I've started to do a bit of research for a project I am working on. And I just discovered this. It's a good place to find info on what Denver urban areas are being redeveloped.
DenverInfill.com: Downtown Denver and Its Urban Infill and Redevelopment Projects
Showing posts with label mixed use. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mixed use. Show all posts
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Happenings in Baltimore
This is an excerpt from a long article on an art/music collective, its performance space, and how it gave rise to much of the current indie music scene in Baltimore. It's quite a good profile of how a group of friends can have a significant impact on a community.
Feature: Wham City Doesn't Want To Take Over The World--But It Just Might Anyway | 5/16/2007 | Citypaper.com: "... Wham City was a rented industrial loft space squatting somewhere between Mount Vernon and Charles Village. (Its members have requested we don't divulge the exact location in print.) In its first incarnation, it was often filled with garbage. Smashing plates in a sink with a baseball bat was a popular activity when bored. But especially after it moved one floor upstairs in the same building, it was a crucial local space for "music shows, variety shows, TV talk shows, video productions, theatrical productions, lecture series, potluck dinners, photo shoots, fashion shows, [and] dance parties" in the words of Wham City member Adam Endres. Wham City united many young people in the Baltimore art and music scenes who maybe didn't even know they needed uniting
In fact, the Wham City collective is but one spiky tip of a massive, tangled ball of creativity currently lurking just under Baltimore's liquor-licensed layer of legit bars and venues, galleries, and theaters. Bands are multiplying like sui generis bunnies in little warrenlike warehouses all over the city, and they're being formed by folks either too young to be squatting and making a racket five years ago, or not even living in the city, or both. These bands do intersect occasionally with the city's longstanding free improvisation/noise crews, but with their vestigial connections to punk rock and their continual reification/recycling of the pop-cultural junk they grew up on, they're not really experimentalists. They're making pop music that bends at various wonky, acute angles.
And though the music is the loudest and most obvious manifestation of all this energy, you can feel it in everything from local T-shirt designers to zine makers to video artists to sculptors to performance-art shenanigans yet to be named. More often than not, they're the same kids in the bands. Wham City has been, if not quite at the center of all this attention, certainly a central node.
Since you can hum along to some of it, the indie-music world outside Charm City is taking note of Baltimore's young underground. National media outlets have started to glom onto Wham City and its satellites as another installment of the Baltimania that's given us a hundred half-assed articles on club music and The Wire in the last 18 months. Just a week ago, Deacon was featured in the The New York Times, where he was hilariously described as a 'sensitive electro-party rocker.' Baltimore bands recently swarmed the annual South by Southwest music industry clusterfuck in Austin, Texas; Deacon played no less than five shows that weekend.
Locally, evidence of this explosion is increasingly easy to find on the records released by labels such as Wildfire Wildfire, Creative Capitalism, and recent Washington transplant Carpark (which is sucking up Baltimore bands at a quick clip); at exhibitions and performances at Current Gallery; at the biweekly Are We Not Men? dance party at the Depot; at the Talking Head club until its closure; at shows in the artist-riddled H&H Building; at house parties and one-off loft gatherings; at Baltimore institutions of 'high' culture like the Walters Art Museum; and at Wham City itself, until recently. See, all this celebration comes at a strange time, because Wham City, as it was, is no more.
All illegal venues live on borrowed time; last September--after a string of shows plagued by assholes pulling fire alarms, smashing windows, and setting fires--Wham City was forced to stop holding shows following alleged complaints by the fire marshal to the building's management and threats of eviction from the building's owner. The collective rallied and is hunting for a new, potentially legit, space, but at the moment there's a feeling that the local arts community has lost something important just as its intensity is peaking.'...
The collective initially formed around six friends, but its ranks have swelled to include anywhere from 16 to 24 people in Baltimore, and 11 of them are here today. It's two days before everyone has to be out of the building for good....
Stranded in a city where they knew almost no one, the Purchase kids developed a drunken bunker mentality, holed up in the space that would become Wham City with no phones, blowing what little money they had at the local liquor store, and destroying personal property when boredom threatened.... [But, as the article explains, things got better.]
The past six months alone have already seen a Wham City theater night, a cross-country tour, sundry live shows around town (and their attendant poster art), two episodes of in-house talk show The Ed Schrader Show, several records released by various WC-related bands, a gallery exhibition, a museum showcase, various videos, two issues of Catatac (a traditionally folded-and-stapled zine published by Kate Levitt, Mark Brown, and Kevin Sherry that's full of contributions from Wham members), and a bunch of stuff not yet ready for prime-time consumption. "I know of at least two board games that are being developed," Connor Kizer says. Sure, not all of it needs to be documented, but the irrepressible, overwhelming mass of stuff that Wham City churns out is always impressive."
Feature: Wham City Doesn't Want To Take Over The World--But It Just Might Anyway | 5/16/2007 | Citypaper.com: "... Wham City was a rented industrial loft space squatting somewhere between Mount Vernon and Charles Village. (Its members have requested we don't divulge the exact location in print.) In its first incarnation, it was often filled with garbage. Smashing plates in a sink with a baseball bat was a popular activity when bored. But especially after it moved one floor upstairs in the same building, it was a crucial local space for "music shows, variety shows, TV talk shows, video productions, theatrical productions, lecture series, potluck dinners, photo shoots, fashion shows, [and] dance parties" in the words of Wham City member Adam Endres. Wham City united many young people in the Baltimore art and music scenes who maybe didn't even know they needed uniting
In fact, the Wham City collective is but one spiky tip of a massive, tangled ball of creativity currently lurking just under Baltimore's liquor-licensed layer of legit bars and venues, galleries, and theaters. Bands are multiplying like sui generis bunnies in little warrenlike warehouses all over the city, and they're being formed by folks either too young to be squatting and making a racket five years ago, or not even living in the city, or both. These bands do intersect occasionally with the city's longstanding free improvisation/noise crews, but with their vestigial connections to punk rock and their continual reification/recycling of the pop-cultural junk they grew up on, they're not really experimentalists. They're making pop music that bends at various wonky, acute angles.
And though the music is the loudest and most obvious manifestation of all this energy, you can feel it in everything from local T-shirt designers to zine makers to video artists to sculptors to performance-art shenanigans yet to be named. More often than not, they're the same kids in the bands. Wham City has been, if not quite at the center of all this attention, certainly a central node.
Since you can hum along to some of it, the indie-music world outside Charm City is taking note of Baltimore's young underground. National media outlets have started to glom onto Wham City and its satellites as another installment of the Baltimania that's given us a hundred half-assed articles on club music and The Wire in the last 18 months. Just a week ago, Deacon was featured in the The New York Times, where he was hilariously described as a 'sensitive electro-party rocker.' Baltimore bands recently swarmed the annual South by Southwest music industry clusterfuck in Austin, Texas; Deacon played no less than five shows that weekend.
Locally, evidence of this explosion is increasingly easy to find on the records released by labels such as Wildfire Wildfire, Creative Capitalism, and recent Washington transplant Carpark (which is sucking up Baltimore bands at a quick clip); at exhibitions and performances at Current Gallery; at the biweekly Are We Not Men? dance party at the Depot; at the Talking Head club until its closure; at shows in the artist-riddled H&H Building; at house parties and one-off loft gatherings; at Baltimore institutions of 'high' culture like the Walters Art Museum; and at Wham City itself, until recently. See, all this celebration comes at a strange time, because Wham City, as it was, is no more.
All illegal venues live on borrowed time; last September--after a string of shows plagued by assholes pulling fire alarms, smashing windows, and setting fires--Wham City was forced to stop holding shows following alleged complaints by the fire marshal to the building's management and threats of eviction from the building's owner. The collective rallied and is hunting for a new, potentially legit, space, but at the moment there's a feeling that the local arts community has lost something important just as its intensity is peaking.'...
The collective initially formed around six friends, but its ranks have swelled to include anywhere from 16 to 24 people in Baltimore, and 11 of them are here today. It's two days before everyone has to be out of the building for good....
Stranded in a city where they knew almost no one, the Purchase kids developed a drunken bunker mentality, holed up in the space that would become Wham City with no phones, blowing what little money they had at the local liquor store, and destroying personal property when boredom threatened.... [But, as the article explains, things got better.]
The past six months alone have already seen a Wham City theater night, a cross-country tour, sundry live shows around town (and their attendant poster art), two episodes of in-house talk show The Ed Schrader Show, several records released by various WC-related bands, a gallery exhibition, a museum showcase, various videos, two issues of Catatac (a traditionally folded-and-stapled zine published by Kate Levitt, Mark Brown, and Kevin Sherry that's full of contributions from Wham members), and a bunch of stuff not yet ready for prime-time consumption. "I know of at least two board games that are being developed," Connor Kizer says. Sure, not all of it needs to be documented, but the irrepressible, overwhelming mass of stuff that Wham City churns out is always impressive."
Sunday, May 06, 2007
What's a college town?
This is a very thorough look what creates a "college town" atmosphere.
Macon.com | 05/06/2007 | Is Macon a college town?
According to Blake Gumprecht, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire who studies college towns, a college town usually has at least 20% students. But the article outlines other factors that create a college town atmosphere, which could be adopted no matter the size of the school population.
Entertainment/eating establishments that are open past 2 a.m.
Bars and clubs for ages 18+
Low-cost/free entertainment
Small, funky shops
Large college sporting event
Strong independent music scene
College radio station
Community/college partnerships
Also mentioned in the article, but not listed above, is a specific district, within walking distance to campus, that caters to students.
Macon.com | 05/06/2007 | Is Macon a college town?
According to Blake Gumprecht, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire who studies college towns, a college town usually has at least 20% students. But the article outlines other factors that create a college town atmosphere, which could be adopted no matter the size of the school population.
Entertainment/eating establishments that are open past 2 a.m.
Bars and clubs for ages 18+
Low-cost/free entertainment
Small, funky shops
Large college sporting event
Strong independent music scene
College radio station
Community/college partnerships
Also mentioned in the article, but not listed above, is a specific district, within walking distance to campus, that caters to students.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Commutes, radio, and live music
I stumbled across this article in a blog about radio. That blog suggested that long commutes encourage radio listening because people want to feel connected. By that same token, long commutes probably discourage going out to catch live music because there just isn't time (unless it's a local concert where kids are welcome, which gives families an opportunity to do something together).
The creative class concept, where you encourage people to live at higher densities closer to cultural settings so they spend less time on the road and more time at clubs and in third places, is an attempt to counter the trends described below.
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker, 4/16/07: "Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as 'extreme commuters'—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990. They’re the fastest-growing category, the vanguard in a land of stagnant wages, low interest rates, and ever-radiating sprawl."
The creative class concept, where you encourage people to live at higher densities closer to cultural settings so they spend less time on the road and more time at clubs and in third places, is an attempt to counter the trends described below.
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker, 4/16/07: "Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way. People travel between counties the way they used to travel between neighborhoods. The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as 'extreme commuters'—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990. They’re the fastest-growing category, the vanguard in a land of stagnant wages, low interest rates, and ever-radiating sprawl."
Monday, January 29, 2007
How to kill a music scene
This article talks about why live music venues are to be found outside Naples, Florida rather than within the city limits.
What it really addresses is the challenge of a mixed use neighborhood (the new trend in urban design) where people live among the businesses. So they don't want loud music after they have gone to bed.
A dance studio in Boulder ran into the same problem recently because it located in a new development where there are apartments above the studio and the residents complained about the noise.
Along somewhat similar lines, the neighborhood right next to the University of Colorado, the Hill, has been having trouble getting any new music venues because local residents (the ones who own the expensive houses in the neighborhood -- not the students who also live in the neighborhood, but in rentals) don't like the noise and the drunken students that such places attract.
naplesnews.com, 1/28/07 - Fight for your right: "But there’s something conspicuously lacking in what Neapolitans have labeled the nightlife hot spot: good live music.
“There’s nowhere to go to see something new and original and live,” said 26-year-old music promoter and bartender Adam D’Zurilla. “As far as music at bars goes there’s nothing but DJs and Jimmy Buffett and Jack Johnson covers.”
If the city of Naples’ elected officials have anything to say about it, things will stay this way. Though not explicitly stated, the general rule of live entertainment in the City of Naples is fairly clear: only solo musicians, and only before 11:30 p.m. If you want to hear a band or DJ play past midnight, you’ll just have to go somewhere else. You’ll have to go north or east."
music scene
economic development
live music
clubs
University of Colorado
Boulder
mixed use
What it really addresses is the challenge of a mixed use neighborhood (the new trend in urban design) where people live among the businesses. So they don't want loud music after they have gone to bed.
A dance studio in Boulder ran into the same problem recently because it located in a new development where there are apartments above the studio and the residents complained about the noise.
Along somewhat similar lines, the neighborhood right next to the University of Colorado, the Hill, has been having trouble getting any new music venues because local residents (the ones who own the expensive houses in the neighborhood -- not the students who also live in the neighborhood, but in rentals) don't like the noise and the drunken students that such places attract.
naplesnews.com, 1/28/07 - Fight for your right: "But there’s something conspicuously lacking in what Neapolitans have labeled the nightlife hot spot: good live music.
“There’s nowhere to go to see something new and original and live,” said 26-year-old music promoter and bartender Adam D’Zurilla. “As far as music at bars goes there’s nothing but DJs and Jimmy Buffett and Jack Johnson covers.”
If the city of Naples’ elected officials have anything to say about it, things will stay this way. Though not explicitly stated, the general rule of live entertainment in the City of Naples is fairly clear: only solo musicians, and only before 11:30 p.m. If you want to hear a band or DJ play past midnight, you’ll just have to go somewhere else. You’ll have to go north or east."
music scene
economic development
live music
clubs
University of Colorado
Boulder
mixed use
Monday, August 07, 2006
Resource on creating vibrant cities
This website/blog is full of ideas on how to create towns with thriving arts and cultural scenes.
CoolTown Studios: "The goal is to develop creative, sustainable, profitable urban buildings and destinations that serve as both a model and anchor for future surrounding development designed to attract creative, entrepreneurial markets that significantly impact the local economy and quality of life."
CoolTown Studios: "The goal is to develop creative, sustainable, profitable urban buildings and destinations that serve as both a model and anchor for future surrounding development designed to attract creative, entrepreneurial markets that significantly impact the local economy and quality of life."
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