Archive for Creative Cities
March 9, 2010 · Filed under Authenticity, Creative Cities, Diversity, Economics, Families, Gentrification, Place making, Social Justice

Sharon Zukin had come to Greenwich Village and the Shrine of St. Jane not as a pilgrim but to wax sardonic.
Ms. Zukin, a Brooklyn College sociology professor, stared at the modest red-brick town house on Hudson Street that once was home to Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” celebrated the joyous hodgepodge of New York’s neighborhoods: the working-class tailor and the artist, the Italian grocer and the writer, living cheek by jowl.
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Popularity: 4% [?]
February 12, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Planning, Public Space, Revitalization, Urban Design

Lower Manhattan, specifically Greenwich South, which is bordered by the Financial District, the World Trade Center site, Battery Park, and Battery Park City. This urban plan to reinvigorate the neighborhood is based on five overarching principles to improve connectivity and resident and business retention. From this plan emerged a 10-team charrette to develop specific building strategies and a list of action items to jump-start redevelopment.
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Popularity: 30% [?]
February 12, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Grassroots, Social Networks, Urban Actions

Over the past couple of years, coworking has been gaining momentum and attention. It is bringing a new and more flexible way of working to cities by helping people to take advantage of the benefits of interaction and collaboration. Breakout! is taking coworking a step further - pushing people to think entirely outside of the office “box”, and using all of the spaces a city has to offer to do work. By using the city as the office, Breakout! brings work back to the streets – to the places where work, play and leisure have happened for centuries.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
February 11, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Grassroots, Happiness, Public Life, Social Networks, Urban Actions

Is it just me or, is the modern urban neighborhood getting remarkably old-fashioned? In the Los Feliz (locals pronounce this los-FEE-liz) community of Los Angeles where I live, it feels like everything that was old is new (and smart) again. Things my grandparents in Kentucky have always done—checking in on neighbors, sharing a new crop of tomatoes—seem not so much folksy as generally just a good way to live, even if you are in the big city.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
February 4, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Gentrification, Grassroots, Homelessness, Housing, Public Space, Real Estate, Shelter, Social Justice

Hamburg has been trying to woo the much-coveted “creative class” for years in a bid to secure its future. Now the city has become the front line in a bitter conflict over gentrification, with artists squatting buildings in protest against investment plans and members of the far-left scene attacking private property — and even police.
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Popularity: 13% [?]
January 23, 2010 · Filed under Authenticity, Beauty, Creative Cities, Economics, Planning

Architecture clearly illustrates the social, environmental, economic, and aesthetic costs of ignoring beauty. We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud gestures of people who want to seize our attention but give nothing in return.
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Popularity: 18% [?]
January 19, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Density, Diversity, Planning, Urban Design

The city imposes notions of sustainability in its decisions on what, where and how to build. Still, it’s not quite the utopia.
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Popularity: 24% [?]
January 19, 2010 · Filed under Architecture, Authenticity, Beauty, Creative Cities, Place making

www.stuckincustoms.com
Economists have argued that individuals choose locations that maximize their economic position and broad utility. Sociologists have found that social networks and social interactions shape our satisfaction with our communities. Research, across various social science fields, finds that beauty has a significant effect on various economic and social outcomes. Our research uses a large survey sample of individuals across US locations to examine the effects of beauty and aesthetics on community satisfaction.
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Popularity: 21% [?]
November 11, 2009 · Filed under Creative Cities, Place branding, Revitalization

Through a unique methodology of Engagement Place Branding, one of Canada’s most neglected inner city communities (East Village) is an example of how to brand a community in ways that result in buy-in, without spending any advertising dollars by allowing the community itself to help build the brand. The nucleus of the program was creating a magazine that told the story of East Village from the year 2020 (an alternative to a traditional “vision” document that sits on shelves and collects dust, (the magazine has been subscribed to by the public and carried across the world by the city Mayor).
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Popularity: 33% [?]
November 11, 2009 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Economics, Social Justice

Recently, there was a bit of a stir when geographer Aaron Renn posted an article on New Geography alleging that “progressive urbanism” was advocating for a model of urbanism that was melanin-deficient. Now, this study was flawed in many ways – the sampling excluded New York, Chicago and L.A as progressive urban models, it equated non-black population with white, which is a major mistake especially in the Southwest, it left out San Francisco, and so on.
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Popularity: 18% [?]
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