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.
Joseph Barnes is now director of architecture and design for Celebration Associates. Barnes is based in Hot Springs, Virginia, where that firm has taken on a major project at the rural end of the Transect. The firm bought the Virginia Hot Springs...
Howard Blackson of San Diego has joined PlaceMakers and is expected to help the organization expand the use of form-based codes in the West.
The national attention, and associated criticism, generated by work in the Gulf Coast region was one of many issues raised at the June Congress for the New Urbanism in Providence, Rhode Island. Other topics included certification of projects,...
The kayaking young developers Katie Selby and her brother Jed Selby expect the first building permits for their South Main mixed-use neighborhood in Buena Vista, Colorado, to be issued by the beginning of July. The 40-acre project along the Arkansas...
Every component of urbanism possesses both technical and social dimensions. While there are always good reasons for a traditional component or relationship of components to assume a standard form, there are also times when some widespread alteration...
A groundbreaking was held in May for the $350 million Pleasant Hill BART transit village in Contra Costa County, California. Lennertz Coyle & Associates (now HDR Town Planning of San Francisco, California) designed the project nearly five years...
The Village of Kennedyville in Kent County, Maryland — one of the first attempts to expand a historic hamlet into a village using traditional neighborhood design — broke ground this spring. Developer Carl Wright contracted with Ryan Homes to build...
Readers around the world can find a concise yet comprehensive summary of New Urbanism and its progress simply by clicking a website address at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism. This up-to-date essay...
Earlier this year EPA released a series of long-awaited publications on water resources and development patterns (see the March 2006 New Urban News). A review of one of those publications, Protecting Water Resources with Higher-Density Development,...
Bob Regan, author of The Steps of Pittsburgh (reviewed in the June 2004 New Urban News), has written a companion book, The Bridges of Pittsburgh, published by The Local History Company in Pittsburgh. Like the earlier volume, the new 182-page...
After 10 years as planning director for the City of Fort Pierce, Florida, Ramon Trias has formed Trias & Associates, a firm specializing in town planning and urban design. Based in Fort Pierce, Trias & Associates is working with national...
Steve Schukraft, who led the new urbanist team in Moss Point, Mississippi, beginning with the Mississippi Renewal Forum last October, has left HOK Planning Group in Washington, DC, to direct the Planning & Urban Design Studio of HDR in Tampa,...