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.
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...
The City of Toronto won a significant legal battle in March when the Ontario Municipal Board upheld the city’s right to limit drive-through facilities. The Board ruled that the city was justified in refusing to let Canadian Tire Corporation include...
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has become the first governor to veto legislation curtailing eminent domain. Since the US Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London last June, more than 40 states have passed or considered legislation to cut...
Chad Emerson of Faulkner University’s Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama, is looking into the feasibility of starting a Center for Smart Growth Legal Studies. If established, the Center would offer education and advocacy on legal and...
Smart Growth America has released Version 2 of Smart Growth Shareware, which contains information on 120 downloadable publications and fact sheets; website links to more than 100 other resources; and PowerPoint presentations and materials from local...
In one of the largest transit-oriented developments in Maryland’s Montgomery County in years, the county has approved a plan that would transform an industrial zone around the Shady Grove Metro station into an urban center with office buildings,...
The head of the District of Columbia Council has introduced a bill to allow developers to build housing, offices, and shops alongside or on top of new schools, libraries, and other public facilities. Chairman Linda W. Cropp sees this as a way to get...
The world’s most populous nation is planning to accommodate a massive influx of urban dwellers in multi-modal, high-density developments.
Chael, Cooper & Associates of Coral Gables, Florida, which operates in association with Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning, won a Palladio Award for the Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker Building and McKean Gateway at Rollins College, which...
The Urban Land Institute, which helped establish regional smart growth alliances in the Philadelphia and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas (see Sept. 2005 New Urban News), is expanding its initiative to six other regions. Since starting the...
Organizers of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) program hope to start the initiative by operating a small-scale test of it this fall. For about two years, the Congress for the New Urbanism has been...