Our President and CEO Carol Coletta was in Dallas this week where she spoke of the shift in housing demands away from suburbia at the 11^th annual meeting of the North Texas Housing Coalition. The leaders of the new economy – the young, college-educated and highly mobile members of…

Here is a great example of under-utilized talent being put to work in new ways.  In this initiative that taps young people’s intuitive grasp of technology, students aged 12 - 16 take on a mentoring role as cell phone ‘coaches’.

“The program’s goal is to improve their…

Some quick lines from today's conversations...

"Creativity is the only inextinguishable resource we have."

There are 3 principles of the creative ecology from John Howkins: 

1.  Everyone is creative.
2.  Creativity needs freedom.
3.  Freedom needs markets.

Creativity does not equal the arts. Creativity is not the same as innovation.

Diverse groups translate their knowledge into innovation better than homogenous groups.  This makes it vital that cities find ways to enhance, map and tap into the diverse knowledge available to them to better their creative performance.

Identifying, encouraging, and accessing varied knowledge domains and talent pools as a way…

Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, is a delightful maverick who insists that any city can be transformed. In an interview with CNN, Lerner insisted that "every city can improve its quality of life in less than three years, no matter the scale or the financial conditions.  All you…