The so-called New Artisan Economy has become hotter than hot in our cities. This trend is especially visible in the form of new, small-scale companies focusing on local craftsmanship. Consumers are more and more demanding for local products that are produced in a sustainable way, with care for the environment. Keywords in the New Artisan Economy are local, authentic and sustainable, whether we’re talking chocolate, jeans or bicycles.
The craftsmanship-focused approach to economy was first described in a report from the Institute for the Future in 2008. New Artisans believe that due to a globalizing and computerizing society it will become increasingly important to be able to exercise a certain craft. According to New Artisans, pre-recession manufacturing and construction jobs won’t come back, nevertheless the demand for high-quality, artisanal products will only increase. By producing small quantities of artisanal products in an environmentally friendly way, the overall economy becomes more sustainable which is a benefit for everyone.

Continue reading this article by Ted Pouls on Pop Up City.

Within cities, we spend a lot of time thinking about the access of people to places: to good schools, to supermarkets, to parks, to job centers and transit stops. You’re better off if you can easily connect to all of these things, and there’s a whole suite of research mapping the spatial relationships (and quality of life) embedded in between them.

It’s significantly harder to think about the access of people to other people (we are all, after all, moving targets). But this question – do you have ample opportunity to meet new people, see your friends, encounter ideas other than your own? – is an equally important dimension of daily life. And it’s likely today that you have fewer chances to do this than you would have had in the past.

“Sociology arguments that tell us that over time our social networks are becoming more dispersed over space,” says Steven Farber, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Utah. “We might know people, but we don’t necessarily know the people in our neighborhoods. We have very rich social networks, but they’re dispersed all over the city, all over the country. And we depend on the car in order to make face-to-face interactions with our social contacts.”

Continue reading this article by Emily Badger on The Atlantic Cities.

LiveWorkLearnPlay joined with Dundee-Kilmer Developments Limited to win the Request for Proposals (RFP) process facilitated by Infrastructure Ontario for the development the West Don Lands. Since, LWLP has lead the Retail Strategy for the Athletes Village and has been critical in ensuring that the mixed-use vision for the community becomes a reality by providing strategic guidance on the programming and design of the buildings and public spaces. Beginning in 2014, LWLP will be responsible for the targeted leasing of the “best-of-the-best” business operators, and overall activation of the ground floor experience. We are very excited about this project and are pleased to share with Fourth Place readers this article from Urban Toronto.

An extremely polite group of anonymous guerrilla road safety activists armed with $350 worth of reflective plastic pylons turned the painted Cherry Street bike lane under I-5 into a protected bike lane Monday morning.

The group—calling themselves the Reasonably Polite Seattleites—wanted to make a statement about how easy and affordable it would be for the city to use the method to make bike lanes safer all over the city. To stress how polite they are, they attached them using an adhesive pad for easy removal, according to an email sent to SDOT and Seattle Bike Blog.

The city has removed them, but responded with an equally polite email thanking them for making the statement, apologizing that they had to remove them and even offering to give the pylons back. Below are the shockingly polite emails, starting with the RPS:

“Tom, I’m an avid reader of your blog and avid cyclist. We’ve attended meetings together, though I don’t think we’ve ever actually met. I’m emailing because this morning a friend and I installed a string of plastic pylons along the Cherry Street bike lane under I-5. I’ve attached a couple of pictures. In New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, the city transportation department usually installs these things, which slow traffic to the posted speed limit, and afford cyclists some protection. Some might ask, very reasonably, how does a piece of cheap plastic protect you from a drunk or distracted driver in a two ton SUV? Based on my experience commuting in such lanes in other cities, 1) they slow speeding traffic by making the lane appear narrower (without actually reducing its size); and 2) it’s essentially a warning system for a drunk or distracted driver; once he hits one, he’s more likely to slow down, lessening the chance of hitting a cyclist or pedestrian down the road. This string cost about $350 in materials and required literally 10 minutes to install (admittedly, because SPD HQ is across the street, we hurried). SDOT will probably argue maintaining these things costs money, they complicate street cleaning, etc., etc. These are reasonable arguments, except that Chicago, D.C., San Francisco have confronted and overcome the same issues….”

Continue reading this article by Tom Fucorolo on the Seattle Bike Blog.

Neighborhoods with a mix of residences, offices and retail outlets are now conventionally thought to have a host of benefits, a departure in thinking from the years of urban planning when cities sought to segregate uses of land, with the houses in one corner of town and the shopping district in another. Mixed-use neighborhoods enable people to walk more, with downstream healthbenefits. They help cut down on traffic congestion, and therefore pollution. For many people, they create livelier communities and a higher quality of life.

The list of evidence in support of these places is constantly expanding, and proponents can now add one more empirical argument: Mixed-use zoning also appears to cut down on crime.

“People say this makes intuitive sense,” says John MacDonald, the chair of the department of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. A neighborhood with lunch counters, offices, condos and bars is likely to have more “eyes on the street” at more times of day. And this collective surveillance ostensibly deters criminals.

Continue reading this article by Emily Badger for Urban Land here.