Author Archive
Learning from an Italian resort: CoolTowns have two unlikely sources of inspiration. One is Italy, home of
The Block, the Street and the Building: Today the blog focuses on the last of three key components of
The Charter: The Neighborhood: Today the blog focuses on the second of three key components of
The Charter of the New Urbanism: The Charter for the New Urbanism is essentially an executive summary followed
What does Smart Growth have to do with job growth?: A lot! Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know it by reading the mainstream press.
Grocery shopping – something for everyone: Three key attributes of CoolTowns are choice, convenience and diversity. That’s certainly
This is a Safeway?: Since just about every large-scale supermarket in today’s ultra-competitive grocery world is
The ‘good neighbor’ supermarket: Typically when a large-scale supermarket moves into a neighborhood it brings with
Investing in cool schools: OK, so there’s grand visions of what future CoolTown schools could be,
School trends helping CoolTowns: What if every sixth grader had a laptop? What if every seventh
It’s the schools, stupid!: While kids love people-oriented*, walkable, entertainment-rich towns, their “bosses” (parents) won’t have
Kids love cool towns too: Can a town designed by and for creatives, gen xers/yers and knowledge
Investing in local retail: If you’ve been tracking the local vs. national retail economic impact numbers,
Better than Target?: Target is easily the department store of choice by urbanites and creatives
Selling music – locally: The next generation of music buyers won’t be shopping at Wal-mart and
“Secede from Starbucks Nation”: Would you believe that’s a city campaign slogan? Excelsior, Minnesota. “We’re just
Buying in your local community: If you believe that what goes around comes around, you may think
Phase II: Building the Physical Community: Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program… Phase II: Building the
Phase I: Building the Human Community: Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program… OK, we’re committed to
Do businesses believe in CoolTowns?: Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program… Do businesses believe in
The CoolTown Program: A great vision doesn’t really matter if it can’t be implemented. Implementation
Investing in ‘people places’ over parking: So what does it take to build a place where people quickly
A people village in San Diego: Yesterday’s blog diagrammed the concept of hiding cars on a neighborhood scale.
Hiding a lot more than 17 cars: Yesterday’s blog demonstrated how to hide 17 cars. But what about 500
Making cars disappear: In business terms, cars are a pure expense. They’re also expensive for