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.
Architect Frank Greene is closing his practice in his native Chattanooga and moving to Florida, where he will be a senior officer in the Rosemary Beach office of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects.
The Selectboard in Bennington, Vermont, adopted a zoning bylaw in January prohibiting any store from exceeding 50,000 square feet in one part of town and 75,000 square feet in two other areas. Wal-Mart wants to raze its existing 50,000 sq. ft. store...
Oregon is struggling with the consequences of Measure 37, a ballot initiative last November that increased the rights of many property owners at the expense of growth management. Measure 37 stipulated that governments must pay owners, or forgo...
As residential construction moves closer to urban rail lines, bridges, and freeway ramps, developers are increasingly using sound-muffling windows and other techniques to keep noise out of new housing. A window wall for a 60-story condo tower next...
By Alexander Tzonis Rizzoli International, 2004, 432 pp., hardcover $75. From Athens to Zurich, to Bilbao, to Milwaukee, structures designed by Santiago Calatrava have been inspiring awe among citizens of the world for nearly 20 years. The...
A design competition for a state capitol building for Alaska — the only state without one — generated extremely modernist entries that are at odds with the urban context and the traditional style of most state capitols. The winner, from Morphosis of...
The final leg of the 12-mile Hiawatha light-rail line connecting downtown Minneapolis to Twin Cities International Airport and Mall of America opened in December, fostering housing development at both ends of its route. One study has associated the...
Ellen Greenberg, former director of policy and research at the Congress for the New Urbanism, is now a principal with the urban design firm Freedman, Tung & Bottomley.
Baldwin Park, a new urban redevelopment of a former naval training center in Orlando, has a town center that is far behind schedule, according to the Orlando Business Journal. Tenants signed on to the project soon after Unicorp National Developers...
How do you propel a second-tier state university into academia’s upper echelon? In the case of the University of Connecticut, you spend billions of dollars from the state government to improve the campus — and you hire consultants steeped in New...
The Macon-Bibb County Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved ordinances Jan. 10 establishing the Beall’s Hill Historic Planning Development District. The Commission’s action is expected to spur well-conceived infill development in the...
The majority of America’s dwellings have been built since World War II. The very large majority of those, in turn, are suburban. Early versions of suburban houses were the smallish (by today’s standards), underaccessorized, single-family “American...