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.
Eco-urban legends will connect past and future of sustainable communities, while transportation summit will explore need for networks
Paul Crawford, a nationally known expert on form-based codes and a practitioner admired among new urbanists, died of a brain tumor May 21 at his home in San Luis Obispo, California. He was 60.
The case for developing in more compact ways — and thus reducing global warming — is made with dozens of color graphs and tables in Growing Cooler, a new book published by the Urban Land Institute. The 170-page, $39.95 hardcover explores climate-and...
Baxter Village, a 1,033-acre traditional neighborhood development in Fort Mill, South Carolina, recorded its 1,000th home sale this May, nine years after the first house was sold. The final 400 lots are under development or planned, leading the...
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems encourage transit-oriented development (TOD), a new study for the Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center suggests. The Center’s newsletter, Transport Innovator, reported in its March-April issue on a draft study of TOD in...
Kenneth Schwartz, who collaborated on a master plan for Crozet, Virginia, that won a 2005 CNU Charter Award, will become dean of Tulane University July 1. Schwartz will move to New Orleans from the University of Virginia, where he has had several...
A $100 million fund that will invest in urban mixed-income housing developments was announced in late April by its two partners — Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and L&M Development Partners. The fund, GSLM Capital Partners LLC, expects to...
Over the next 12 months, individuals associated with CNU and the Institute of Traffic Engineers (ITE) will work on making refinements to a guide the two organizations have produced: Context Sensitive Solutions in Developing Major Urban Thoroughfares...
n the 1960s, two elevated Interstate highways were built along the edges of an old, mixed-use area north of downtown San Antonio. The result —no surprise, in retrospect — was that the area pretty much languished for the next 40 years. Now, however,...
The Bywater Cottages in New Orleans have more than one floor of living space, contrary to what we reported in the March issue. Diane Dorney, a partner in their development, says the second level contains a large loft with a bathroom.
Brookings Institution’s Urban Markets Initiative and the Center for Neighborhood Technology launched an interactive mapping website April 9 that allows people to calculate the cost of housing and transportation — by neighborhood — in 52 metropolitan...
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced legislation in March to aggressively promote transit-oriented development (TOD). “For decades in our State and in our country, our transportation system has followed land use,” said O’Malley. “Now, we must...