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.
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,...
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 ...
The July/August issue of Cottage Living features what are described as the nation’s “Top 10 Neighborhoods.” Nine of the ten incorporate new urbanist ideas. Pictured on the magazine’s cover is Serenbe, a 1,000-acre development in Palmetto, Georgia,...
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
When was the last time you heard of a building being named for an urban planner? That rare event has just occurred in Vancouver, British Columbia, where a 34-story glass tower, to be erected in the Yaletown section of downtown, is being called “The...
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture, has been appointed to the US Commission of Fine Arts for four years by President George Bush.
Connie M. Moran was elected mayor of her hometown, Ocean Springs, Miss., in June 2005. Two months later, Hurricane Katrina changed almost everything.“Her leadership was immediately tested and she was a real stand-out among all the elected officials...
The nation’s largest nonprofit builder — known for a barebones approach — is moving forward with an ambitious and diverse neighborhood.What will apparently be the first complete new urban neighborhood developed by Habitat for Humanity was designed...
Edited by Robert Adam and Matthew HardyTradition Today takes readers, at a quick pace, over a lot of interesting terrain, most of it off the Modern beaten path. It’s a refreshing excursion.