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.
Transportation II. The pedestrian environment; frontages D. Shopfront and awning; gallery and arcade
Within the urban center and core zones uses mix densely,
and the value of land is such that the setback of facades from property lines often diminishes to zero. Private and public realms abut directly. Consequently the details of their design...
Plans are moving forward in New York’s Borough of Brooklyn for Willoughby Square, a collection of offices, hotel space, and residential condominiums with a new 1.5-acre park at its core. Unlike the nearby MetroTech Center, which was designed some 15...
The population of American downtowns rose 10 percent during the 1990s, reversing 20 years of decline, according to a new study by Eugenie L. Birch of the University of Pennsylvania’s planning school. Birch examined downtown population, household,...
On Providence’s Eastside, homes
with holiday lights slowly pass by my train window. After passing a half-dozen downtown development projects on my walk from the train station to the office, I can’t help but think that “Developing the New...
An article by Andrew Nelson in the November-December National Geographic Traveler pays this tribute to pedestrian-friendly traits, as found in Philadelphia: “One of Philadelphia’s greatest assets is of a low-tech variety — its sidewalks. A city...
New Urban News won in the “General Excellence: Newsletters” category in Utne magazine’s 2005 Independent Press awards. The announcement was made in Utne’s January 2006 issue.
Chad Emerson will teach a course on federal, state, and local laws and regulations governing smart-growth planning and development, beginning Jan. 12 at Faulkner University’s Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama. Emerson, a Faulkner professor...
The Louisiana Recovery Authority is
hiring experienced new urbanist firms to help the state, where an estimated 205,000 homes were destroyed in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and their aftermath.
New Urban News turns 10 and reviews how the movement has advanced.
Ten years ago this spring, the first issue of New Urban News
appeared. To mark the anniversary, we decided to reread the decade’s worth of newsletters and see what they reveal...
By Robert BruegmannUniversity of Chicago Press, 2005, 301 pp., hardcover $27.50.
New statistics on commuting suggest that residents of metropolitan Atlanta are shifting toward living closer to work and increasingly toward finding homes in Atlanta itself. From 1998 to 2003 the average distance each person drives per day plummeted...
Sherman Plaza, a $190 million mixed-use project, is the latest development rising in downtown Evanston, Illinois, which has become an ever-livelier center in the past 10 years. Nearly all of the 253 residential units have been sold; construction is...