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.
CNU’s Urban Laboratory sessions were a successful introduction of the Providence Congress. Giving participants an opportunity to work side-by-side with expert new urbanists on local challenges such as customizing a form-based code to the local...
Steve Maun of Leyland Alliance LLC and Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company led a week-long charrette in early February that produced a design for 30 acres of waterfront land in Newburgh, New York, a distressed Hudson River city of 28,...
Brown University is planning to expand into the Jewelry District of Providence, Rhode Island, by purchasing seven buildings containing 232,000 square feet. Past expansion by the university on the city’s East Side often brought Brown into conflict...
In Paris, a motorist with a cellphone or a GPS navigation device will soon be able to find out whether there’s a parking garage nearby that has space available. An organization of French parking garages announced in November that approximately 120...
CNU summit in Boulder showcases Project for Transportation Reform. The nearly 200 transportation enthusiasts who gathered in Boulder November 17-18 witnessed the evolution of CNU’s annual transportation summit into a showcase for the organization...
Mary Vogel, principal of PlanGreen in Washington, DC, helped prepare the Green Building Act of 2006, which the DC Council approved in December. If signed by the mayor and approved by the US Congress, the act would require new District-owned projects...
Donovan Scruggs stepped down as planning director of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to do planning-related consulting work for Tolar LeBatard Denmark Architects, the firm that produced a development of Katrina Cottages known as Cottage Square. Scruggs...
Table title: Pedestrian Survival Rates — Vehicle Speeds
New urbanists call for changes in ITE guide to “context-sensitive” design.
Richard McLaughlin, a Minneapolis-based architect and town planner known for his work on public-sector charrettes and for his efforts to systematize New Urbanism, died on New Year’s Eve of pancreatic cancer. He was a former principal of the Town...
Firmitas, a subsidiary of the I’On Company, is redeveloping a 32-unit apartment complex in Charlotte into a 1,000-unit, Morningside Village, which will also include 30,000 square feet of commercial space. According to the Charlotte Business Journal...
Luxury condominium developers in New York are including automatic parking garages in their projects. The driver leaves a car in a delivery bay, and a computerized system carries the vehicle to a parking spot in a structure that — thanks to the...