Six Good, Duplicable Ideas for Cities

"The Knight Cities Challenge just gave out $5 million to winning ideas from civic innovators to help 26 particular American cities, from Detroit to Macon, Georgia," reports Adele Peters.

Peters details six of the winners as innovative projects begging to be borrowed and stolen by other cities. The ideas include:

1. Turning a highway into a bicycle park, such as the city of Akron is preparing to do with the last mile if the Innerbelt highway.
2. A "pop-up minimum grid" will allow residents of Macon, Georgia to test a complete bike and pedestrian infrastructure system for a few days
3. A "placemaking platform" for front lawns, based on the ideas of the Musicant Group, a placemaking firm based in Minneapolis.
4. Using vacant homes to create new jobs. According to Peters, "the nonprofit Delta Institute plans to create a new reuse facility, Steel City Salvage, and then train workers in demolition, deconstruction, warehousing, and furniture-making," in the city of Gary, Indiana.
5. Turning a park into an outdoor office, "with free quality Internet, electricity, a comfortable place to sit, water, quiet, music, and shading so it's possible to look at a laptop," like a project in Long Beach, California.
6. Training neighs to develop vacant lots. A project in Columbus, Ohio works similarly to the idea for Gary above. In the case of Columbus, the Incremental Development Alliance will look to hand off renovation projects to local investors and developers.