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.
TOD or transit-oriented development is a complex topic that can nevertheless be demystified.
In new urbanist parlance, the “transit” of TOD is often assumed to refer to rail. But rail is merely the most glamorous of various means, including buses,...
A sea of parking lots on the periphery of New Jersey state government offices in Trenton may be divided into streets and blocks as part of the state Department of Transportation’s plan for converting the Route 29 expressway into a graceful tree-...
When the Bay Area Rapid Transit system announced in 1991 that it wanted to build a parking garage next to its station in the Fruitvale section of Oakland, the Spanish Speaking Unity Council said no, there must be a better idea. Fourteen years later...
Organizers of the federal HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program, longtime opponents of federally supported housing, and prominent new urbanists met for two days in Wisconsin in late March, trying to reach a consensus on how the federal...
Judith A. Corbett, founder of the Local Government Commission, a Sacramento-based group that helps cities and counties plan better, received the “Distinguished Leadership Award for a Citizen Planner” from the American Planning Association March 22...
People in Chittenden County, Vermont, are talking about whether they could use devices such as roundabouts, rather than a proposed Circumferential Highway, to relieve traffic congestion on Rt. 2A in the towns of Williston and Essex. The Vermont...
Public Architecture, a think tank and grassroots organization in San Francisco, has launched “1% Solution,” a program aimed at getting design professionals to commit one percent of their time to pro bono work. The new organization, at www....
With its theme, “The Polycentric City, CNU XIII will explore issues that arise in Southern California and resonate in regions and localities everywhere. After all, regions all over the United States and beyond are facing the reality of connecting,...
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...