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.
Did you know it’s safer to live in cities or old suburbs than at the outer edge of metropolitan development? A book by William H. Lucy and David L. Phillips
Ankeny, Iowa, a community of 36,000 a few miles north of Des Moines, unveiled plans in August for development of Prairie Trail, a 1,031-acre project that is expected to be one of the largest new urban endeavors in the Midwest. The site, most of...
Deadline for comments on “Context Sensitive Design for Urban Thoroughfares in Walkable Communities,” the manual coauthored by the Institute for Transportation Engineers and the Congress for the New Urbanism has been extended to December 31. It can...
Maryland is experimenting with a private initiative aimed at reducing sprawl, now that the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation program launched by Governor Parris Glendening in 1997 has lost momentum under his successor, Robert L. Ehrlich.
Mixed-income housing should be encouraged around the 300 transit stations in metropolitan New York as part of a strategy to moderate the region’s exceptionally high housing prices, says a new report from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and...
A first portion of Classical Architecture: A Handbook of the Tradition for Today has been posted on the website of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. That section, “The Elements of Classical Architecture,” will be...
Ann Daigle has been named special assistant to Leland Speed, director of the Mississippi Development Authority. A Louisiana native active in Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts for the past year, Daigle is aiding in town planning, coding, and design, and...
Habitat for Humanity is seeking to raise its design standards through a collaboration with the Institute for Classical Architecture & Classical America (ICA&CA). Three architects selected by ICA&CA are designing houses in Rochester, New...
Downtown Montgomery will soon have a new plaza much like those in Europe. The Alabama city was about to rebuild an intersection around the 1885-vintage Court Street fountain when Ken Groves, head of the city planning department, asked Rick Hall and...
Berkeley-based planner says New Urbanism should focus more on jobs and regional planning.Peter Calthorpe, whose urban and regional planning work now extends from American locales such as Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Austin to overseas cities...
In the September issue, we reported that Dhiru Thadani of Baltimore-based Ayers Saint Gross would lead the planning for a brand-new university in Orissa, a state near the Bay of Bengal in India, and for the 40,000-population township that will be...
A master plan study that Ayers Saint Gross Architects and Planners prepared for hurricane-damaged Long Beach, Mississippi, received an award for excellence in urban design from the Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Dhiru...