In surveys about where young people want to live, Shimokitazawa, a rare natural cultural district on the western side of Tokyo, is always a top choice, and known as a trendsetting place for creatives. Why? Here’s a description from a Japanese magazine, 10+1:

“The urbanism of Shimokitazawa characterized by narrow pedestrian streets (no cars) and dense commercial activity, gives the area a deep Tokyo feel. Attracted by the relaxed character and communal atmosphere of Shimokitazawa, newcomers live alongside old-timers who have seen the neighborhood change throughout the years. An African shop owner explains that what attracted him to Shimokitazawa was a feeling of “old-Japan” which he did not encounter in any other part of Tokyo. In Shimokitazawa the future meets the past.  Shimokitazawa is an urban experience and a space of cultural expression enjoyed by a colorful crowd from Tokyo and the rest of the world.“

In Shimokitazawa, you’ll find small theater halls, live music venues (known as ‘live houses’), bars, secondhand record and clothing shops, and stores offering miscellaneous items from the 70s and old animation-themed toys. Many shops express the ingenuity of their young owners, such as the convergence of multiple venues and user-driven items, (ie combining a cafe and a record shop or an outlet for small handmade items.) Every February the month-long Shimokitazawa Theater Festival showcases plays performed at eight small theaters, and the Kitazawa Music Festival in July features live music in every alley throughout the town.  Animated cultural festivals include the Tengu-matsuri Festival honoring the mythical Tengu, and the Mikoshi-matsuri (portable shrine) Festival.

As the magazine further states, “it is the favorite destination of sophisticated vintage shoppers, record collectors, musicians, artists, students, freelancers, lovers, and other creative types. The “Shimokitazawa experience” is a lifestyle rather than a fashion-style. Indeed the area has served as an “incubator” for many Japanese artists and musicians. From one of its creatives, ““It’s the hippest place in the city where people who say no to the commercialism… you won’t see Gucci or Vuitton here. It’s vintage-antique-used-retro-pop-cool-jazz-indies that defines what this town is about. It’s the basement and attic of Tokyo.

Sadly and surprisingly, various government and commercial entities are attempting to replace the neighborhood with an auto-oriented boulevard - hopefully they learn from Dublin’s successful Temple Bar District, a natural cultural district that was not only saved, but is now a major cultural and economic destination for the city (however, perhaps too much so).

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.
The beta community - The crowdsourced placemaking community that makes it all happen.
The four different kinds of beta communities - The four kinds of projects beta communities can help generate.

Placemaking…
The impact of natural cultural districts - The best academic definition for the places that attract creatives.
The third place - The fundamental unit of a natural cultural district.
Cultivating your own Temple Bar District - One of the most inspiring stories of how a natural cultural district was saved and now flourishing (though maybe too much so).
Happiness best reflected by the beauty of place - Aesthetics matter to people more than anything.
The ‘postcard test’ - A litmus test for a place’s aesthetics, beauty.

The economic foundation…
If there was ever one definitive graphic, this is it - A table that illustrates our evolution from an industrial to a knowledge economy.
Digital infrastructure replacing an asphalt one - The physical environment to accommodate modern needs.
The Experience Economy - A better description of our modern economy than simply ‘the information age’ or ‘knowledge economy’.
Creatives ahead of the financial crisis - How the preferences of creatives, and not so big homes, are better suited to a sustainable economy.
How the creative class relates to the economy - Visual evidence of how creatives grow an economy.

Innovative examples…
The most innovative government agency in the U.S. - The New York City Department of Transportation.
NYC’s stunning ‘streets to plazas’ program - A model program for creating pedestrian-only destinations.
Ten defining principles for a true green community - Benchmark principles and communities for zero carbon, zero waste communities.
Paris launches world’s largest bike sharing system - No bike sharing system in the world comes close.
Elements hits the Washington Post front page - A crowdsourced restaurant gets national exposure.

Recently dropped from the Top 20
More evidence that ‘not so big homes’ are in - Smaller homes are the creative American Dream
Affordability’s secret weapon - the ‘ipad’ - A stylish 380 s.f. one-bedroom in the UK.

What’s the big deal with how aesthetically pleasing a place is? Well, according to the Place and Happiness Survey, it’s the most important of any quality regarding what matters to people the most. Thus, within this understanding, we present Forbes Travel’s America’s Prettiest Towns, based on the following very subjective qualities used by the judges:

- exceptional, unique urban form
- organic
- haunting beauty
- picturesque
- how the towns makes one ‘feel’
- local character and real charm
- aesthetic appeal on a human scale
- personal preferences like tradition, the kind of places that don’t exist much anymore, and flower boxes on windows

...and my personal favorite, the postcard test.

Finally, here’s their list of the 20 ‘prettiest’:

Northeast
Annapolis, Maryland
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Hanover, New Hampshire
Cape May, New Jersey
Lake Placid, New York
New Hope, Pennsylvania
Newport, Rhode Island

Southwest
Bisbee, Arizona
Flagstaff, Arizona
Mendocino, California
Bodie, California
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Marfa, Texas

Galena, Illinois
Park City, Utah
Savannah, Georgia
Aspen, Colorado

What’s the prettiest town in the U.S., or the world, in your opinion?

September 2008 is a landmark day for anything having to do with green dance clubs.  That’s the launch month for both Club Watt in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Surya in London, both being presented as sustainable/ecological dance clubs featuring a floor that generates energy from the people dancing on top of it.

It’s been talked about since 2005 by a group now referred to as the Sustainable Dance Club, formed by a group of Dutch ecological inventors, engineers and investors using a technology called ‘piezoelectricity’, based on the dance floor panels having about a centimeter of play.

Each dance club has a different company behind them - Sustainable Dance Club developed Club Watt, and Club4Climate created Surya. A little bit of competition may be healthy. For the ecological record, Club Watt claims 30% electricity reduction and 50% water, waste, CO2 reduction, and Surya says the floor will eventually produce 60% of the club’s electricity. At Surya, tables are made of magazines, the walls out of old mobile phones. Both have waterless urinals and toilets using rainwater.

Read about the technology in the New York Times, Partying Helps Power a Dutch Nightclub, and check out a video explaining Club Watt’s eco features.

Thanks to Marianne Drowne for the reference.

The Bearden Arts Building, a crowdsourced development (restored building in front, new building in back) in the once bustling/now revitalizing H Street/Atlas District of Washington DC, has released the following triple bottom line goals, co-developed by its beta community, as a causal benchmark for any development:

Financial/Economic
The Bearden Arts Building will meet required member rates of return, serve as an appreciating investment for its homeowners, and provide a revenue source for strategic environmental organization partners. The project will demonstrate that urban-infill ‘green’ residential condominiums can be attainably priced and profitable with or without the use of government subsidy, serving as a model suitable to be widely replicated in other locations.

Environmental
The Bearden Arts Building will be built using sustainable design and construction practices based on the Green Communities Criteria, specifically created for attainably-priced developments. As a model of elegant and practical green living, the residences will be efficiency style units with low carbon footprints. Parking spaces will be reduced compared to new housing developments, resulting in more residents that walk, ride bicycles, take the bus or metro, and use short-term rentals (Smartbike, Zipcar).

Btw, when they say ‘attainably-priced’, they mean it.  In a city where any new housing unit starts at $300K, the objective here is to provide homes beginning at under $200K, partly inspired by Cubix Yerba Buena in San Francisco.

Follow this project’s story here when the developer was first introduced to the idea of crowdsourcing and here when they assigned that process to a project.

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is related to readers seeking to buy homes that fit the vibe of what this site is all about. For years, I really had no answer for them. Finally, Brent Roberts, who worked for one of the most innovative, creative developers in the world, Streuver Brothers (see triple bottom line industrial loft redevelopments here and here), decided to strike out on his own and suggested providing that very service.

Long story short, Brent committed to the principles illustrated and presented via the 1400 vignettes on this site, licensed the brand, combined that with his model of providing sincere customer service and launched CoolTownLivingDC. It follows the crowdsourcing model of building its service based on the direct input of its initial customers, especially as described in this entry, Here Comes Everybody. Thus, until at least the end of November as he fine tunes the service, he’s promising a third of his commission back to his first clients under the new brand.  He’s also already been helping people find homes for a few years.

By all means, this is not being presented here as the start of a company, but the beginning of a model for other realtors around the country to learn from if they want to truly relate to urban creatives, especially since this service is only available in the Washington DC area. What makes the service unique:

- Only homes with a Walk Score of at least 75 will be provided or listed.
- Special attention will be given to finding ‘not so big’ homes, at ‘not so big’ prices.
- Those who want to crowdsource their own homes will be exclusively introduced to such ongoing opportunities, even initiating them.
- Clients will be invited into social networks where they can network with others in their neighborhood to crowdsource third places they feel should exist, but don’t.

You may be noticing a lot of bicycle posts lately, reflecting a trend of low cost, low energy, low maintenance transportation as gas prices have reached a new plateau. The same is happening for housing, as cities and developers partner to build homes at price points (and thus sizes) that those in the workforce (ie from teachers to police officers) can actually afford.

San Francisco leads the way in this regard, first with attainably-priced Cubix Yerba Buena and its efficiencies, and now a trio of new affordable housing developments (government subsidized) downtown, one of which includes market-rate units. They are as follows:

125 Mason Street, Tenderloin neighborhood: 81 apartments of one to four bedrooms, presented in an 8-story building fronting 14 stories behind it, with rent starting at $1079/month.

Railton Place, Tenderloin neighborhood: 110 units in a nine-story building catering to youth leaving foster care, adults recovering from substance abuse and formerly homeless veterans, paired with a community center featuring a full-court gym, indoor pool, computer labs and a dance studio. Keep in mind this building and its amenities serve, and is embraced by, the local community.

Mosaica 601, Mission District: 151 units in four stories that reflect the neighborhood fabric, including 93 family apartments, 24 studios for formerly homeless elders, and 34 condos (21 for first-time buyers, 13 at market rate). Fitting the Mission’s creative vibe, 12 ground-floor spaces will be reserved for light industry or design production along a cobblestone alleyway.

The thing to remember is pricing relevance. The median home price in San Francisco is $749,000, so having units starting at $279,000 (Cubix Yerba Buena) brand new is an unprecedented opportunity. In other words, take any median home price of a city and reduce it to a third - that’s significant.  Read more about the trio of developments in the SF Chronicle article, Housing projects benefit more than just tenants, which speaks to how the buildings enhance its surrounding community.

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 shortage of inspired articles on this site documenting the DOT’s commitment to establishing pedestrian-first places in New York City:
Streets to plazas examples.
Summer Streets pedestrian-only Saturdays.
The pedestrianized Broadway Boulevard.
The Streets to Plazas Program, one of the most compelling programs in the U.S., but not mentioned in the video, which goes to show they’re focused on results.

Click here for the Sustainable Streets plan she mentions at the end which summarizes the DOT’s vision.

Here’s a pretty significant sign of the times - both the University of New England and Ripon College in Wisconsin are giving every single one of its freshmen a free personalized bike. They’re not cheap clunkers either, the bicycles provided at the University of New England retail for $480. Turns out cheap bikes aren’t well taken care of.

Sure, the argument is that students are paying for it somehow, but the universities are benefitting financially by avoiding the construction of costly parking garages (they really are a budget crippling expense since they have no inherent educational return on investment) as well as providing the social benefit of a more humanized walking, biking culture and physical fitness as well - as one student put it, “Maybe instead of gaining the freshman 15 I’ll lose it.”

One motivation for the personalized bikes is that on-campus bike sharing programs often resulted in theft and vandalism, so perhaps ownership would provide better security.  It’s also a great program for alumni donors to contribute toward, to help sponsor bikes for everyone.

Has it made a difference? 75% of Ripon College freshmen brought cars with them last year. Only 25% did this year. Now that’s making an impact.

Read more about this and university bike sharing programs in the NY Times article, With Free Bikes, Challenging Car Culture on Campus.

What makes the Dining Hall in the Little Creatures pale ale microbrewery such a popular destination in Melbourne, Australia? It could be that it converges two kinds of places creatives crave into one they can relate to - a third place.

The Beerhouse: - In Germany, the beerhouse is the standard. Characterized by long wooden communal tables and Germany’s famous Hofbrauhaus, patrons enjoyed themselves as if they were at an indoor picnic, while dancers, singers and musicians provided a truly festive atmosphere.

The Loft: - Owing to tradition, beerhouses are typically in historic buildings, but the Little Creatures Dining Hall is a contemporary interpretation. Converting a light structure warehouse, there’s a definitive loft-like vibe with the open airy feeling of the high ceilings, the rawness of the exposed ductwork and steel structure, and even a mezzanine of more intimate spaces, just as you would find in a residential loft.

The third place: - However, it’s the combining of the two that provides a remixing of not only the beer drinking experience, but more importantly, a social experience that feels fresh and current where one can meet friends (and strangers) on a regular basis.

Thanks to Springwise for the reference, and photo by snazzsmemoirs.