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 “move away from a focus on negative noise

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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 brought in the same urban design group that planned

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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, mentioned in the previous entry.

The public

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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 Carolina - A true live/work/learn community

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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 in that regard is a

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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 up by significantly raising the

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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 well?  You bet.  Take the comparison of two

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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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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 neighborhood character.  In fact, a masterful blending

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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 longer reserved for avant garde real

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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 Theaters (pictured), but weren’t able to

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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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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 safety issue as well as a quality-of-life issue.“

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Yesterday the EPA announced their annual National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement.  The winners were:

Overall Excellence in Smart Growth: Highlands’ Garden Village, Denver Urban Renewal Authority, Denver, CO - a new front-porch TND neighborhood in the inner suburbs.

Built Projects: Belmar, City of Lakewood and Lakewood Reinvestment Authority, Lakewood, CO - A regional mall turned upscale town center.

Policies and Regulations: Central District Specific Plan, City of Pasadena Planning and

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I’ve mentioned transit-oriented development (TOD) a few times, and felt it deserved its own entry.  The term was popularized by the renowned town-planning firm, Calthorpe Associates, and now represented by an organization, the Center for Transit-Oriented Development.  It’s also makes for one heck of a business plan for an investor.

Here’s a cooltown point-of-view of Ten Common Sense Rules for TOD by Bruce Liedstrand of Liedstrand Associate, another highly respected TOD planning firm:

1.

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While New Urbanism is more about placemaking than economic development, and a quick search of Google images will illustrate that many new urbanist projects are rather suburban at this point, the movement is trending toward urban, and many of the suburban projects are urban in nature.

That said, if you’re looking for a development guide on placemaking and can filter out its suburban-oriented content if you’re focused on city/urban/CoolTown development, the New Urbanism: Comprehensive Report &

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Yesterday I presented Project for Public Spaces’ principles for what makes a great public place.  Today I list their annual ten best additions to their great places archive:

United States:
The City Museum, St. Louis, MO
Museum of Modern Art Interior and Sculpture Garden, New York, NY
Wisconsin State Capitol, Madison, WI
Devon Street, Chicago, IL
Canada:
Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC
Central/South America
Jardin Juarez and Market Hall, Juchitan, Mexico
Largo Glenio Peres, Porto Alegre, Brazil …

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What makes a public place great?  A good start is to ask Project for Public Spaces, a leading nonprofit that documents public places for a living.  Below is their http://www.pps.org/info/newsletter/august2005/august2005_what_makes_place_great
“four-point criteria, with a CoolTown slant to it:

- “Accessible and well-connected to other important places in the area.“ The best public places are at the center, like the Italian piazzas or town/neighborhood squares, where the ‘important places’ and

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CityPlace, West Palm Beach is one of the most beautiful, European-inspired new retail entertainment villages in the U.S… for the rich.  $300K+ is the starting point for any of the 600 residences, its 20 restaurants are high-end, and its chain-driven stores even higher.

Still, for budget-minded visitors and local residents alike, there’s no better place in the area to sit back and enjoy anything remotely close to life in an Italian piazza.  The vastness of the square, the sound of bubbling

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Here they are as presented by one of the top town planning firms in the country, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company.  The diagram shows an auto-oriented sprawl infrastructure in the lower half - notice how each major destination leads to a ‘collector road’ - a major source of traffic congestion.  The pedestrian-oriented layout in the upper half (aka traditional neighborhood development (TND), aka ‘good suburban development’) shows how traffic is distributed evenly with multiple choices of travel,

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Looking for a singular resource of great public spaces, especially with photos?  Look no further than Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit that’s been supporting the best of public placemaking and third places for 30 years.

One of their best resources is a series of online case studies based on the following four areas:

Great public markets: Whether indoors or out, these festival, fresh food, art and farmers markets date back to ancient times, and still serve as the heart of the community

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Now this is a true piazza in design and proportion, just the right scale, surrounded by restaurants and entertainment, always full of people, and even located in the U.S.  Unfortunately, the second and third floors are not offices and apartments and it’s a tourist attraction in a Las Vegas resort on the Strip.

The point here is not to rip on all the things Las Vegas does wrong, but to learn from what happens when the top designers in the world focus on building places that compel people to

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The answer?  When you focus on designing great alleys.

Narrow, pedestrian-only streets (paseos) are becoming quite popular.  They help focus attention on people, the most interesting subject matter to the human eye.  This ‘people stage’ is made more dramatic with a terminating building(s).

Building facades that feature human-scaled, human-designed detailing are that much more appealing to - humans, especially if you intend to look at it longer than a minute or two.  The same goes for the

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You get places like this.  The scene seems so natural, but it’s actually very unnatural here in the U.S. (the shot is in Paris).

First of all, there’d be a line of cars parked alongside the curb, which would immediately block any view more than 10’ in front of you.  This is one reason why waterfront seating seems so dramatic by comparison.  The buildings on the opposite side of the street would be pushed back and largely out of the picture, mainly because the street here won’t accomodate four

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