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.
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...
What is probably the biggest demonstration of alternative energy in new development projects in the US was made possible through $2 billion in tax free “green bond” financing for four projects — three of them examples of New Urbanism. About half of...
St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, which had 67,000 residents before Hurricane Katrina damaged most of the homes in its jurisdiction, may pull back from the most flood-prone areas, such as those along the 40-Arpent Canal, where a surge of water caused...
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...
BB&T Corporation, a financial services company based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, announced in late January that it will no longer lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls, and other private projects on...
Jason Miller, a writer and editor who moved last year from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Concrete, Washington, has been named editor of New Towns, a new urbanist periodical published by Diane Dorney in Kentlands, in Gaithersburg, Maryland. “In the near...
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...
Austin, Texas, this winter established its first “parking benefit district,” which will regulate parking demand in the West Campus area, where the city intends to increase residential density.