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.
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...
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.
Several South Mississippi communities that took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina are considering changing their development codes and adopting other recommendations from last October’s Mississippi Renewal Forum.
Combining apartments, retail space, for-sale townhomes, and a public plaza, West River Commons, which opened in 2004, replaced blighted uses on a polluted Minneapolis site. The project provides the Twin Cities with an example of appropriate infill...
The last two decades have witnessed a heartening revival of traditional planning techniques. Element after element, the components of walkable, mixed-use, civically conscious environments have been restudied, redeployed into use, and gradually have...
The Mississippi Renewal Forum, which was assembled in October by the Congress for the New Urbanism, won an Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America in the...
FrogSong, a 30-household cohousing development that was featured in a June 2005 New Urban News report on cohousing in new urban neighborhoods, won an EnergyValue Housing Award from the National Association of Home Builders. The 2.3-acre, mixed-use...