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.
With the walkable, neighborhood-based development favored by new urbanists becoming fast established as a needed remedy to the central threats facing the earth’s environment — and the hazards of oil dependency — the Austin Congress became the place...
Daniel Parolek, Karen Parolek, and Paul Crawford have identified nine errors that people commonly make when designing and applying form-based codes (FBCs).
Fourteen homebuilders are at work in Oshara Village, a New Mexico development that combines New Urbanism and resource-saving features to reduce stress on the environment. Developer Alan Hoffman says his 470-acre project, just south of Santa Fe, uses...
The latest edition of “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” identifies transit-oriented development as a “best bet” for investors. The annual report published by the Urban Land Institute and Pricewaterhouse Coopers says that in light of traffic...
The US Green Building Council has compiled an on-line catalog of green building strategies that have been used in LEED-certified projects. The Innovation & Design Credit Catalog is available at www.usgbc.org.
Hank Dittmar, chief executive of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, received the Seaside Prize during a ceremony in Seaside, Florida. Dittmar, who stepped down as chairman of the board of CNU this April, was honored for “significant...
After years of finding themselves on opposite sides of disagreements about street design approvals, new urbanists and members of the fire service profession gathered in Austin just before the start of CNU XVI and discovered they have more in common...
Rendering and photo shared captions: The series above from A Living Tradition explains an architectural solution to clothes drying — the Laundry Eave. At right is the vernacular-classical Transect.
By Paul LukezFrom the beginning days of the movement, there was a genuine desire on the part of several of the New Urbanism’s founders and other early members of CNU to bring Modernists and other proponents of the architectural avant-garde into...
Officials in Arlington County, Virginia see a growing likelihood that a modern streetcar system will be installed on a 4.7-mile stretch of the Columbia Pike. The streetcar proposal emerged from planning efforts that produced a form-based code for...
A newly produced 30-minute DVD helps builders and developers in new urban communities learn about cohousing. The DVD features Nevada City Cohousing in Nevada City, California; Eastern Village in Silver Spring, Maryland; and Wild Sage in Boulder,...
Architect Patrick Pinnell, who recently moved his office to Chester, Connecticut, was featured in the “Sketch Pad” column of the April 6 New York Times real estate section. Describing himself in the article as “a card-carrying New Urbanist,” Pinnell...