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.
Laguna West, an early 1990s new urbanist development 12 miles south of downtown Sacramento, recently became a point of contention in the June 6 primary for governor of California. State Treasurer Philip Angelides, now running for the Democratic...
The Vermont legislature approved a bill establishing a “growth centers” program, which encourages development and rehabilitation in existing downtowns and village centers. The legislation expands financial incentives for property owners in centers...
The Knight Foundation has chosen the investment collaborative organization Living Cities to help guide redevelopment in the eastern section of Biloxi, Mississippi, where the homes of many low-income and minority families were destroyed or badly...
The Urban Land Institute has released a 22-page booklet titled “Principles for Temporary Communities,” based on lessons learned from the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. It includes a new strategy from FEMA’s Joint Housing Solutions Center that calls...
Howard Katz, a former Knight Fellow in Community Building who worked for the Cuyahoga County treasurer’s office in Cleveland and the American Architectural Foundation in Washington, DC, will be a member of the “founding faculty” of the Charlotte...
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.
PlaceMatters, an initiative of the Orton Family Foundation, has established a website at www.placematters.org. PlaceMatters is a network of practitioners involved in what the Foundation calls “the art and science of planning for vibrant and...