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 Project for Public Spaces has developed a website on “context-sensitive solutions” in road design, with support from the Federal Highway Administration. Visit www.contextsensitivesolutions.org. The site suggests readings on context-sensitive...
Regulations that restrict development in Loudoun County, Virginia, were struck down March 3 by the Virginia Supreme Court. The ruling, decided on a technicality, will allow much more development in the western portion of Loudoun, said to be the...
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...
Phoenix, Arizona, has a light-rail line under construction that will connect the city to Mesa and Tempa, due for completion in 2008. Community Design + Architecture of Berkeley, California, was hired to create vision plans for transit-oriented...
Dan Burden, who for years operated Walkable Communities Inc. (see Dec. 2004 New Urban News), joined the firm of Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart Feb. 7. Burden is now part of the urban design and transportation service group at...
Before it became famous for the nearly inescapable sprawl stretching from San Bernardino to Ventura, Los Angeles was a place of distinguished urbanism — a constellation of towns and compact cities that grew up along the stops of the “Red Car” rail...
Azusa Land Partners — a joint venture of PLC Land Company, Fieldstone Communities, Rockpoint Group, and Starwood Capital Group Global — will begin grading land this spring for a 517-acre development on the site of the Monrovia Nursery in Azusa,...
In Issue 7 of The Next American City, contributing writer Kenneth Naylor offers a nuanced view of the not-quite new urbanist development known as Aqua, on Allison Island near Miami Beach. Naylor suggests that new urban planning and Modernist...
By Mark C. Childs University of New Mexico Press, 2004, 230 pp., hardcover $45. At first, Squares annoyed me. The Table of Contents fills five entire pages, the “Table of Queries” goes on for seven more, and then the Table of Figures consumes...