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 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...
Building demolition began in February for the redevelopment of a World War II Airplane factory in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, into a mixed-use, transit-oriented neighborhood. Wesmont Station, planned by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, includes 737...
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...
By the American Planning AssociationJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006, 736 pp., hardcover $199.
The idea of calling prefab new urbanist-designed dwellings in Louisiana “Gulf Coast Cottages” has been put to rest no more than two months after it was first raised. Andres Duany now says “Katrina” is the brand that will be used for all the cottages...
The City of Montgomery, Alabama, adopted the SmartCode by a unanimous vote of council in January. According to Chad Emerson of Faulkner University in Montgomery, and an expert on the SmartCode, Montgomery is now the second largest municipality in...