Entries tagged with Innovation
Design Museum Boston
February 26, 2010
What happens when you pair two designers over a slice of pizza with the back of a pizza box as their blank slate?
The Boston design community gets a new museum to promote local design.
But it won’t look like any other museum.
The nomadic Design Museum Boston will occupy…
City After Life
February 8, 2010
How can a city reinvent itself when a big anchor company relocates away from its birth-place?
Eindhoven in the Netherlands is exploring just that question. Work is underway to develop a ‘creative city’ with the aim of bringing new life to the neighborhood.
When The Netherlands’ largest redevelopment…
Patronage for Cities
February 3, 2010
CityPatron is an interesting experiment on the potential of crowdsourcing for supporting people to contribute their ideas and efforts to their cities. It aims to generate start-up capital for city-focused projects, based on a business model of patronage.
Here’s the idea:
CityBuilders who have a track record of creating public…
Metro Innovation
January 19, 2010
How will you create jobs today and for the next 100 years?
That’s the key question that has inspired this whitepaper just released by Elizabeth Edwards. The paper outlines “why startups, specifically venture-backed startups, are the #1 driver of job growth in the economy and how venture capital…
Alternate Ideas for San Francisco Span
January 13, 2010
In the spirit of breathing new life into disused infrastructure, UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design graduate students were given the challenge of thinking big about repurposing the trussed steel span from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island.
Their task was not “simply to recycle, but to renew the steel bones…
Designs for the Big Apple
January 4, 2010
Designers rose to the challenges laid out by city leaders in New York City recently, to propose some new and creative solutions.
GOOD Design NYC I and II, run by our colleagues at GOOD and co-sponsored by CEOs for Cities, celebrated the unique ways that designers can serve…
Designs on Cleveland
December 23, 2009
Have a look at these exciting new designs that aim to revitalize Cleveland’s downtown area by rethinking its main public space, Public Square.
James Corner Field Operations, best known for their work on New York’s High Line Park, has been asked by two local non-profits Parkworks and The Downtown Cleveland…
Reinventing Business-Civic Partnerships
December 16, 2009
Excerpts from Carol Coletta's remarks to the Cities of Service "Building the Blueprint Meeting" in Philadelphia Dec. 3, 2009.
Not that long ago, there was an obvious reason for business to be involved in community. In any mid-size city, there were three big local banks, three local department stores, two…
One Prize
December 10, 2009
With an enormous amount of space dedicated to lawn areas that consume 7 billion gallons of water a day, rising transportation costs detracting from food budgets, and only 2% of food grown locally, this competition urges a transition “from Mowing to Growing”.
The One Prize is a design competition for…
A Kickstart For New Ideas
October 22, 2009
If your entrepreneurs and creative communities are looking for alternative funding models, here’s a site that offers itself as a platform for funding new endeavors for artists, designers, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, inventors, explorers and more.
Kickstarter taps into ideas of crowdsourcing as a means of funding “creativity…
Learning From ArtPrize
October 2, 2009
ArtPrize from Above
September 29, 2009
Just received this picture of the crowds at ArtPrize in downtown Grand Rapids. Organizers tell us the crowds are even larger than expected.
Creative Infill
July 28, 2009
This article by Julia Levitt highlights an emerging trend with exciting potential for our cities – the creative infill, re-use and sharing of under-used spaces.
Using the example of the restaurant Everest Momo Shack that shares space with a burrito kitchen, Levitt challenges us to think about…
Working from Anywhere
July 26, 2009
It turns out that people need people. Ah, yes. That's why cities were invented. And that's why urbanness makes increasing sense to the way we live today.
The Washington Post has a story on today's digital nomads that makes the point. Clad in shorts, T-shirts and sandals, these nomads…
Mobile Cultural Spaces
July 9, 2009
Cityspinning, an organization developing a platform to seed new ways of using public and unused spaces with a series of interventions in Bangalore and Delhi, is exploring how mobile cultural spaces might help make a city “less alienating and fragmented”.
The results of a competition, in which…
DMY Design Festival: Same, Same But Different
June 25, 2009
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…
Shrinking Cities
June 22, 2009
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…
A Call to Action
June 16, 2009
This morning I learned about Chicago's Red Line Green Roofs. I was instantly intrigued by the project's name. Underway in Chicago’s 48th Ward, it' an effort to activate a neighborhood coalition to design and create 50,000 square feet of green roofs along one of the city's busiest elevated…
The Sorry State of Transport in America
June 3, 2009
Daron Dierkes, who has lived abroad for three years, posted this on MyCity last night comparing U.S. transportation with that in Asia:
"I have lived abroad for about three years now. I spent a year in Seoul, a few months in Barclelona and around, and the past year and…
Ryan Avent Talks Sense
June 2, 2009
Another brilliant blog post from Ryan Avent who writes,
Who Wouldn't Want to Live Here
May 14, 2009
Do you know Paju Bookcity? I didn't until I found Dana Cho's lovely blog, Goodspace, devoted to design and innovation.
Am I the only one who would think I had died and gone to heaven if I lived in Bookcity? Ok, maybe it's close to a theme park…
Gearing Up for a New Oregon
May 3, 2009
Joe Cortright wrote an important piece for today's Oregonian on why Oregon's economy has faltered and how Oregon should prepare to come back.
Joe warns against believing that when the economy comes back, it will look just like the economy we knew before the recession hit. Clinging to the…
Hobbling Arts Hobbles Innovation
May 1, 2009
Why fund arts and culture? That is question tackled by Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein in this compelling argument, where they challenge us to imagine the results of not having these “luxuries”.
Have a look at the wealth of examples that emerge when they see “what…
Turning the Tide
April 2, 2009
I am speaking at the Turning the Tide event today and tomorrow. Good news is that the proceedings are being offered via a free, live webcast from Fort Baker. Watch Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer and Goldman Environmental Prize Winners, artists, scientists, CEOs, journalists, educators, and young activists plan action for…
Old Ways vs. New Ways
April 1, 2009
Reading Matt Bai's short piece in NYT Sunday Magazine contrasting the culture embodied by GM (and many "old economy" companies) and business culture today, I was struck by this observation: "...younger Americans... have largely dispensed with the mythology of the infallible institution. Transparency and reinvention, rather than stability and…
Time for Cities to Come Out of Dark Ages
March 30, 2009
Nicolai Ouroussoff must have been eavesdropping on my week. His column in today's NYT was headlined "Reinventing America's Cities: The Time Is Now." Truer words have never been written.
"We long for a bold urban vision," he wrote. "With their crowded neighborhoods and web of public services, cities are…
The Magic of a Creative City
March 29, 2009
Kudos to Jamie Moses, Artvoice publisher in Buffalo, for his magical and brutally honest remarks upon accepting the city's annual Arts Award. If you want to understand the power of a creative city, you must read his speech.
Impressive in Syracuse
March 28, 2009
Thursday, I spent the day with Marilyn Higgins at Syracuse University seeing the community work inspired (and pushed hard) by Chancellor Nancy Cantor. Nancy and Marilyn are both smart, can-do leaders who are working to give downtown Syracuse and its Near West Side neighborhood new energy.
The Connective Corridor…
Cities Get Serious about Small Business
March 23, 2009
I'm seeing more of these kinds of workshops...
This Thursday, I will be hosting another Shop 52 Small Business Seminar. My Shop 52 seminars provide education and resources to small business owners and individuals interested in opening their own small business. This one will focus on how small businesses can…
Missive from Florence
March 18, 2009
As I arrived in San Diego for our CEOs for Cities meeting, I received this from our very much missed colleague Joe Cortright who is in Florence.
Hope you are doing well at the national meeting in San Diego. If I were anywhere but here, I'd have definitely…
Amsterdam as Smart City
March 16, 2009
Amsterdam is going green fast, and Business Week has the story. Amsterdam will complete its first-round of green infrastructure investments by 2012, making it one of the first and most ambitious adopters of the smart city concept.
The Tipping Point
March 3, 2009
As we consider the shovel ready road and bridge projects of the stimulus package, consider this important analysis by our colleague Joe Cortright of the impact modest declines in auto travel have on congestion. And how that could save us big, big money...
Last year, the US made more…
Green Jobs Potential
February 28, 2009
I found a partial answer to my question about green job at this post on Environmental and Urban Economics blog. Duke's Gary Gereffi has reviewed the green jobs industry and identified promising green jobs in these industries: promising green manufacturing industries;
LED Lighting, High-Performance Windows, Auxiliary Power Units, Concentrating…
So What Is a Green Job?
February 27, 2009
I'm not sure, but according to the task force on the middle class meeting in Philly today, a green job pays 10-20% more than -- what? -- a non-green job. Certainly, the $787 billion stimulus provides a market for green jobs with its $22.5 billion for green investments, including $5…
Matching Democracy to Media Reach
February 26, 2009
Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarguen's comments to the WeMedia conference just made my hair stand on end.
He pointed out that there is, for the first time, a disconnect between media reach and where democracy happens. While local newspapers and radio are disppearing, online media…
SeeClickFix
February 26, 2009
Power to the community is the tag line. Go see SeeClickFix to see WeMedia's commercial amount.
It's a Googlemaps mashup that uses crowdsourcing to report problems to public officials and get them fixed. The start up is located in New Haven where the service is the most developed. There…
One Way to Stimulate Visits to Downtown
February 26, 2009
Got this in the mail today from friends in Cape Town and had to share...
Retail Therapy is not only about shopping, it is also about winning. But why hold an ordinary competition, when we can play games?
Since Monday 23 February, the Internet and the streets of…
Hard Choices
February 26, 2009
Will the financial meltdown help cities make some of the hard decisions they must make? Ryan Avant has a nice discussion going on the topic on his blog. The answer to this question will separate the cities that become the next generation of Great American Cities and those that…
Will the Crash Reshape America?
February 24, 2009
Rich Florida says it will. Citing research from a number of sources, he makes a case in the current Atlantic Monthly that can be summarized as follows:
+ The current crisis makes the end of a whole way of life in America.
+ The recession will accelerate the…
The Biggest Threat
February 24, 2009
According to FedEx Founder and CEO Fred Smith, the U.S. dependence on imported oil "represents the biggest single threat to our nation's economy and national security," after terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Smith is a member of the Energy Security Leadership Council, and today at the…
Recovery.gov Goes Live
February 17, 2009
Civilian Service
January 28, 2009
In keeping with the theme of this week’s City Trends report, Instant Karma, here is an example of one company working to engage the public in community service. Starbucks, as part of its Shared Planet initiative, intends to motivate people to 1 million hours of community…
Gee, Why Didn't We Think of That?
January 14, 2009
PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL ANNOUNCES $503 MILLION-PLUS "PORTLAND JOB
CREATION AND ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE" TO FAST-TRACK AN ESTIMATED
4,985 PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS
Plan also boosts housing development, business assistance and worker
retraining programs
January 13, 2009
PORTLAND, ORE. — Portland City Council at City Hall today announced a
Land Sharing
January 13, 2009
Trend Central reports that land sharing is growing in Canada and on the U.S. West Coast. Here's their report...
Teenage Tech Tutors
January 8, 2009
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…
Crowded Streets Correlate to Innovation
January 5, 2009
Why do cities continue to grow? And why, even in the electronic age, do they endure as wellsprings of intellectual life?
The Boston Globe believes it has found the answer. "Recent research by scientists at the Santa Fe Institute used a set of complex mathematical algorithms to demonstrate that…
The Content Campus
January 3, 2009
Opened last month, L.A Live, with its two concert halls, an ESPN Zone/broadcast studio, a bowling alley, movie theaters, ten restaurants, Grammy Museum, and condos, is being called a "content campus" by Business Week. Its developers call it an entertainment campus. The complex cost $2.5 billion and is…
More Thinking on the Stimulus
January 3, 2009
Rich Florida cited on his blog a study by Greg Linden, Jason Dedrick and Ken Kraemar, of the Personal Computing Industry Center at UC Irvine that concluded the "iPod and its components accounted for about 41,000 jobs worldwide, of which about 27,000 are outside the U.S. and 14,000 in…
An Infrastructure Conundrum
December 27, 2008
Many of the communities with the biggest job losses are those whose populations are shrinking. The worst possible investment would be in infrastructure that fuels sprawl... putting too few people on too much land. In fact, what most of these communities need is a massive investment in people in the…
Don't Let Auto Bailout Stop Innovation
December 5, 2008
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom released the following letter today to congressional leadership. The mayors are advocating for Congress not to reallocate funds intended for advanced transportation technology innovation and identify a different mechanism to finance efforts to improve the viability of the American…
The Way Out of the Current Crisis
December 3, 2008
Richard Florida challenges the current approach to the global financial crisis. The problem, according to Richard, is that we are stuck in an industrial economy mindset. We still do not take seriously the idea-driven economy that is emerging.
"The first step," Richard wrote in his November 29 Globe and…
Frank Gehry's Complex Legacy
December 1, 2008
Today's Washington Post has a good analysis of Frank Gehry's latest work, the Princeton Library and the addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
Time to Accept NOLA as Shrinking City?
November 29, 2008
Three years into the recovery from Katrina, New Orleans' population has grown only modestly and resettlement has slowed to a trickle. Times-Picayune reporter Gordon Russell asks, Is it time to recognize New Orleans as a shrinking city?
Russell writes, "Embracing or even accepting a downsized city can be painful for…
Do the Collapse
November 23, 2008
The Urbanophile blogs about the Midwest. Always provocative, today's post reviews the auto industry's options and what that means for Detroit. Definitely worth a read.
Offshoring Audacity
November 9, 2008
The conversations at the Chicago Humanities Festival are always a pleasure. Last weekend, I heard Saskia Sassen (she of Global City fame), her husband and author Richard Sennett (power couple extraordinaire), Ricky Burdett of Urban Age and Philip Enquist, SOM partner in charge of Urban Design…
Creativity in a Time of Financial Trial
November 3, 2008
Good column today in the NYT on Innovation is relevant to our upcoming meeting of the CEOs for Cities Creative City Network. Some thoughts:
++ Five core values are needed to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set: questioning, risk-taking, openness, patience and trust. All five must be used together.
…Life's a Lab
November 2, 2008
Congrats to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, organizer of Science Chicago. It's a collaboration of more than 100 public and private institutions that are producing what they call "the world's largest science celebration." Thousands of activities, tours, and hands-on learning are part of the celebration, which runs through…
Detroit Aerotropolis Takes Flight
October 31, 2008
One of the best blogs on local economic development and politics continues to be Smart City Memphis, written by good friend and colleague Tom Jones. Today he's written another incisive post on the Aerotropolis strategy being pursued by a number of cities.
Building Green Cheaply
October 19, 2008
The Bay to Silicon Valley
October 9, 2008
I've been in San Jose, capitol of Silicon Valley, since Tuesday night. This morning I spoke to a big group of downtown developers and tonight I'll be speaking to the Great Cities Speakers Series for 1st ACT Silicon Valley. Last night, I had dinner with Connie Martinez, founder of…
The Citiwiki Project
October 8, 2008
Take a look at Pittsburgh's Citiwiki that invites citizens to offer their own ideas to develop an intelligent, easy-to-use transportation system that works for people of every stripe?
The goal of the Wiki is to harness the considerable intellectual firepower of the Pittsburgh region's thoughtful citizenry to help transform…
Great minds converging in Detroit
October 8, 2008
With creative cities strategies increasingly gaining the attention of city leaders around the world, the Creative Cities Summit being hosted in Detroit October 12 – 15 will engage leaders with ideas on how to “rethink and redesign our cities for this age of innovation, knowledge and creativity”.
By…
SILK
October 6, 2008
Design Management Institute is meeting this week in Maine. Yesterday I had an opportunity to tell a roomful of designers how they can be pivotal to making cities places people love. Right now, I am listening to Oliver King, director and co-founder of Engine, one of the world's foremost…
Remaking Shrinking Cities as Living Labs
October 1, 2008
Jim Russell over at Cleveburgh Diaspora has a great post that gives solid examples of what shrinking mid-size cities can do to reinvigorate their appeal and their fate.
Buffalo is talking about becoming a national laboratory dedicated to…
Ohio, Home of Innovations & Opportunity
October 1, 2008
Ohio has announced a new economic development strategy that includes 33 new efforts designed to create jobs, improve productivity through innovation and grow the income of all Ohioans.
The two programs with high priority are called Ohio Means Home and Ohio Hubs of Innovation and Opportunity.
Ohio Means Home…
Finally, a Clear Take on Clean Tech
September 9, 2008
SPUR, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, has a new study out on Clean Tech and the opportunities it presents to the Bay Area. With all the talk of green collar jobs as economic savior, it's good to see a clear analysis on the industry and its potential. …
Available for Lease
September 8, 2008
The City of Chicago has led the way in the U.S. on leasing public facilities to private interests in exchange for big money. The latest municipal asset to go on the privatization block is Midway Airport, expected to be a 99-year deal. Bids are due within a month, but given…
More on Inc. 5000
August 31, 2008
The top 10 metro areas according to median income of Inc. 5000 look like this:
Grand Rapids
San Antonio
Baton Rouge
Houston
Kansas City
Sarasota
Milwaukee
St. Louis
Cincinnati
Hartford
There are certainly some surprises on this list.
Hotspots for Fast-Growing Companies
August 30, 2008
The Inc. 500 of fast-growing businesses lists these metro areas with the most companies on the list:
Washington, DC, 39 companies (explained by having government contractors supplying a war)
New York, 31
Atlanta, 29
Chicago, 27
Los Angeles, 26
Dallas/San Francisco, 20
Boston, 18
Miami, 14
Philadelphia/Seattle, 13
Here's the…
Big-Box Retail Re-used
August 27, 2008
Once home to Wal-Mart in Wisconsin Rapids, a 120,000-square-foot big-box retail shell is now home to the Centralia Center for Senior Citizens. The town has revived and reinvented this empty space that threatened to leave a hole in the middle of their community and the neighboring shopping area.
…If Nairobi Can Do It
August 15, 2008
Colleague Greg Zachary has found in Nairobi 600 young programmers, bloggers and Web enthusiasts who have turned themselves into Skunkworks, a group sharing ideas and encouraging new businesses to develop in response to the distinctive (narrow bandwidth) digital experience in that city.
“To be truly creative in…
Pardon Us While We Reinvent
July 14, 2008
Loved this sign I found while shopping at ABC Carpet and Home this weekend.
The $300 Million X-Prize
June 24, 2008
I agree with Business Week's Bruce Nussbaum's assessment of John McCain's announcement of a $300 million contest for a better car battery. Nussbaum lauds the idea and writes, "There are many ways to incentivize innovation. VC money. Government money. Corporate R&D. Labs (government and private). Serious prize money and…
ReThink: Innovative Leadership
March 22, 2010
Local Innovators at Strategy Session 2010
Download these Harvard case studies on the public-private partnerships developed by NYC Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe to strengthen the city's parks. Then ask Adrian how your city can do the same. He’ll be…
RSVP for San Diego Strategy Session
February 5, 2009
CEOs for Cities Announces Next National Meeting
Strategy Session 2009: The Upside of Down
San Diego, CA, March 18-20
Hosted by CEOs for Cities and the University of California San Diego
Hard times force us to re-consider everything.
What are the opportunities for your city to innovate now…
University Circle Keynote: Cities are the Solution
November 18, 2008
Old assumptions about cities are under assault, and new ones are in play, demonstrating that cities like Cleveland, where CEOs for Cities President and CEO delivered the keynote address for University Circle Inc.'s Annual Meeting, are not the problem. Cities are the solution. Read the full text of Coletta's remarks…
Carol Coletta's Speech to the Tennessee Municipal League
June 22, 2008
Too many urban leaders still operate under old assumptions when it comes to planning for their cities' futures. In her speech to the Tennssessee Municipal League, CEOs for Cities president and CEO Carol Coletta, discusses what leaders must pay attention to today and how they must respond to new realities…