Speakers and Performers

Neil Takemoto is a co-founder of the CSPM Group, a crowdsourced placemaking firm that is managing such programs for four projects: a 17-acre transit oriented development in Bristol, Connecticut; an urban revitalization initiative in Hempstead and Huntington Station, both in Long Island, and a new development in Nashua, New Hampshire. You can watch his TEDx presentation on crowdsourced placemaking here.

He is the founder and CEO of Cooltown Beta Communities, a firm that pioneered the field of crowdsourced placemaking, encompassing his work over the last 19 years that has been committed to developing destinations with significant economic, environmental and social benefit.

He is the founder of Cooltown Studios, a crowdsourced placemaking blog/news site that attracts 40,000 unique visitors a month. It has been featured in Architect Magazine and the ULI’s annual developers conference. He is also the co-founder of Bubbly, a crowdsourcing web application.

With Andres Duany, Neil co-founded the National Town Builders Association in 1997, the only business trade group of Smart Growth/New Urbanism real estate developers. Prior to that, he founded a national nonprofit educational clearinghouse for the New Urbanism field.