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.
Plan title: Parking Lot Guidelines
“Planners cannot significantly improve the design of cities without reforming local parking requirements to emphasize quality over quantity,” Vinit Mukhija and Donald Shoup declare in the Summer 2006 issue of...
Developers Frank and Trey Starkey of New Port Richey, Florida, are working on a new traditional neighborhood development (TND). Having sold a large part of Longleaf, their first TND — to Crosland Inc., which will complete the final two neighborhoods...
A 19-acre mixed-use development is being proposed on Lady’s Island in Beaufort, South Carolina, across the Beaufort River from downtown. Aslan Development Group of Louisville, Kentucky, has hired LandPlan Partnership of Hilton Head to do the urban...
An article on msn.com in early August contended that consistently high gas prices will have a rising influence on house buyers’ decisions. The article, “Could Rising Gas Prices Kill the Suburbs?,” calculated that at $3/gallon gas, a 50-mile commute...
Copyright © 2006 Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell. Libraries, universities, institutions, and businesses may not circulate, hire, print, use as a teaching aid, or reproduce this article and/or images without the prior written...
The City of Germantown, near Memphis, Tennessee, hired the Lawrence Group of Davidson, North Carolina, to create a smart growth plan in during a charrette scheduled for September, according to an eyewitnessnews.com report.
Wide traffic lanes may make traveling more dangerous, rather than less. Eric Dumbaugh at Texas A&M, who has studied road design and the frequency of accidents, has found that making traffic lanes wider than 11 feet does not improve safety....
The movement toward eliminating excessive parking requirements scored a victory this summer when San Francisco adopted new regulations for downtown. Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an ordinance that gets rid of all minimum parking requirements for...
Well over 200 homes are built or under construction in Norton Commons, a traditional neighborhood development outside of Louisville, Kentucky. The town center for the project is also under construction, with four live-work units, and three mixed-use...
Well-executed new urban projects often spawn other projects nearby, and a new example of this tendency is in Birmingham, Alabama. Chimney Rock, a town designed in July and on a fast track for development, is located down the road from Mt Laurel, a...
A mixed-use infill project broke ground in Providence, Rhode Island, designed by new urbanist Donald Powers. Two buildings on a vacant lot on Douglas Avenue will include a total of 13 residential units above 5,500 square feet of retail. The...
Fourteen states have enacted visitability legislation, and at least 24 cities have modified their building codes to make new houses accessible to disabled visitors, the American Planning Association newsletter Zoning Practice reported in an April...