Kansas City’s new outdoor ‘living room’

It’s not a model for supporting local independent businesses, certainly not a natural cultural district, and its website opens with the words “Greed, lust and gluttony… and that’s only dinner”, but Kansas City’s new $800 million ‘corporate cultural district’ does provide clear evidence that there’s a growing market for pedestrian-only districts in downtowns.

The nine block Power & Light District is a one developer, formula-driven entertainment zone

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Every once in a while a checklist is highly beneficial to remind one of the fundamentals. Today we bring you a civic-minded one from Project for Public Spaces*, Is Your City a Great City?

PPS’s checklist has seven principles with three to four action-oriented steps each, as you can see here. Below are those principles with the most cool town, natural cultural district-focused tactic to achieve each one:

Community goals are a top priority in city planning
Utilize crowdsourced placemaking. 

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Continuing our look at Richard Florida’s new book, Who’s Your City?, one eye-opening study Rich’s team conducted was their Place and Happiness Survey.

The survey received 27,000 responses on what things matter the most to U.S. Americans in their communities, which were later organized into five major categories: economic and personal security (jobs, perceptions of crime and safety); basic services (schools, affordable housing, transportation); leadership (business and civic, opportunity for

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CNU’s placemaking 2008 ‘Charter Awards’ announced

If you want to know which New Urbanism projects New Urbanism architects were most inspired by in 2008, check out the Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) annual Charter Award winners.

While these fall on the opposite spectrum from crowdsourcing and tend to be more baby boomer/upscale, they still provide important design lessons learned. Here are ten of the fifteen winners that are more urban:

Region, Metropolis, City, Town Scale:

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Beach in the city

Paris’ Mayor Bertrand Delanoë wanted to make summer vacation accessible to people unable to afford leave town, so he brought the vacation to them.  Voila!  Paris Plage (Paris Beach).

Since 2002, three million people sun themselves along a two-mile stretch along the Seine between late July and August.  An expressway is temporarily replaced with two tons of sand, grass, wood decks, lounge chairs and palm trees, creating a pedestrian-only paradise in the heart of a

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The tagline for this blog, ‘Crowdsourcing cool places for creatives’ is essentially the same thing as crowdsourced placemaking. Now what exactly is crowdsourced placemaking?

Crowdsourcing - “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.“ Alternatively, “the application of open source principles to fields outside of software.“ Definitions are from the

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The hidden ‘indoor’ outdoor patios of Key West

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

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Bikes come first in Key West

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

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The hidden public courtyards of Buenos Aires

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

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A design guru speaks on architec-ture

Continuing a look at world-changing design from the annual Fast Company series, 2007 Masters of Design, we introduce to you Philippe Starke from France, one of the elite who brings extraordinary design to the masses via Target.

He is currently garnering an international reputation for the emotional connections people have to the apartments and workplaces his company develops, many of which are historic renovations. No, they are not affordable by any

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How does the customer fit in with design these days? From the annual Fast Company article, 2007 Masters of Design, here are some notables from their featured designer, Yves Behar, followed by how it could apply to design in your neighborhood.

- Companies that focused on customer-experience design outperformed the standard (S&P 500) by 10 to 1 from 2000 to 2005. Yves, founder of Fuseproject and arguably the ‘LeBron James of design’ states, The simplest definition of design is how you treat

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The sounds of high urban quality of life

There’s endless research on what makes a city look good, but what about what makes a city sound good? Is there a body of research that complements the visuals of well-designed streets and buildings with how to create a more enlightened experience by what is heard?

Five universities jointly funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK may very well be the first to provide that. Their Positive Soundscapes project aims to

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Redwood City looks to lose ‘Deadwood City’ nickname

Once one of the largest cities in Silicon Valley between San Francisco and San Jose, most people today have never heard of Redwood City, much less visited there for any particular reason. If current plans stay on track, that’ll soon change.

Public and private leaders recognized that their city was being left in the dust as the neighboring towns of Mountain View and Palo Alto initiated dramatic investment in their downtowns. Shrewdly, they

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A postcard portal for post-Katrina city

What to do when your city is devastated by Hurricane Katrina?  The government and city leaders of Long Beach, Mississippi, a city of 17,000 people, allowed its citizens to reshape the city’s future into a postcard portal, facilitated by an urban design firm familiar with the creative class, Ayers Saint Gross.

The result is the Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan, a regional master plan the recently received a CNU Charter Award for New Urbanism,

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The 2007 New Urbanism Charter Award winners

Each year the Congress for the New Urbanism announces its Charter Awards that best represent New Urbanism. Here are some of the winners for 2007.

The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town:

Long Beach Mississippi Concept Plan - Waterfront revitalization. Check out its humanistic-proportioned buildings reminiscent of Amsterdam - those are going to be in immense demand.

Neighborhood, District, and Corridor:

Innovista Master Plan, Columbia, South

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‘What about color?‘

What provides the greatest return on investment when developing destinations or revitalizing neighborhoods?  The answer is easy by far - color.

However, developers and cities mistakenly associate that with the word paint, and that’s simply not true. More importantly, it involves investing in the expertise of choosing the right paints - that attract your target market most effectively, in the largest numbers, with the strongest emotional connections.

The best investment

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The next great public places

Many of us are aware of the immeasurable value that Central Park, NYC and Golden Gate Park, SF bring to their respective cities. In the words of Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, “There need to be places where the rich and poor, the cultivated and the self-made shall be attracted together and encouraged to assimilate.”

Economically speaking, extraordinarily designed public places more than replace the opportunity costs of the land they take

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Good design - applied to neighborhoods

What area of business do more companies need to invest in to provide more appealing products and services for their customers?  As the leading magazine for innovation in business, Fast Company calls attention to the power of design, “The evidence of design’s power is everywhere. It’s apparent in the mere fact that the bar has been raised. Customers expect, even demand, more from the design of everything they buy.“

Does this apply to neighborhoods as

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In an economy that is becoming increasingly customer driven, it’s critical for the creatives to be able to communicate what it is they actually want in order for developers to bring it to reality.  Design psychology, a field founded by Toby Keith Ph.D. of Toby Israel Consulting, can help.

Design psychology is defined as “the practice of architecture, planning and interior design in which psychology is the principal design tool used to create not just aesthetically and functionally beautiful

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Can you easily identify the three new buildings?

In this elevation there are six 18th century buildings designated as City, State and Federal historical landmarks, as well as three brand new buildings.  It’s one of the best examples of mixing historic with contemporary that I’ve seen.

While it may not be all too difficult to pick them out, it’s not like the three new buildings stand out either, helping dispel the belief that anything new is automatically going to destroy the long-time

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Mixed-use fast becoming the norm

It wasn’t too long ago that housing developers only built housing, retail developers only built retail, office developers only office.  Then the three began joint venturing to build them closer together, what was generally regarded as new urbanism/smart growth.

At last, real estate has evolved to where one developer not only constructs all three uses, but together in one building, and a complex of them at that.  What’s also significant is that it’s no

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Two restaurants short of a destination

Continuing our cooltown audit of developments across the San Francisco Bay Area, our next stop is in San Mateo, north of San Jose (and Santana Row, as reviewed just previously.)

The historic main street downtown is coming around with new, independent restaurants and stores, though it’s still missing some sense of identity that an active, grand pedestrian-oriented public place would provide.  They were very close with the plaza fronting the Century

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Detroit is not only known for cars, but also for the mass exodus of people from its downtown, and it’s still bleeding.  However, a focus on creating a masterfully crafted public square in the very center of the City may start the healing.

With the help of a $25M grant raised by a civic organization formed to celebrate the city’s 300th anniversary in 2001, former Mayor Dennis Archer set a goal of creating the best public space in the world - City leaders, are you listening out there?  Out of a

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In the short term, the people of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast may have less of a town to return to. But in the long term, they may very well be living in heathier, livelier, more economically stable communities than if disaster never hit.

Thanks to a $1M Knight Foundation grant and $1M gift from philanthropist Jim Barksdale (formerly of Netscape), 120 new urbanists led charrettes in eleven cities over six days in mid-October, assisted by my good friend and renowned town planner, Andres Duany. 

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Manhattan running out of space for pedestrians

Would you believe there are now so many pedestrians in parts of Manhattan that they have to walk in car lanes?

From a NY Times article:  “In the core of Times Square, there is no doubt about the need to create more space for pedestrians,“ he said. “In one October afternoon a couple of years ago, between 3 and 7 p.m. we counted 4000 people walking literally in the street, in traffic lanes, because the sidewalks were too crowded. It is clearly a

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