Rob Walton (Walton Family Foundation/Wal-Mart) and Peter Seligman (Conservation International) are at the Aspen Ideas Festival offering insights on scaling sustainability.  These lessons (some stated, some embellished from their remarks) seem to apply to urban leaders working to get smart ideas for next generation cities to a tipping point:

1.  Decide what it is you are attempting to get to scale and communicate it clearly. (Not particularly clear from CI's work.)
2.  Imagine what it means to get to scale and, again, communicate it clearly.
3.  Be aspirational and just go there.  If you don't make it, you will at least made progress toward something that matters.
4.  Position the change you seek as desirable, rather than a sacrifice to quality of life.
5.  Identify prospective partners with the scale and expertise you don't.
6.  Gain the ability to evaluate the impact plans will have on the things you care about. (CI has used this with NDRC in China.)
7.  Add the change you seek to the evaluation of personal performance. (Wal-Mart has done this with sustainability.)
8.  Be passionate.  Turn people (especially young people) on.

Do you have ideas to add?

With young adults 30 percent more likely to live within 3 miles of central business districts today (up from 10 percent in 1980 and 12 percent in 1990), access to jobs, educational opportunities, people and ideas, and the fact that new research points to real estate in more walkable neighborhoods holding its value better than in less walkable neighborhoods, (not to mention the inherent advantages of city living: variety, convenience, discovery and opportunity) we were not the least bit surprised to hear that the latest population data point to something we've known for almost a decade: cities are growing. 

That was the lead story in this morning's USA Today and then reported on public radio's Marketplace Morning Report.

Nevertheless, this is welcome news for climate, health, innovation and idea velocity.

Read the full story in USA Today here, and listen to the Marketplace piece by clicking here. You can also read a blog post by Marketplace's Scott Jagow on the story here.

Here's a remarkable new piece of technology that maps London according to price, commute time, and other attributes (even how scenic various neighborhoods are).  It's called Mapumental and a short video on the technology ought to be viewed by all urban leaders.  (Stick with the video.  The capability of the technology doesn't become clear until 1.22 min in.)

Good news for city leaders looking for different ideas.

According to Marcia Caines, in this blog, the design trend at the recent International DMY Design Festival in Berlin was greater emphasis on “public space, recycling, re-use and open source technologies”, which she sees as a result of the economic and social changes of late.  The theme of the event highlighting ‘design that makes a difference’ can’t hurt either.

City leaders may be interested in the ‘You May [take the public space]’ furniture, designed for public space.

The bright red wooden benches “that seat up to 15 people are the creation of the Vienna based designer’s Karl Emilio Pircher and Fidel Peugeot and are a direct attempt to empower people to repossess public space and explore its potential.” They aim to encourage people to “meet, network and take inspiration from public space”. 

We may be seeing more of this type of design around, given the growth of initiatives re-claiming the streets, like this one in New York.

Marcia also mentions this rather novel approach to city planning by Hans Venhuizen:

At the symposium, “he described the practice of ‘game planning’, a game played with inhabitants to start the design process in planning. Based on board game rules and principles he creates different group identities with the purpose of causing conflict, such as pioneers versus housing consumers, for example. The groups compete and the result is a plan from which a landscape emerges. The game develops over different phases and ends in a lobby, where the only players who cannot be eliminated are the present inhabitants. This method involves all kinds of elements that create an imperfect town, which according to Hans Venhuizen is the ideal town.  The ‘game planning’ method provides an innovative solution to urban planning processes that blend existing natural and cultural heritage with contemporary culture and the constantly changing environment.”

In a presentation last night to young professionals in Chicago on the ways to turn around America’s global image, Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide and the founder and president of Business for Diplomatic Action, offered an interesting perspective on ‘recruiting’ people to the U.S. (or at least to the idea of it).

Among the essentials, he suggested, are: to provide dignity, provide jobs and opportunity, and offer a chance to leave a legacy.

Entrepreneurs are capitalizing on the natural advantages cities offer to kids.  Urban Baby Tours, highlighted in this Pop City article, offers walking tours that explore all the city of Pittsburgh has to offer for parents and their little ones.  What a great ambassador for downtown family living.  My guess is that once parents see all the free amenities the city has to offer their kids - fountains, galleries, parks, people-watching - they'll be back for more...and maybe to stay.

Share your experience in this survey by our colleague, Stacey Randall of SBR Consulting.  As smart cities continue to focus on talent as a key lever for success, this study could shine new light on unemployed young talent and perhaps what you can do to snatch them up.  We'll post the findings when they are released later this year.

You've been in this downtown before.  It feels so disconnected that no one even thinks of walking.  Instead, they'll hop in the car to drive three short blocks.

Hartford, CT, will unveil a plan tomorrow to address the problem.  Tom Condon of the Hartford Courant previews the plan with generall good reviews.

This story keeps running so I finally have to comment.  It's the story that the Obama Administration is considering backing a plan to shrink deteriorating American cities by bulldozing entire neighborhoods and returning the land to nature. The idea, which originated in Flint, Mich. -- cratered by the auto industry implosion -- is to persuade disintegrating and depopulated cities to embrace their shrinkage, destroy abandoned infrastructure, save money and thereby stave off fiscal ruin, as columnist Gregory Rodriquez put it.

While he's right to be discomfited by the thought of massive clearance (Roberta Gratz condemned the idea in much stronger terms on Citiwire.), I think dismissing the idea out of hand is a mistake.

Dismissal ignores one big issue:  If the metro area has stalled out and its population is shrinking, then you ought to make the footprint smaller in order to make it more vibrant.  Otherwise you have too many people rambling around on too much land with too many houses to fill.

What happened in an earlier era with urban renewal was that population in the metro area was either growing or shifting around -- just not in the central city.

The key is not to enable a stagnant or shrinking population to shift around onto new greenfields while abandoning the older city.  That is expensive and devastating because it undermines the very urbanism needed to make innovation and other good things happen.

Imagine that you could animate your streets with the kind of entertainment found on the Ramblas in Barcelona.  Now, imagine that the animation has a different purpose -- to teach math, science and foreign languages in exciting and fun ways that are present on the streets.  Imagine.