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.
The higher the initial cost of a given public transit technology, the less likely a system using it will be built. From the outset, this tough reality must be recognized. The last Technical Page considered the higher levels of technology and...
Ohio developer Robert Stark has created a new urban town center by the name of Crocker Park outside Cleveland. Now he is eager to use the ideas to revitalize the historic city.
“I feel I am in possession of a great truth,” he told Cleveland Plain...
Transect-based codes like the SmartCode provide new opportunities for municipalities to promote New Urbanism and smart growth. But the difficulty of applying these codes to local conditions remains a hurdle to widespread implementation. One method...
Artists are moving into 61 loft apartments in the five-story Read’s Department Store building, which had stood vacant for more than 20 years in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut. Norwalk-based developer Bill Kraus worked with nonprofit Artspace...
Fourteen projects that fulfill and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism will be recognized as this year’s best examples of New Urbanism when the 2005 Charter Awards are formally presented in a ceremony at CNU XIII in Pasadena on...
Kennedy Smith, former director of the National Main Street Center of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was named Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Design School for the 2005-2006 academic year. Smith is principal of Community Land Use and...
A major development was approved for the South Miami Hometown District, which is a walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented center in the City of South Miami. The 3-block, 5-acre First National Bank of South Miami property will be developed as a mixed-...
Edited by Rahul Mehrotra, Robert Fishman, and Roy Strickland University of Michigan, 2005, distributed by Distributed Arts Press, New York, 80 to 96 pp. each, $17.95 each. Doug Kelbaugh thinks Americans would understand cities better if we...
Providence, Rhode Island, architect Bill Dennis reviewed the names of more than 600 new urban developments across North America and found more repetition than he liked. He identified 10 projects with “Commons” in their name, 30 that were called “...
The book that introduced North America to this community concept is Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, available in a second edition from Ten Speed Press ($29.95). The authors tell how...
No one has won more acclaim for designing mixed-use centers in recent years than Richard Heapes. His projects include Mizner Park, Bethesda Row, Santana Row, and Blue Back Square. Heapes has exhibited a flair for creating lively collections of...
Developer Sergio Pino is proposing a 200-acre, 2,700-unit traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Doral, Miami-Dade County, Florida. Grand Bay includes shops, two schools, parks, and a church. The Miami-Dade County Commission voted to change...