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.
Three months in advance of anticipated initial home settlements, a factory is built in the area planned as the final phase of the subdivision. The home assembly plant is typically sized for volume of output, recognizing that some capacity increase...
Lacking a city-initiated redevelopment plan, the Gentilly section of New Orleans took its future into its own hands in late April and sponsored a charrette led by Miami architect-planner Andres Duany. The well-attended eight-day program produced a...
A citizens’ effort in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington, DC, and adjacent Takoma Park, Maryland, highlights what may become an issue at a number of transit stations across the nation: how to balance development against the need for affordability...
A 15-member Charrette Stewardship Group, chaired by Pam Kramer of the Duluth Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC), is working on promoting and implementing ideas from a charrette the University of Miami’s Knight Program in Community Building...
The first project advocated by the Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance within the state of Delaware is Bell Point, a 108-acre mixed-use new urban community at the Five Points intersection of State Routes 1 and 9 in Sussex County.
In the mountain states, where urban neighborhoods are oases in a landscape of wide-open spaces, “traveling eight hours for a meeting is par for the course,” says Katie Selby, codeveloper of South Main in Buena Vista, CO. So she wasn’t surprised to...
Tom Borrup, a Minneapolis-based consultant in nonprofit management, community development, and philanthropy, has written The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook: How to Transform Communities Using Local Assets, Arts, and Culture. The 224-page...
Milt Rhodes has moved from Miami, Florida, to Raleigh, in his native North Carolina, where he is working part time on projects for Dover, Kohl & Partners, where he previously was employed. Rhodes, who has degrees in architecture, urban planning...
New Town Builders has more than 5,000 traditional neighborhood development (TND) units in the pipeline or under construction in Colorado, including houses in greenfield and grayfield communities, transit-oriented development (TOD), affordable...
Newland Communities LLC has agreed to build a traditional town center in its Clarksburg Town Center development in Montgomery County, Maryland, as part of a settlement that apparently ends a long-running controversy over whether the developer...
The patterns of alley geometry and alley-associated buildings, where they meet the block faces and surrounding streets, may be usefully adjusted in a variety of ways. It is necessary to understand standard configurations, but also how they may be...