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.
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...
Keith Covington has launched Third Coast Design Studio, a Nashville-based planning, urban design, and architecture practice. Covington formerly directed the Nashville Planning Department’s Design Studio.
Proposals for planting rows of trees along the roads — a traditional technique for shaping pleasing public spaces — are often opposed by transportation engineers, who contend that a wide travel corridor, free of obstacles, is needed to protect the...
Public workshops lead toward a statewide vision of the future, while 15 teams work on planning New Orleans.
Andres Duany hopes to help revive the art of village-building in Scotland. Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. has been commissioned by Moray Estates Development Company to help plan a new Highland community containing about 5,000 houses, along with shops...
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has cleared the site in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where its store was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and has hired consultants to study a proposal for constructing a “Wal-Mart village” there, says local architect Robin Riley...
In a region with numerous examples of mixed-use town centers and TNDs completed, Ayrsley in Charlotte, North Carolina, is taking off. Planned for a total of 2,000 residential units, 1.8 million square feet of offices, 400,000 square feet of retail,...
Urban designer and architect Bill Dennis of Providence, Rhode Island, created a plan for a 160-acre traditional neighborhood development in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, in July. The plan includes a main street, library, post office, Montessori school, and...
Fairfax County, Virginia, has issued a request for proposals for redesigning one of the nation’s most famous, or notorious, edge cities — Tysons Corner. The consultant selected by the county would help a business-civic group known as the Tysons Task...
Brent Toderian, who has worked with new urbanist projects as a planner for the City of Calgary, has moved to Vancouver to take the Director of Planning position. As the Vancouver Globe and Mail reports, he will be taking over from the city’s “...
Photo caption #1: A Charter Awards certificate for the creation of new traditional residential villages at Fort Belvoir, Virginia (including the first village: Herryford Village) will be hanging in the Pentagon, said Ivan Bolden, an assistant for...
Steve Mouzon has stepped down from PlaceMakers to devote all his energy to the growth of the New Urban Guild, which focuses on architectural charrettes, “manufactured architecture,” and tools for the making of traditional towns and buildings. One...