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.
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...
The Charrette Handbook: The Essential Guide for Accelerated, Collaborative Community Planning is scheduled to be made available August 1 by the National Charrette Institute (NCI) and the American Planning Association’s Planners Book Service. NCI...
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 Arnold Fund builds new urbanist projects in Georgia and eyes the ‘Katrina Cottage’ model.The Arnold Fund builds new urbanist projects in Georgia and eyes the ‘Katrina Cottage’ model.The Arnold Fund is taking the lead in developing two sizable...
The Peerless Development Group has begun converting a 40 percent vacant shopping mall in Forest Acres, South Carolina, into the core of a development that may eventually contain a network of streets and sidewalks, street-oriented retail, a restored...
Dan Camp was elected mayor of Starkville, Mississippi, a college town with 22,000 people, in June of 2005. In the last year, Camp has made progress fulfilling a campaign promise to keep the police station and city courthouse downtown. Camp ran for...
Shaker Heights, Ohio, is considering an offer by developer Robert Stark to redevelop a sprawling intersection with two strip malls into a town center. A plan for the intersection of Warrensville Center Road and Van Aken Boulevard was created by...