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.
Alley-loaded and on-street parking can easily make new urbanist neighborhoods more than competitive with sprawl in lower-density situations. In denser center and core zones, though, the parking issue truly comes to the fore. By its basic nature,...
A 54-acre expansion of the downtown of Savannah, Georgia, extends the historic city’s connection to the Savannah River. The plan for Savannah River Landing, initiated by the city, includes a series of squares based on the city’s famous Oglethorpe...
The image to the right accompanied a March book review of Australian New Urbanism, and originally appeared in that book. Contrary to the caption in March, the authors never said the approach at the left is the “Australian ideal,” although it is well...
Jeff Speck will step down in May as director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts and return to private practice as a city planner. “I signed up for two years and ended up staying for four,” Speck said, expressing satisfaction with...
At HomeTown, a 300-acre new urban development being built by Arcadia Realty in North Richland Hills, Texas, the Walker Creek Elementary School has been designed so that it forms a street wall and helps define an important corner in what will be a...
Edited by Eugenie L. Birch and Susan M. Wachter University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, 387 pp., paperbound $34.95.
The Vancouver City Council unanimously adopted the East Fraserlands Official Development Plan, a high-density town center and a major new development site with emphasis on sustainability and New Urbanism. Hired by ParkLane Homes and WesGroup, Duany...
With a focus on traditional urbanism and the lessons of our most treasured older cities, the formal Thursday-evening-through-Sunday CNU XV program is fully loaded with expert urbanists sharing valuable knowledge, but there are great reasons to...
The new director of planning for the District of Columbia is well known to new urbanists — Harriet Tregoning is the former secretary of the Maryland Office of Smart Growth and director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute. She was on the team...
The 2007 Charter Award winners, listed in the table below and to be presented at CNU in Philadelphia in May, include four designs promoting Gulf-Coast recovery. They include:• Two projects that advance the promise of modest Katrina Cottages in...
“It’s wonderful to see kids in the town center,” town landscape architect Rip Weaver says of the Mt Laurel development in Shelby County, Alabama. Schoolchildren and their parents are among those breathing life into center’s several blocks, which...
The 2007 Downtown Specific Plan of Ventura, California, which calls for reconnecting the downtown to the beach and for managing parking better, won approval March 19 from the City Council. Five years in the making, the plan calls for adding more...