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.
Will Selman has formed a consulting firm, Town Planning and Design Associates, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to serve clients who need assistance with new urban development and code projects. He resigned as staff planner for the Lancaster County...
A new booklet, “Higher-Density Development: Myth and Fact,” tries to dispel negative perceptions about higher-density development. The glossy 32-page booklet published by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) profiles 16 projects across the US — many of...
Atlantic Station, the 138-acre new urban redevelopment of a steel mill near downtown Atlanta, is moving forward very quickly. More than a thousand residents already live in condos and apartments in the development, according to a report in the...
By Joel S. Hirschhorn, Ph.D. Sterling & Ross Publishers, 2005, 400 pp., hardcover $25.95 When a big idea bursts upon the American scene, it often takes two different forms: first a carefully argued book for serious readers, and second, a...
One-bedroom apartments in San Francisco command rents averaging $1,731 a month, and nearly a quarter of the city’s renters pay more than half their income for housing, according to a local real estate source, RentalGuide.com. Consequently the city...
Online requests for the SmartCode rose significantly after DPZ announced that it was dropping the licensing fee (April/May 2005 New Urban News). One of two websites that are allowing the code to be downloaded, www.tnd
townpaper.com, said that 18,...
Independence, Ohio, a suburb south of Cleveland with 7,100 residents, intends to ask developers to submit proposals to build a town center project including stores, offices, senior housing, and tightly spaced houses. Mayor Fred Ramos said the...
By Vincent Scully, Catherine Lynn, Erik Vogt, and Paul Goldberger Yale University Press, 2004, 406 pp., paperback $45. How do you judge whether a university is treating its host city decently? Some focus on how much or how little the...
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of the University of Miami School of Architecture and the Knight Program in Community Building, will lead a charrette July 13-18 on ways to improve the eastern portion of downtown and the adjacent Hillside/waterfront...
Three years ago, Trammell Crow, the Dallas-based company that calls itself America’s largest commercial developer, organized a wholly owned subsidiary, High Street Residential, with the aim of pursuing mixed-use projects, transit-oriented...
From 1999 to 2004 only one private-sector traditional neighborhood development (TND) was under construction in Louisiana. That first project, River Ranch in Lafayette, achieved commercial and aesthetic success, and New Urban News reported last year...
Planners and public officials are now free to use text and images, in whole or in part, from Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s SmartCode without paying a licensing fee, according to Andres Duany. DPZ, the author of the code, previously charged $10...