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.
The City of Hercules, California, has been dragging its feet on adopting a master plan for the final 40 acres of a large new urban waterfront development that has been under construction in central Hercules for the past seven years (see March 2005...
• Takes place November 6-8, 2008. • Registration will open in late August.
• Please check cnu.org/transportation2008.
• To get involved or learn more, contact Heather Smith at (312) 551-7300 x15 or e-mail to hsmith@cnu.org.
Dhiru Thadani of Ayers Saint Gross is leading a team that is master-planning Akruti University, a new institution for 35,000 students near Mumbai, India. The team is producing the schematics for the buildings in addition to the plan. Earlier,...
About 11 blocks of Granville Street, historically one of the premier shopping streets in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, will get a $20.8 million (Canadian) ($20.4 million US) makeover, starting in September. The street’s retailing started...
By Stacy MitchellBeacon Press, 2007, 336 pp., $15 paperback
Waveland, Mississippi, one of the municipalities most devastated by Hurricane Katrina, has turned away from new urbanist rebuilding plans. Planner and architect Robert Orr, who participated in the Mississippi Renewal Forum in October, 2005, reports...
The US Environmental Protection Agency has created a suggested stormwater permit framework geared to encouraging higher-density, mixed-use development and “low-impact” runoff management techniques. The EPA permit framework is voluntary, but it...
Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in British Columbia has written a paper that calls for changes in the LEED rating system. LEED programs typically “reduce building energy consumption 20 to 60 percent,” says Litman, but they...
Widewaters Group, based in DeWitt, New York, and Robert M. Leidig & Associates, in Monterey County, California, have been authorized by the City of Salinas, California, to negotiate the master planning and redevelopment of an eight-block area in...
im Van der Ryn, Paul Hawken, Jerry Brown, Peter Calthorpe, and Stewart Brand to appear at September event
New urbanist thinking holds that tight-knit development can promote neighborliness and can generate densities that make amenities, such as nearby shops and transit service, economically feasible. But at what point does a lot become too small for...
Construction began this spring on phase 1 of Westgate Pasadena, a 2005 Charter Award winner designed by Thomas P. Cox Architects. The 820-unit infill development includes 110 affordable units and 22,000 square feet of retail on 12 acres in the ...