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.
More than 20,000 bicycles are to be made available at 1,450 rental stations in Paris by year’s end. A company called Cyclocity is working with the city to establish the bike rental system, The Washington Post reported March 24. Renters will pay a...
A plan for Sandywoods Farm, an affordable community for artists in Tiverton, Rhode Island, received an award from CNU New England during the chapter’s annual conference, held at the end of March in Lowell, Massachusetts. Donald Powers Architects of...
The Miami Planning Advisory Board approved Miami 21, a comprehensive plan to guide development along with a new zoning code based on the SmartCode. The City Commission is scheduled to vote on Miami 21 in June. “An approval of the Miami 21 plan means...
Dan Parolek and Karen Parolek, principals in Opticos Design in Berkeley, California, are co-authoring a book on form-based codes with Paul Crawford of Crawford Multari & Clark in San Luis Obispo. Wiley Press is to publish it in spring 2008....
The NEA has awarded funding to the National Charrette Institute (NCI) for the production and distribution of an educational DVD video on charrettes. The list of matching funders includes the National Association of Realtors. The DVD will contain two...
Washington Town Center, the first New Jersey town center built from the ground up with the help of grants from the state, including a planning grant from the Office of Smart Growth, is experiencing growing pains.
The 400-acre Town Center, eight...
To overcome persistent conflicts between new urbanists and advocates for the disabled, the lobbying group AARP has agreed to host a conference in which the participants will try to reach a consensus on access requirements for one- to three-unit...
Starting prices at New Daleville have slipped a few thousand dollars further — to $269,990 — in the seven months since Last Harvest was written. “Instead of selling five houses a month, which I had hoped, they’re selling 2 a month,” Joe Duckworth...
Highlands Garden Village, a new urban infill development in Denver, Colorado, won the Urban Land Institute’s Award for Excellence: The America Competition. The 27-acre Highlands Garden Village was developed by Perry Rose LLC and was planned by...
Peter Swift, director of town planning for Mid Atlantic Global LLC in Erbil, Iraq, is working on a three-square-mile new town plan for Dohuk in northern Iraq and on infill in the Ankawa Quarter of Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government...
Pass Christian, one of the Mississippi communities hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, adopted the SmartCode in principle in April. The expectation is that after the city draws maps and meets with residents of neighborhoods to make adjustments, the...
Montgomery, Alabama, approved the SmartCode as mandatory regulation for downtown development. Montgomery County, centered on the city, is a SmartCode hotbed. In 2005, the county’s only other incorporated municipality, Pike Road, approved the...