Help me make South Grignano work :)

Okay, so I might as well let the whole cat out of the bag, instead of being all mysterious like for no good reason.

I live in an area in SL called Nova Albion; it was the Lindens' attempt at coaxing us users to build a living, breathing city. It has sidewalks, bridges, roads, even a broken trolley system (Ben, fix that someday, eh? . The major clincher, though, was that the lindens doubled the prim allotment for the land, letting us users have twice as many prims with which to build our things.

I started off in the SE corner of the city, and over the last year, have slowly crawled west. I now own the southern part of Grignano.

As such, I have my studio there, my "home", as it were. But, I also have 3000 extra prims with nothing to do.

So, my idea is to develop a "downtown" area, inspired and modelled after my neighbor Salazar across the street and his apartments/store/coffee shop combo.

I am in the process of building several brick-and-mortar structures, each with a distinct "American Downtown" feel to them. They will have officespace, coffee shops, apartments, and all that other stuff.

The piece de resistance, if I may say so myself, is the 240+ meter walkway that I constructed from one end of the Sim to the other. It connects the entire area together nicely, even if it does use some creative ways to get over Linden land (hope they don't mind .

Yes, this is going to have shops and apartments. However, I'm not looking to be deadly efficient with either, for maximum profit potential. I need tenants and shopkeepers to give the area "flavor". As such, renting both is $L250/month, with a prim limit currently set at "reasonable" (reasonable being as much as you can without affecting my building the rest of the neighborhood).

The major crux of this idea of mine is I want to experiment with the concept of a social space; why people hang out where, and for what reason. As such, I'm going to have several areas which are to serve as general purpose "hangout" spots. Currently on the list is a warehouse area, a bar, and a coffee shop. Other suggestions are welcome.

Anyhow, in a previous thread someone mentioned that "people attract people"; that is, if there are a group of folks milling around in an area, there are more likely to be more people flying by and getting "stuck" in the group. Midnight City is a good example; there are always a group hanging around there, and without fail, it collects about a dozen people within a half hour of arriving. PLus your regular shoppers and whatnot.

My question is, is there any way that you folks could see that would help folks get there and stay there? My initial idea was to pay someone to "run" these establishments; run the bar however the see fit, have events, invite their friends over; but that seems almost disingenuous; I don't want to turn into some sort of "club" where I force my workers to sit around for 15 hours a day. I want a vibrant, happy atmosphere throughout the entire city.

Thoughts? Comments? I gotta go to work, so I'l be checking on this thread from there.

Thanks, in advance.

LF

Well you posted that you were thinking of a warehouse, bar, and coffee shop as places for people to hang out in. So maybe tailor events for those areas.

Coffee bars - General socializing events, poetry readings (themed/unthemed), poetry slams, short story readings, essay readings, book reading circles

Bars - free t-shirt events, dating events, meetings

Warehouse - show off new ideas, projects, items?

Lordfly, whether you meant to or not, you also managed to bridge the look of Venice a bit with your walkway across the water toward the southeast part of Grignano. Very nice!

You are doing a great job with the mix of old downtown buildings you are putting up on the south edge of Grignano. It's a very interesting combination of mixed use spaces.

A few new people have moved into the Brownstone West recently. I think that this area has a nice atmosphere and will draw those looking for an old downtown feel.

I love it. I hope you make an area where people can tinker. I often need a change of scenery when I'm working on something and I love the environment you've created around there.

You've got some great ideas! I can't wait to go there and explore.

I am not sure how you could attract a lot of people at once other than having some dreaded money-ball costume-contest events, but obviously this is not the type of thing you want in your downtown.

So: woo clothing designers, preferably new ones (and good ones), woo animators, woo art galleries. Be picky! Or else it'll end up looking like the rest of SL. Sooner or later -- helped by a few events; I'd love to go to an art gallery opening -- someone could manage that, perhaps, and feature new artists every month -- people are going to show up at their own accord.

A big reason why so many people go to Midnight City is because the stores there ARE good (and it's fun to hang around and see who else shows up). So just remember to keep the content good and be as picky as you want.

I heard they have giant blue rodents in South Grignano that like to sit in the coffee shops.

I think I met that guy. The only jazz loving rodent I know of.

your doign great work down their LF. I avctually saw your walkway across the water and had to check it's properties as your were "VERY" creative in your linking I like all that you have done down there and i will be sepnding much mroe time in the city as well. I let it go in Barcola for a while but i just began to build on a couple of my lots that were vacant for awhile. Check out my new twin towers in Norhtern Barcola. Not quite grignano towers, and not real funcitonal but i am truly working to get the Cityscape to be a reality.

I also second your motion for Ben Linden to fix the trolley. I was thinking about that on my drive into work today. I also noticed that the north side of barcola's land height shfited and it is making the Linden Content look REALLY bad up there. I will continue to put effort into the city and get people's awareness up, but we need a little Linden intervention on their content (or Ben, give me and LF privileges to edit your objects and we will fix the haphazard roads, bridge with missing pieces, and land terraforming that is way off now)

I would like to chat with you in world LF. Perhaps i can be of assistance in getting people into your area as well. Not once has anyone taken me up on my offers to revitalize the city, and i genuinely would like to. hank didnt ever follow up with me on his "Living City" prjoect so I am goign to do my damn best to help Nova Albion become Alive and LIving again.

Kudos on all you have done so far. I also need ot mention that Marcos has done wonerful things in Miramare! Him and Tiger have that sim looking great with it's futuristic city look and performance friendly builds.

ingrid has a good suggestion. build an old factory into the scheme with a wide open inside space for people to sandbox small builds.

I rented an office here and fell into the really-realistic scuzzy canal/ditch, it's cool! Great walkway too, to dry on on lol.



I will talk to you about this some time as I have spent months trying to do events but there are probably much better experienced people ought there.

It always interests me that people come together and hang out and do little show-and-tells. How do the elite meet to greet? Where there is space for rezzing as Ingrid mentioned, but where it isn't a sandbox where kids are shooting at you and somebody's big ugly particle experiment is shining in your face.

Also, avoid ledges that are hard to land on. The more you make this town look like a RL town, the more you are forgetting that we are avian ethereal creatures and we really need a different environment to function in, which means flyability.

There's something that the Lindens need to do to make group gatherings happier. And that is to get rid of that hideous alphabet soup of names that greets you as you land at every gathering of more than a few people. You can't even find the person who just positively rated you in that ridiculous haze of names. It looks bad, it's stupid, and it actually runs counter to the intended purpose.

There ought to be a way to turn off your name above your head, and have it go somewhere else. Maybe a little "HELLO MY NAME IS" nametag. Maybe only a kind of mouseover text if in fact I mouse over you. Maybe a tray of icons of heads in a window, like in TSO. SOMETHING. Because it's impossible to sort through that alphabet soup.

Since they aren't likely to fix this, I suppose one solution is to try to have various centers of gravity that people group around so that they aren't all in that alphabet soup haze together.

I don't know why people in SL have stood that for two years.

Yes, I know you can go to chat history and see a list of names. But then you can't find the person in the alphabet soup.

Try going to EDIT > PREFERNECES > [I dont remember the rest] But I know there is a way to disable names on people. And last time I checked they do have a mouse over on people.

I know I know, I'm so smart

Besides, what's wrong with alphabet soup? How many food items are even minutetly educational?

Anywhoo its a lovely area and I am proud to say I have a shop down there! Very excited to set it up. Although its PG, (I guess I will have to sell my unmentionables elsewhere! ) Still getting set up and probably wont get done until the new year, but I plan to make an upscale furniture store.

As far as getting people there just stealing other peoples ideas from the thread - I like the idea of using the warehouse for exhibitions. From time to time you could bring in people to show off some sort of something. Maybe go with a theme like vehicles or even sculptures. I guess that would all depend on how many prims you have though.

I think the key is to just continually offer new things for people to check out. People like change

A bookstore (where the books are people's picks and have the cover of the real book) with book-club events.

A music store where musicians can advertise their online music and browsers can find urls to stream -- and where CD picks can be viewed.

An art resource store where a browser can get notecards telling where to find tutorials, etc.

A pet store with a weekly demonstration.

I have some more ideas but I may be a crackpot : }

Barnes, you are so smart!


BUT, how do I get A WHOLE ROOM of people to exercise their edit/preferences to avoid an alphabet soup situation? And yes, I think you can mouse-hover over somebody and see their name. But how do you get the whole group to realize this?

Do I form a group with a title that says USE EDIT PREFERENCES PROKOFY NEVA?

Turning off your own name only effects yourself, I think. There might be another option to turn off other peoples avatar names. But not sure



Great idea Lordfly, and everyone