We are so far behind, someday we will be ahead...

A while back the ingenuity fest - Cleveland offered up a competition entitled 'What Would YOU do with the Breuer Building?'

I was beyond tempted to enter something, in fact I had at least submissions in mind but mostly due the time consuming action of moving my competition entering ability has decreased. Regardless I am sure that there will be some real fine ideas. In fact, I guarentee it.

A couple of days ago I stumbled across an article referencing the Nido Project in London. A student housing project where the students rent out very compact dorm rooms in downtown areas and share facilities such as recreation, exercise, library, living room, etc. Imagine only renting out the bare necessities of space for your life, where you sleep, restroom and eat. Then you share the rest with your classmates. Study space, a movie theater, education center, etc.

It sounds very similar to a boarding house or dorm building but on a larger more urban scale. The reason I bring this up is mostly to wonder if something like this could work in Cleveland. As Cleveland State University attempts to create residences for it's students close to campus I wonder (and hope) that the public spaces will become more active and that businesses will move in to capitalize, hopefully making downtown, well, vibrant.
The idea of centralized living spaces that hampers the basic human need to accumluate a ton of 'junk' also appeals to me (having recently packed up and moved much more then I thought I ever owned). I think I could apprectiate living in a smaller place if it was well laid out and not as cramped as many of the dorm rooms I had witnessed in my life. I just wonder why this only applies to college kids though. I think that there would be quite a few younger professionals looking to move to downtown if the rent was cheap and they weren't burdened with having to furnish a larger 'typical' apartment that didn't foster the idea of 'being neighbors'.

This is just a rant on an idea that doesn't seem all too out there, just doesn't have the market research supporting it's development. Oh, and this would be one of my suggestions for the Breuer building; dorm living for CSU and Kent State University.