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.
If economic feasibility studies turn out favorably, there’s a good chance that Wal-Mart will combine its rebuilt store in Pass Christian, Mississippi, with 300 to 500 townhouses and apartments.
Since last October’s Mississippi Renewal Forum, new...
A senior vice president of a real estate financing and development firm, Faison Enterprises, recently criticized the financial returns of new urban town centers. Frank Herring, who is based in Winter Park, Florida, says town centers cost 30 percent...
By John Nolen Introduction by Charles D. Warren University of Massachusetts Press in association with the Library of American Landscape History, 2005, 228 pp., hardcover $35
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Orton Family Foundation will develop new planning tools and processes that coastal communities can use. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation will give the Orton Family Foundation $250,000 to introduce...
A growing number of cities are introducing illustrated zoning guides that ordinary citizens can readily
Laurie Volk of Zimmerman/Volk Associates in Clinton, New Jersey, has joined the board of directors of the Remaking Cities Institute.
Landscape architect Douglas Duany went to Kurdish Iraq in March to work with town planner and engineer Peter Swift, who is working with an American firm, Mid Atlantic Enterprises, that is carrying out development projects.
Todd Litman, executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in British Columbia, wrote a new book from Planners Press, Parking Management Best Practices. The 312-page, $69.95 paperback from the American Planning Association tells how...
New Mexico state planner Ken Hughes is staffing Gov. Bill Richardson’s Livability Task Force, which this spring will begin establishing the criteria for transit-oriented development at each station of the Albuquerque area’s commuter rail service....
Vulnerable neighborhoods like those in Biloxi, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, need buildings that are “able to take a swim every 30 years,” architect Stefanos Polyzoides said last October during the Mississippi Renewal Forum. Some disagreed. They...
The alley offset, described in the last Technical Page, is a way of modifying alignment of alleys from one block to the next. It is used where baroque excess in vehicle size and speed would otherwise result in corrosion of the alley system’s...
Traditional Neighborhood Development Partners of Durham, North Carolina, founded by new urbanist Robert Chapman, has four projects in planning and entitlement. Two of the projects are associated with university campuses, an area that Chapman has...