Brand Avenue

Dream Neighborhoods

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A recent study finds that members of Generation Y dream at a different scale than their predecessors. Instead of the dream house, it's the dream neighborhood that they're after:

Gen Yers are motivated by experiences (in an experience economy), not consumption, or home size. Smaller homes and apartments are both less expensive and easier to maintain, leaving more time and money for enjoying those experiences.

For Gen Yers, driving isn’t part of the American Dream anymore. Being connected is. That means walkable and transit-oriented, and that means downtowns and cities. Also, as far as connecting face-face, town squares and piazzas are the ultimate connectors in the built environment, especially with outdoor movies/dining/concerts in them.

The shift from house to neighborhood, and from buying to renting, is driven by a number of factors--from delaying marriage, to academic debt, to persistent unemployment.

They haven’t built up their wealth to buy yet, and with the economic downturn, 30% are unemployed. School debt is also much larger, averaging $23,000, and banks now loan to people that can actually pay them back. It also means sharing apartments via multiple bedrooms to split the rent. They’re also delaying marriage, so no single-family suburban home with white picket fence.

Building off an earlier post, the desire for a great neighborhood--really, a yearning for community--may also be motivated by something simpler: a wish to be happy.

People who live in walkable communities are more socially engaged and trusting than those who live in less walkable areas, says a new study from the University of New Hampshire....The researchers scored 700 residents of three communities in New Hampshire on measures of "social capital" such as socializing with friends, civic engagement and trust in their community. They found those in neighborhoods with higher Walk Score ratings reported being happier and healthier and more apt to volunteer, work on community projects or simply entertain friends at home.

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The Bungalow's "Baby Sister"

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"Lowly though it may be, the bungalow is still the common type of building in Chicago...and an accessible first home for many," according to a recent Chicago Public Radio piece. Indeed, the city is known for its Bungalow Belt of neighborhoods, mostly built in the early decades of the 20th century. The housing type is ubiquitous throughout Chicagoland.

Nevertheless, Chicago is in a state of flux. Waves of development over the last decade have transformed many of the city's neighborhoods, introducing dramatic changes in scale and density. What is the 21st-century equivalent, or counterpoint, to these rows of staid brick homes?

Listen.

Friendly Manitoba

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What is a place made of? People, first and foremost. In a global, multipolar economy, human capital matters more than ever.

Acutely aware of this, Manitoba government officials are in the process of repositioning the province accordingly:

As waves of immigrants from the developing world remade Canada a decade ago, the famously friendly people of Manitoba could not contain their pique....

What irked them was not the Babel of tongues, the billions spent on health care and social services, or the explosion of ethnic identities. The rub was the newcomers’ preference for “M.T.V.” — Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver — over the humble prairie province north of North Dakota, which coveted workers and population growth.

Demanding “our fair share,” Manitobans did something hard to imagine in American politics, where concern over illegal immigrants dominates public debate and states seek more power to keep them out. In Canada, which has little illegal immigration, Manitoba won new power to bring foreigners in, handpicking ethnic and occupational groups judged most likely to stay.

This experiment in designer immigration has made Winnipeg a hub of parka-clad diversity — a blue-collar town that gripes about the cold in Punjabi and Tagalog — and has defied the anti-immigrant backlash seen in much of the world.

 Below, a video promotes Manitoba as the ideal destination for the skilled workers it wishes to attract. The province's strides underline the potentials of strong place branding in a global competition for talent. Moreover, the effort itself refashions the place as somewhere in the process of becoming, interested in reinvention, and open to change. In other words, the policy impacts the branding, and vice versa.

   

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Shiny Happy People

 (La Rambla, Barcelona)

A provocative question from an October post on a great blog: "How do we measure national happiness, well-being, and social capital as they relate to the way we plan our neighbourhoods, towns and cities?"

Vancouver is working on ways to correllate urban form and senses of well-being:

As one of the world’s most livable cities, Vancouver is asking itself what more it can do to provide for physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs. In doing so, it’s adding spirit to the other pillars of a healthy community: complete community (land use, density); healthy mobility (transit); healthy buildings (zero carbon); thriving landscapes (open space); green infrastructure (water, sewers, storm); healthy food systems (organic agriculture, nutrition); healthy community (facilities, programs); and healthy abundance (sustainable economic development).

Advancing the idea of ”spiritual urbanism,” Vancouver’s Healing Cities finds inspiration in the human body’s ability to rebuild, repair and regenerate, and asks what it takes for our cities to heal themselves, and in turn heal us. Oxytocin, the trust hormone, goes up with eye contact. We get a whole lot more of it while walking. Which is just the beginning of balm to the spirit fostered in walkable neighbourhoods.

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Like Trudging Across Siberia

 

Boston's much-maligned City Hall Plaza--the centerpiece of a severe 70s redevelopment scheme known as Government Center, and the forlorn hole at the heart of one of America's most elegant cities--may soon be nothing more than a memory:

After decades of loathing from public officials and the public alike, Boston’s City Hall Plaza is finally poised for a makeover, courtesy of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency has selected City Hall Plaza as one of five winners of its new Greening America’s Capitals program, which will annually award design assistance grants for green makeovers of dysfunctional sites in state capitals.

When City Hall Plaza and the government building within it were built by Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles in the heyday of urban renewal in the mid-1960s, they were envisioned as a grand civic ensemble. Instead, the plaza’s seven acres of concrete and brick have primarily served as a daunting interruption of downtown Boston’s tight-knit fabric. “We thought Boston City Hall was a fabulous candidate for the program,” said Rosemary Monahan, the EPA’s Region 1 smart growth coordinator. “It’s a barren, windswept, desolate place. In the winter, it’s like trudging across Siberia.”

On the one hand, I appreciate the feeling of space and straight lines contrasting to the more organic grain of the surrounding urban fabric, much as the plaza in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris provides a counterpoint to the density of the Marais. That kind of contrast can be a strength.

On the other hand, let's face it: City Hall Plaza is scaleless, forbidding, and cold at any time of year. A charming Italian piazza, it definitely isn't.

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