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.
In the works for nearly two years, a manual to help people implement the SmartCode was scheduled for release in early October. Titled SmartCode Manual and subtitled The Complete SmartCode, Annotated Version 7.5, it will be downloadable for free and...
Bus rapid transit varies from one metropolitan area to another, but generally has the following characteristics: First, BRT vehicles enjoy priority treatment, usually through a dedicated busway and also through preferential treatment at traffic...
Frank Greene of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects has been appointed “town architect” for Rosemary Beach, a 105-acre new urban development about eight miles east of Seaside, Florida. The project will contain approximately 700 units when completed around...
By Douglas E. MorrisFeeling lonely, depressed, victimized by rudeness, and threatened with violence? You may be suffering from the physical breakdown of American communities, according to Douglas Morris.
New downtown hotels and expansions of existing hotels are being talked about in Providence, RI, where CNU’s 14th annual conference will be held June 1-4, 2006. On narrow Westminster Street, Providence developer and antiques connoisseur Stanley Weiss...
Ray Gindroz of Urban Design Associates is helping to obtain affordable vernacular prototypes from local architects, to be used by Habitat for Humanity in the rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. Gindroz’s effort is supported by the Institute of...
Vancouver, British Columbia, has decided to convert two lanes of one of its busiest commuter bridges to bike lanes. Council voted to switch two of the six lanes of the Burrard Street Bridge as a one-year experiment, beginning in April 2006. “I...
A tool that could help new urban projects by generating more accurate estimates of their impact on traffic and air quality has been developed for the California Air Resources Board. Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates in San Francisco produced an “...
An estimated 200,000 evacuees from New Orleans settled in the Baton Rouge area in late August, straining the resources of the principal local government — the consolidated City of Baton Rouge and Parish of East Baton Rouge, which had a population of...
Hopes that the Civano development in southeast Tucson might continue to develop along new urban principles have now been pretty much extinguished. Pulte Homes, which took over the “environmentally sustainable” Arizona project from Fannie Mae, is...
Tim Keane, an architect and former director of planning for Charleston, South Carolina, and Davidson, North Carolina, has created an urban design and development firm called Keane & Company, based in Charleston. Keane hired Jacob Lindsey, a...
By Charles Jencks Rizzoli, 2005, 224 pp., hardcover $35. New Urbanism has yet to produce its equivalent of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: a building so astonishing that it generates excitement worldwide.