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 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...
Hammond’s Ferry, a 200-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) now under construction in North Augusta, South Carolina, builds upon a plan that James U. Jackson, the original developer of North Augusta, set forth in the 1890s and never...
Redwood City, California, intends to become the first city
in the US to use the market-rate pricing system for public parking recommended by UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup. On Feb. 1, downtown Redwood City will introduce pricing ideas...
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,...
CNU is pleased to welcome two new staff members to its Chicago office. Lee Crandell joined CNU in November 2005 after working part time in 2003 to assist with special projects and Congress planning. As CNU’s membership and chapter coordinator, Lee’s...
Christopher Gray, who has been writing the “Streetscapes” feature in the Sunday New York Times real estate section for years, authored an Oct. 23 article debating whether Manhattan’s 1811 grid, which covers most of the island, has turned out to be...
Leo Casas of Opticos Design has been hired by Seaside town founder Robert Davis to fill the position of the town architect. “This position had been vacant for several years and Robert Davis has reinstituted this position because he realized that the...
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...