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.
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...
Joyce Marin decided not to seek a third term on the borough council in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, so that she can devote more time to regional issues, including smart growth. She was recently appointed to the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission and is co-...
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...
Each Congress for the New Urbanism is packed with much of the collective knowledge of an incredible group of people devoted to designing, building, and rebuilding better cities and towns. Many first-time attendees are overwhelmed to be exposed to so...
By Philip Bess
Bess has never advocated giving Christian witness a preferred place at the new urbanist table; he simply wants sound ideas to be given their due regardless of the convictions from which they emerge.
Cruising for on-street parking is responsible for about 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts, UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup said in an op-ed piece in the March 29 New York Times. Shoup used the Times article to promote the...
Tony Sease of Civitech in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is serving as the CNU’s representative on the Governing Assembly of PERSI, a new organization whose full name is Practices, Education and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure. Formally...
The US Environmental Protection Agency has issued a request for proposals (RFP) on how state policies and practices affect spending on school construction and renovation. One of the purposes of the RFP is to identify policies and practices that make...
Emily Talen is leaving the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she has taught planning, to become a professor in the Urban and Metropolitan Studies Program at Arizona State University’s new downtown Phoenix campus, located on a light...
City pursues ‘EcoDensity Initiative’ that expands downtown housing boom to transit-friendly corridors.City pursues ‘EcoDensity Initiative’ that expands downtown housing boom to transit-friendly corridors.The government of Vancouver, British Columbia...