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.
The City of Miami, Florida, is working with Duany Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) of Miami on a complete overhaul of its zoning code. The new code will be a modified version of the SmartCode. The city’s effort is called Miami 21. In a parallel effort, the city...
For workers driving to their jobs, Atlanta is America’s most expensive metropolitan area, at least as measured by the cost of gasoline, says a study by Sperling’s Best Places. Because of long distances between home and work and the region’s serious...
Roughly 90 percent of Oregon’s 241 cities have changed their laws to limit cul-de-sacs, The Wall Street Journal reported June 2. In an article on efforts throughout the US to discourage cul-de-sacs, the Journal said “some traffic experts say the...
Katrina Cottages by Marianne Cusato and others get eight pages of text and photos in the July/August issue of Cottage Living magazine. The diminutive dwellings are presented as “the first step for long-term housing to replace the approximately 99,...
Discussion at CNU XIV’s closing session affirms membership’s respect for the Charter
After a one-year hiatus, the subject of supplementing the Charter of the New Urbanism was back on the program at the Congress in Providence.
Scott Polikov of Gateway Planning Group in Austin, Texas, is joining the board of directors of the National Civic League. He was involved in producing a master plan and form-based code for transit-oriented development in the core of a 2,000-acre...
For five years public and private interests have sought to redevelop a commercial strip in New Castle County, Delaware, into a walkable village center. These efforts are bearing fruit as a 66-acre medium-density urban center called Brookview nears...
The Grand Valley Metro Council in Grand Rapids, Michigan, won the “best project” award from the Institute of Transportation Engineers Transportation Planning Council for a study that promotes form-based codes among governments in the Grand Rapids...
In downtown Cedar Key, Florida, a development will create a new block of mixed-use buildings plus the restoration of adjacent historic buildings dating to the 1860s. The $25 million project is under construction and expected to be complete in late...
The University of Miami’s Knight Fellows in Community Building will conduct a charrette in Memphis July 17-22 aimed at helping revitalize a section of the Tennessee city that historically was known as Winchester Park and currently is called Intown....
An economic impact analysis of the Curtis Park HOPE VI project in Denver by the Leland Consulting Group illustrate a success story. Among the findings:• Crime was down 17 percent (it rose 7 percent in comparable neighborhoods).
“New Urbanism is Blooming” is the theme of the Summer 2006 issue of On Common Ground, a magazine published twice