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.
Washington, DC, Mayor Anthony Williams last year announced a “Great Streets” program that would spend $100 million of local funds on streetscape and infrastructure improvements, land-use planning, and development assistance in the capital city. In...
Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod is in the permitting phase for 382 new residences — a mix of detached houses, townhouses, apartments, and live-works. Developers Buff Chace and Douglas Storrs are obtaining permits under a Massachusetts law known
Cincinnati and Baltimore have pulled down “skywalks” that were once seen as a great way to connect downtown buildings. “Cincinnati City Architect Michael Moore said the difference is striking around Fountain Square since 2 of the city’s original 22...
The US Environmental Protection Agency has released four new smart growth publications: “Protecting Water Resources with Higher-Density Development,” “Using Smart Growth Techniques as Stormwater Best Management Practices,” “Growing Toward More...
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...
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...
By Robert BruegmannUniversity of Chicago Press, 2005, 301 pp., hardcover $27.50.