Archives
Welcome to the archives of Better Cities & Towns, a publication founded by Robert Steuteville as New Urban News in 1996. This archive holds two decades of the best news and analysis on compact, mixed-use growth and development, from 1996 to 2015.
By Thomas L. FriedmanFarrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008, 438 pp., $27.95 hardcoverThomas Friedman is a powerhouse author — someone who apparently only has to pick up the phone to talk or meet with political, industrial, economic, and intellectual...
Vertical construction is now underway at Twinbrook Station, formerly called Twinbrook Commons, a major transit-oriented development in Rockville, Maryland, that won a CNU Charter Award in 2004. JBG Companies, joint developer with the Washington...
The Health Line, a seven-mile-long bus rapid transit (BRT) route, is expected to begin operating on Cleveland’s premier street the last week of October. At a cost of about $200 million, mostly from the federal government, the BRT line has been...
New York architect Robert A.M. Stern will receive the tenth Vincent Scully Prize of the National Building Museum Nov. 12 in Washington, DC. The museum is honoring Stern for his “years of teaching at Columbia and Yale Universities, his leadership as...
New Longview, a new urban development in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, about 20 miles from downtown Kansas City, was featured on ABC’s nightly news Sept. 25 in a report about how one developer — Gale Communities — continues to build and sell houses...
Affordable-housing advocates in Austin, Texas, are promoting “alley flats” as an answer to the city’s escalating housing costs.“From 2000 to 2007, the median home price in Austin has risen from $144,000 to $239,000 — an increase of 66 percent —...
By Michael Kwartler and Gianni LongoLincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2008, 104 pp., $35 paperback.The last 20 years have brought a blossoming of citizen-planning processes and an array of innovative tools that help citizens understand future...
“Honey, Who Shrunk the Wal-Mart,” could be a title of a documentary film sometime in the future. The big-box merchandiser has introduced a 10,000-15,000 square foot neighborhood grocery store format, according to a report in the San Diego Union-...
Sim Van der Ryn began earning an international reputation as the “father of the green building” during his tenure as California State Architect in Governor Jerry Brown’s administration. His pioneering role advancing sustainable urbanism received...
Ocean Springs development runs counter to a spate of bad development in Mississippi.Cottage Square, a model cluster of new urbanist cottages that was planned more than two years ago for Ocean Springs, Mississippi, as a response to Hurricane Katrina...
A study in Raleigh, North Carolina, area shows why fire response is slower and more costly in the suburbs. The city looked at two fire stations in historic areas with street grids and three stations in the emerging suburbs, examining how many...
The Financial Times reported July 18 on a sure sign that sprawl is on the defensive, at least for now: Some developers are selling outlying land back to agricultural interests, having concluded that the market for constructing houses on it has...