  Mind you, developers rarely partner with other developers, much less six others.

The key is that BHP had a very clear vision for the 27-acre former drive-in theater site, one that resulted from extensive citizen participation. The vision’s focus on people and community also greatly appealed to the 45 interested parties that responded

read more…

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 operates on 27-acre site.
- 1990: Drive-in owners’ plans for

read more…

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

, 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 successful approach we’ve used across the state over the last

read more…

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 to a creative class that dispels much of new urbanism on

read more…

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 model. If you imagine movies as live/work/play experiences, a truly

read more…

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 own population. Not to oversimplify things, but here’s a CoolTown scenario of

read more…

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 here (and yesterday) is

read more…

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, creative 24-hour destination emphasizing

read more…

Say you want to develop a $10 million Cool

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 development costs in renovating an

read more…

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 do it right.  Here’s a CoolTown version of ULI’s Ten Principles for

read more…

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 more), it’ll be a true urban village in

read more…

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 Franciso, Charleston), but not the uses

read more…

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 the term ‘the projects’.) 

read more…

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. neuroscience researchers like Dr. Michael

read more…

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 is that this is a code designed for creating places where

read more…

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 housing, which is only allowed in T3, suburbia.  In the most walkable T5

read more…

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!... unless they’re isolated away in a special district (‘SD’)

read more…

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 it best by having the entire street as the outdoor dining realm,

read more…

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 underlying structure of the transect (see image)

read more…