Solar Powered Medical Equipment from Dayton's Creative Class

In early March, under the leadership of SOCHE, Richard, Steven, Lou, Rana, and I worked with 32 catalysts in Dayton, Ohio. The energy of the people, the strength of the art community, the leading universities, and the culture of innovation (from the Wright Brothers to Wright-Patterson) made for an exciting couple of days.

I recently came across a great example of the Dayton's creative assets in action. This article from the University of Dayton highlights the winner of their recent business plan competition.

From the piece:

Salud del Sol, an innovative new business from a team of University of Dayton students aimed at bringing the 'health of the sun' to medical treatment in developing countries, took home the $10,000 first prize to help get the venture off the ground.

Winning the 2008 University of Dayton Business Plan Competition, the team of Lauren Dokes, Lori Hanna, Daniel Hensel and Anna Young created a business plan to develop and market solar cookers and solar-powered sterilizers.

Salud del Sol tapped other expertise at the University including engineering, international development and social entrepreneurship, according to project member Lori Hanna, a mechanical engineering major. The project – the basis of her senior honors thesis – grew from an internship in rural Nicaragua through UD 's Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Opportunities of Service-learning (ETHOS) program.

"Nurses have to travel to bigger health centers or hospitals to use sterilizers, sometimes traveling long distances by bus and spending precious time and money to have access to the equipment," she said.

This type of social entrepreneurship is becoming more and more of a calling card/career choice of members of the creative class and places that offer combinable creative assets -- including universities, mega region/international linkages, entrepreneurial institutions, and scientific talent -- will see sustainable growth and improvements in quality of place.

Historic Cities Programme

A quick plug for a project I am involved with - the Historic Cities Programme (or HCP) coming to Toronto (free to attend for all) from April 16 to 25.  HCP is an international exhibition which is an initiative of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.  The exhibition debuted in the United States and is currently making its way across Canada. 

HCP showcases the conservation and re-use of buildings and public spaces in historic cities in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Mali, India and Afghanistan.  The HCP exhibition offers a perspective that looks at culture as an asset that can transform communities.

   

Here are some pictures from the exhibition's debut in Montreal last week

Aleem Kanji

"Upwardly" Mobile

Mobile, Alabama is making strides to advance its local economy, in recent weeks it has attracted Airbus' European parent company to its city in an effort to build an aerospace cluster.  New commercial airplanes and big military tanks are on the way for production right out of this tiny centre in the Southern U.S.  Other industries (steel, auto makers) are also looking at Mobile as a place to set up shop.

Why is it that manufacturers, many of them foreign based find Mobile hard to resist?  What's keeping Mobile Alabama's economy on fast forward?

Aleem Kanji

Is it just 'academic' ?

Guest Blogger - Aleem Kanji, Creative Class Group

Statistics Canada recently examined where the smartest people in Toronto, Canada live by census tract.  Ironically, we are all in good company, with 46% of folks that are twenty-five years of age and older having a post-graduate degree - apparently the highest percentage across the 5.5 million people that live in the Greater Toronto Area.  Richard and Rana's neighborhood, along with mine and my wife Salma's all closely border this brainy census tract here in Toronto.

What do you think?  Is this just academic ?

Aleem Kanji

Where have all the young men (& women) gone?

It is definitely worth looking at:

Today’s young workers, those aged 25 to 34, are much more mobile than previous generations. So where are the young workers going? The answers, based on statistics from U.S. Census data, might surprise investors. While many baby boomers have publicly fled to the Sun Belt, today’s young workers have quietly followed.

Between 2000 and 2006, the population of this demographic in certain cities dropped dramatically—San Francisco lost 28 percent of its young workers, while Pittsburgh lost 29 percent. Detroit lost 20 percent of those aged 25 to 34, a decline perhaps caused by significant workforce reductions in local manufacturing.

full story here.

However, their table (sort by % of total population) tells a different story.  When you look at "stocks" instead of "flows", you see that the top three cities for % of 25-34-year olds are Austin, Boston Seattle -- two of which don't seem all that "sunny" to me (expect perhaps for their economic outlooks...).  (I'm also not buying the "following the sun" argument when San Francisco makes their list of biggest losers -- Maybe Census did the count during the summer months..?)

Posted by Kevin Stolarick

Cities, bikes, diabetes, flu shots and positive externalities

A recent report from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), maps diabetes rates in Toronto's 140 neighbourhoods.

Here’s the Star’s summary:

The report's most startling finding is that urban sprawl – not just poverty and an immigrant population at greater risk – is contributing to diabetes rates in the city's poorest neighbourhoods that are almost triple those in more densely populated areas downtown. <snip> They found diabetes rates climbed in low-income, high visible-minority neighbourhoods the more residents depended on cars and the further they had to travel to grocery stores and other services.

The (US) CDC is all in favour of curing diabetes through biking and walking.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering public promotion of the "co-benefits" of fighting global warming and obesity-related illnesses through everyday exercise, like walking to school or work, said Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.

"A simple intervention like walking to school is a climate change intervention, an obesity intervention, a diabetes intervention, a safety intervention," Frumkin told The Associated Press. "That's the sweet spot."

The key is getting people out of the car, Patz and Frumkin told the public health association at its annual convention. Reducing car travel in favor of biking or walking would not only cut obesity and greenhouse gases, they said, it would also mean less smog, fewer deaths from car crashes, less osteoporosis, and even less depression since exercise helps beat the blues.

Ahh. A simple public policy issue: to increase health, increase urban density and active transportation options, right?

Not so straightforward in Toronto. This city, which used to be a leading edge city for bicyclists, has fallen behind the rest of the world. The evidence? Current estimates are that the 500 km of bike lanes slotted into the official plan for 2011 will in fact be complete in 2070.

At the same time Toronto is lagging, a new public transit system of short term bike rentals, la Vélorution, is springing up all over the world.

Chicago is interested, and so is Moscow. Geneva and Sydney are in negotiations, and the mayor of London has called by twice. All eyes are on Paris. But what is the big attraction? It's a brand new model of bicycle, one that can be seen teeming through the streets by the thousands, all the same chic silver-gray, with a dolphin-like design. And they are all rented.

Paris has suddenly become the world capital of bike rentals. Nowhere else in the world has quite so many rental bikes standing at the ready: there will soon be over 20,000. And the fleet is really being put to use: commuters pedal from the Metro to the office, managers pop out in their lunch breaks to pick up groceries, tourists zigzag in every direction. More than six million rides have been clocked up in just three months -- there is hardly a faster way to get through the legendary tangle of the French capital.

Not in Toronto, which axed its hugely popular Bikeshare programme because it cost $80,000 per year.

What does this have to do with flu shots?

Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok explains that people who get flu shots reduce not only their own risk of flu, but that of everyone around them.

People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability that I will get the flu it reduces the probability that you will get the flu.  In the language of economics the flu shot creates an external benefit, a benefit to other people not captured by the person who paid the costs of getting the shot.  The external benefits of a flu shot can be quite large.  Under some conditions each person who is vaccinated reduces the expected number of other people who get the flu by 1.5.

They create positive externalities.

There are thousands of potential cyclists in Toronto, who could be living longer and healthier lives while reducing the whole society’s greenhouse gas emissions and medicare expenses. They aren’t biking because of the risks and costs they will personally incur.

How many times do we see this? Positive externalities are the side effects that cause spillovers of goodness, saved costs and lives, healthier options. All too often they are discounted.

Cities are vast reservoirs of positive externalities in employment, transportation, education, recreation and services. People migrate to cities hoping for all those happy spillovers to land on them.

A successful city identifies and builds new mechanisms to create these positive externalities, whether it’s flu shots or bike lanes, schools, transit, parks or libraries.

Tabarrok suggests that we kiss the inoculated. At this point, Toronto’s cyclists would appreciate bike sharing and dedicated lanes as least as much as kisses.

posted for Alison Kemper (by Kevin Stolarick)

Want It All

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Want It All Map

Place to Retire

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Place to Retire Map 

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Want It All

Retired, Not Dead

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Retired, Not Dead Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Place to Retire

Good Second Home

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Good Second Home Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Retired, Not Dead

Tallahassee Park and Ride Initiaitve Begins

Congratulations to our KCCI catalysts in Tallahassee on today's launching of their Park-N-Ride Community pilot program. The goal of the program, led by the Greenovation team and its partner StarMetro, and supported by some great sponsors,  is to "offer Tallahassee drivers a convenient, environmentally conscious option for commuting." Catalyst Bill Berlow is participating in the pilot program and writes about his motivations, expectations, and the program in today's Tallahassee Democrat. To sign up as a participant click here. Snippet from Bill's piece below.

posted by David

Just Wanna Have Fun!

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Just Wanna Have Fun! Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Good Second Home

Kids First

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Kids First Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Just Wanna Have Fun!

Car Sharing to Save Detroit?

In addition to seeing hybrids all over the place, I see a lot of Zipcars and Flexcars in metro areas. (To be honest, it bothers me that they get reserved spots with no meters in many towns, but I digress.) This new model of car ownership/use, the sharing model, seems to be taking off and many innovative organizations are getting on board.

Equity Residential Properties, a huge publicly traded apartment building operator, recently inked a deal with Zipcar to provide cars and spaces at some of its properties. Today's WSJ (sub req'd) features an article by Darren Everson highlighting how Zipcar is 'driving' into the college market by inking deals with Universities to put cars in and around campuses.

Perhaps Detroit's long suffering car makers should think about this new model of ownership in trying to revive US sales/revenues? With many of the user's of car share services in college and just starting their careers, this seems like a growing consumption trend that Detroit would want to take advantage of?

posted by David

Room to Grow

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Room to Grow Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Kids First

Like Being a DINK

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Like Being a DINK Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Room to Grow

Starting a Family

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Starting a Family Map 

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Like Being a DINK

Getting Ahead

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Each map shows the best regions based on a variety of criteria all evenly weighted.  In this case, "Getting Ahead" shows the combination of cities that rate the best based on:

    Tolerance (higher is better)

    Growth

    Number of Creative Class young & single in the region

 

The criteria used for each map are listed & described in the region to the left of the map. 

Only data for major US cities (populations above 250,000) has been included.

The map itself is a heat map overlay on a standard Google Map.  So, all of the usual Google map features are available: pan, zoom in , zoom out, change the background, etc...

The "hotter" -- yellow areas are those places that do the best on the combined criteria.

Getting Ahead Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Starting a Family

Money to Party

Kevin Stolarick of the Creative Class Group and Lisa Taber of FortiusOne have paired up to develop a series of 'heat maps' that show the hottest places in the country based on your lifestage and some preselected criteria.  The maps allow you to zoom in on specific parts of the country or see how your current city compares to others.

Each map shows the best regions based on a variety of criteria all evenly weighted.  In this case, "Money to Party" shows the combination of cities that rate the best based on:

    Overall Cost of Living (lower is better)

    Nightlife

    Rental Affordability (lower is better)

    Number of Creative Class young & single in the region

 

The criteria used for each map are listed & described in the region to the left of the map. 

Only data for major US cities (populations above 250,000) has been included.

 

The map itself is a heat map overlay on a standard Google Map.  So, all of the usual Google map features are available: pan, zoom in , zoom out, change the background, etc...

 

The "hotter" -- yellow areas are those places that do the best on the combined criteria.

Money to Party Map

Come back Monday to see next week's map: Getting Ahead

The Car of the Creative Class

The Creative Class clearly brings its own ethos to work, leisure, cities, and consumption. From the San Jose Mercury News (hat tip: ValleyWag), The Prius is the number #1 selling car in Silicon Valley. Thats right, the large US metro with the greatest % of CC in its workforce has made the Prius its car of choice by buying more Prii in June than any other model. "That puts the Prius ahead of Toyota's Camry and Corolla and Honda's Accord and Civic, all cars that outsell the high-mileage, gas-electric sedan nationwide."

"Are we ahead of the curve, or what?" asked Rod Diridon, executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University, and a Prius owner.

The Prius' newfound status reflects the continued greening of Silicon Valley. Diridon listed sustained higher gas prices, the availability of carpool-lane stickers for solo Prius drivers - no more are being issued - and the intelligence of local residents as factors in the Prius' popularity."

posted by David

 

Toronto and Me

Lots of media on Toronto and me, here, here, here and here.  We had been trying to wait on the announcement until I visit the city again in late August but the cat's now very far out of the bag as they say. So here's the skinny.

First off let me say that our time in Washington DC and at George Mason's School of Public Policy has been terrific.  The leadership of the school, Kingsley Haynes and Roger Stough are dear old friends and colleagues. What they and their team have done to build a new school of public policy in less than a decade is phenomenal.  My GMU colleagues have been great. Washington is a wonderful city that has been a great place to work.  Also, our remarkable CCG team is mainly here - David, Steven, Amanda, and our interns (with other key folks in Pittsburgh). CCG will stay a DC and Pittsburgh based company. We'll miss our colleagues, and our friends, our house, neighborhood and neighbors and especially our neighborhood pool. There is no push here, only pull, which brings me to ...

Toronto - It's a city I've long admired. My own calculations put the broad Tor-Buff-Chester mega-region as one of the world's ten largest.  Toronto is at the cutting edge of innovative, dare I say creative, urbanism and economic development. Some of the media say it reflects my principles.  The truth is more the reverse: What Toronto has done has informed my work.

The main reason for the move is Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Its Roger's vision that has created the major new Centre for Jurisdictional Advantage and Prosperity funded, as has been reported in the press, by some $100 million in funds from the Province of Ontario and private sector sources.  Ontario's Premier, Dalton McGuinty and his team could not have been more generous.  Joseph Rotman provided part of that funding to get the initial research agenda of the Centre up and running.  The Centre will have amazing quarters in the MaRs Centre, essentially the old Toronto General Hospital, near campus and almost directly across from the Ontario Parliament. The space, which we are working on now, is phenomenal.  For the first time in my career I will have a stable source of research funding to build a team, develop data, support other researchers, and really build capability and knowledge in this area. My title will be Director of the Centre and Professor of Business and Creativity.

My wife Rana and I have found a wonderful house in Toronto's Rosedale neighborhood overlooking the ravine.  We hope to move in early September.

If there's more you'd like to know, just give a shout.

Global Superstar Cities

David Leonhadt has a fascinating piece in today's NYT on the "split" housing market:

[T]he high end of the market is surviving the slump much better than any other segment. Even as foreclosures keep rising and overall sales continue to plummet, more expensive homes have staged a bit of a comeback in recent months. They’re spending less time languishing on the market than others, and their prices appear to be holding up better. ... The upper end of the market has also been helped by an influx of well-off foreign investors whose buying power has grown with the recent decline of the dollar. Hard as this may be for an American to imagine, New York, San Francisco or Miami can now seem like a bargain, compared with London, Moscow or Sydney.

It's clear that the housing market in key cities and mega-regions has become globalized.  In this sense it bears some parallels with what has happened to elite universities, where foreign students vie for top slots.  The housing market in cities that are atop the world city system -  like London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco, Vancouver, LA, and others in the US and around the world - has been globalized.  This not only drives prices up at the top end, it puts tremendous pressure on the entire market in those areas, making them even more unaffordable for average people and even for the upper-middle class.  My hunch is this problem - and the split nature of the housing market - will continue to worsen for some time.

Gentrification of Coney Island

The Washington Post writes:

The birthplace of the roller coaster and the American hot dog is set to fall into the same powerful grip of New York City gentrification that cleaned up Times Square and brought luxury lofts to Hell's Kitchen. Thor Equities, a mall and commercial real estate developer, has amassed much of Coney Island's six-block-long amusement area, with public hearings expected later this summer on a $1.5 billion redesign of the area into an upscale techno theme park with retail space, high-rise timeshare towers and hotels. Click here for the full story.

Globalization and US Cities

My old friend, Don Holbrook, outlines the challenges globalization brings for US cities and economic development, here (hat tip: Kevin Stolarick).

New York Still #1; Phoenix overtakes Philly

New numbers on the largest cities in the U.S. from the Census Bureau.

New York continued to be the nation’s most populous city, with 8.2 million residents. This was more than twice the population of Los Angeles, which ranked second at 3.8 million.  The estimates reveal that Phoenix moved into fifth place ahead of Philadelphia, the latest evidence of a decades-long population shift. Nearly a century ago, in 1910, each of the 10 most populous cities was within roughly 500 miles of the Canadian border. The 2006 estimates show that seven of the top 10 — and three of the top five — are in states that border Mexico.  Only three of the top 10 from 1910 remained on the list in 2006: New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. Conversely, three of the current top 10 cities (Phoenix; San Jose, Calif.; and San Diego) were not even among the 100 most populous in 1910, while three more (Dallas, Houston and San Antonio) had populations of less than 100,000.  California had seven cities among the 25 fastest growing, leading all states.  Phoenix had the largest population increase of any city between 2005 and 2006, adding more than 43,000 residents to reach 1.5 million. However, Texas dominated the list of the 10 highest numerical gainers, with San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and Dallas each making the top 10. North Las Vegas; Miami; Charlotte, N.C.; and San Jose, Calif., rounded out the list of the 10 biggest numerical gainers.  Overall, eight Texas cities were among the 25 biggest numerical gainers to lead all states.  (press release here)

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Why Cities?

Wendy, a  regular commenter on this site, has another super-insightful post over at her blog, All About Cities, which I strongly recommend as one of the very best city blogs out there.

Craig Thomas, economist at Torto Wheaton Research (an investment real estate industry research firm), wrote a great essay a couple weeks ago that reduces a city down to its economic essence.  Here are a few quotes.

So what is a city? What do these metropolitan areas do? They're not there to look pretty, or because they're historical landmarks or because they're cool. Cities are market-makers. ...

To succeed, he insists, cities main role is to provide a dynamic place for human, financial and physical capital to intermingle and flow -- what he calls liquidity.

Firms will form within or relocate to a city if it provides three things: the physical infrastructure that helps firms function, access to capital, and—most important these days—ample suitable labor with which to support production. Labor will come to the city if there is physical infrastructure to occupy, ample choice of vocations and employers, and access to capital. Developers and investors will provide physical and financial capital if there are adequate firms and households to occupy structures, and if there is a sufficient liquidity of capital when it is time to monetize these assets. All parties' motivation is to be as productive as possible, and they will go to the cities that allow them to trade their time and resources at the highest value.

Everything else happening in cities, he argues, is there to support the flow of labor and capital. Creating livable neighbourhoods is about attracting and retaining talent. Building infrastructure is about facilitating the flow of industry (capital) and jobs, as well as making the region function for the residents.

Thomas' approach Sounds more or less like Robert Lucas or Jane Jacobs. Wendy goes on to provide her perspective.

I'd say Thomas' notion of cities as "market-makers" explains about all of what cities have done historically and about half to two-thirds of what cities do in today's knowledge-driven, creative society.  I have lots more to say about this in Who's Your City, but for now let me just add that cities provide a key function by organizing a vibrant mating market - (what's more important to you:  your job or your significant other/ spouse) and also have enormous effects on psychological well-being.  Cities have a clear and important economic function, but they also do more.

Your thoughts?

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