This post includes an excerpt from my eBook - The 10 Traits of VIBRANT Cities. Just like a vibrant region needs vibrant cities, vibrant neighborhoods are the building blocks of vibrant cities. A city that lacks vibrant urban neighborhoods cannot become a thriving community. What is a Neighborhood Anyway? First, we need to define what a neighborhood really is. The term neighborhood is one of those words in the English language that is thrown around too loosely. Like the words love or … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2013
Do you need to spend millions to improve your city?
What does it take to improve your city in a major way? If you assume that you need massive quantities of money and many years of effort to achieve any kind of transformative change, you would be wrong. Check out the TED Talk below from Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City's transportation commissioner. Sadik-Khan describes how Times Square (and many other areas in New York) was converted from car-crazed chaos to pedestrian paradise with little more than new street paint and a bunch of lawn … [Read more...]
How important are public spaces for vibrant cities?
What does the phrase vibrant city mean to you? What types of mental images pop up when you think of a vibrant city? When you think of a vibrant urban place, the images that most often come to mind are the public spaces in our cities. Lively avenues and streetscapes full of pedestrians, shops, and cafes. Public plazas filled with people from all walks of life. These are the types of public places every city needs yet most cities are sorely lacking, according to out-spoken urban planning … [Read more...]
How can we fix the suburbs?
Even if we assume that suburban sprawl is no longer a significant factor in the growth of our cities, we are still left with all of the suburban development that was built in the last several decades across America. So, the question is: what the heck are we supposed to do with all of our existing suburbs? How do we go about fixing them? The two TED Talks below address this question. The first TED Talk from Elen Dunham-Jones, Georgia Tech planning professor, and author of Retrofitting … [Read more...]
What happens when big cities try to micro-manage land uses?
A minimum level of land use regulation by local governments is necessary for cities to function properly, especially big cities. Imagine the worst-case scenarios of a city with zero land use regulation: a landfill next door to a pre-school, or a row of houses within an animal slaughtering complex. However, big cities often go overboard with their regulatory powers. Watch the TED Talk below for a great example of ridiculous local government regulations in Los Angeles. Now, a city that … [Read more...]
Is suburbia dead?
It once seemed like suburban growth was destined to continue forever. The expansion of suburbia dominated the U.S. landscape from the 1950s to the 1990s. However, in the last couple decades, suburban growth has clearly slowed down, especially since the housing market collapse that began in the mid-2000s. The question now is whether suburban sprawl will continue, or is suburban growth essentially dead? Check out this interview with real estate mogul Sam Zell for one answer: via … [Read more...]
How Important are Your City’s Street Names?
Can you imagine New York without Broadway? Or Los Angeles without Hollywood Boulevard? Or New Orleans without Bourbon Street? Or Austin without 6th Street? How about Paris without the Champs-Elysees? Check out this list of the Top 10 most famous streets in the U.S. Clearly, the names of important streets in major cities play a role in creating a unique brand and identity for those cities. I'm willing to bet that most people had the same mental images that I had when reading the five … [Read more...]
10 Small Cities With Urban Amenities That Most Big Cities Lack
The urbanSCALE rating system is currently focused only on the 100 largest cities in the U.S. (we had to start somewhere!) but I realize that there are many, many examples of vibrant urban places in smaller cities across the country. This blog post is a tribute to small cities with unique urban amenities, attractions, or infrastructure that are not found in many cities that are much larger. Boulder, CO (2012 Pop. 101,808) – Pearl Street Mall Pedestrian-only streets have been attempted in … [Read more...]
The Most Prosperous Downtowns of the 21st Century (Part 3 of 3)
This is the third in a series of three entries on thriving downtowns in the largest 100 U.S. cities. The first post here focused on growth rates of downtown population and jobs. The second post here also looked at the growth of downtown jobs and population in each city, but focused on absolute numbers instead of percentages. This post will focus on each downtown’s importance to its respective urban region. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog series, we looked at growth rates of downtowns in … [Read more...]
