About Us

What we do

Cooltown Studios is the only blog exclusively focused on crowdsourced placemaking (see FAQ here), that is, sourcing crowds to create community-oriented places people love. It’s a free public service (including all 1600+ archived entries, each with a unique image) committed toward building inspiring triple-bottom-line places to live, work, learn and play.

For implementation, check out Cooltown Beta Communities, a consulting firm which applies crowdsourced placemaking to natural cultural districts and the destination places within them. The crowdsourced placemaking groups, initiated by creatives, are known as beta communities. Check out a network of them at the Crowdsource Placemaking Lab, where you can start your own, and see their favorite places at Cooltown Places, where you can submit your own.

For a more comprehensive report on crowdsourced placemaking, download Crowdsourcing Cool Places for Creatives.

Who are we?

Neil Takemoto is the founding director of Cooltown Beta Communities, a crowdsource-based placemaking and economic development firm codeveloping natural cultural districts with creatives. His work over the last 14 years has been committed to the development of places with significant economic, environmental and social benefit, currently working in Syracuse, New Orleans and Washington DC.

Neil is the founder of CoolTown Studios, a ‘crowdsourcing cool places for creatives’ blog/news site that attracts 40,000 unique visitors a month. It has been featured in Architect Magazine and the ULI’s annual developers conference.

He is also the cofounder of Bubbly, a crowdsourcing web application, and Mobfuse, a crowdsourcing consulting firm.

With Andres Duany, Neil co-founded the National Town Builders Association in 1997, the only business trade group of Smart Growth/New Urbanism real estate developers. Prior to that, he founded a national nonprofit educational clearinghouse for the New Urbanism field.

Contact

Cooltown Studios
Adams Morgan, Washington DC
Email | 202.556.1030

About The Author

neilkt