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.
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...
Some municipalities in hot climates, such as Miami, are replacing that symbol of tropical paradise — the palm tree — with other, leafier trees. The objective is to provide a tree canopy that will shade the sidewalks and make pedestrians more...
Robert Sitkowski has moved from Chicago back to the Robinson & Cole law firm in Hartford, where he is focusing on land-use law for developers, land owners, municipalities, and advocacy groups and on legal aspects of Smart Growth and New Urbanism.
Architect Victor Deupi has taken a leave of absence from teaching at the University of Notre Dame’s architecture school to become Arthur Ross Director of Education at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America in New York.
The Florida Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism has released a new edition of Guidebook to New Urbanism in Florida. A review of this publication will be in the June 2006 issue. See www.cnuflorida.org.
The bulk of this year’s Charter Awards from the Congress for the New Urbanism honor projects on redeveloped sites — contradicting the persistent notion that New Urbanism is mainly about building on virgin land at the suburban fringe.
Other Mississippi communities move forward with form-based codes and plans.
By John M. DeGroveLincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2005, 360 pp., paperback $30.
Affluent Americans are increasingly buying or renting second homes in urban centers. “The 2000 Census indicated that the number of apartments in Manhattan used as second homes had increased 141 percent to 21,640 over the previous decade, and the...