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.
In Drachten and other small communities in northern Holland, traffic engineer Hans Monderman is stirring debate by eliminating many of the customary elements of streets and roads, such as traffic lights, speed limit signs, and pavement markings. “...
McCaffery Interests, which built the highly successful Market Common, Clarendon transit-oriented, mixed-use project in Arlington, Virginia, has another project in the works of the same name. Market Common in Myrtle Beach is described as an “urban...
Albuquerque developers Rob Dickson and Christopher Leinberger co-chaired the Governor’s Task Force on Our Communities, Our Future, which criticized contemporary development patterns such as large residential subdivisions with “suburban garage-scapes...
By Steven W. Semes
W.W. Norton, 2004, 192 pp., hardcover $55.
“Despite the urgings of the avant-garde in favor of radical experimentation and the relentless search for the unprecedented, traditional design remains the overwhelming choice of...
Few California cities in financial difficulty carry out first-rate planning. When governments feel pressed for income, they usually grab for auto malls, big-box stores, or whatever else will bring tax revenue.
The developers of Meriam Park in Chico, California, are proposing a bold plan which, for the first time in the US, would embed a professional baseball stadium into the urban fabric of a new town center.
The stadium for approximately 5,000 fans of...
Companion texts to Duany Plater-Zyberk’s SmartCode are in the works, aimed at aiding implementation. William Wright of Balch & Bingham, an attorney based in Birmingham, Alabama, has written the SmartCode Manual, a guide to the adoption,...
CNU welcomes its newest staff member, Heather Smith. As Planning Director, Heather will help advance CNU Task Forces and Initiatives and will serve as a contact for members needing assistance with other projects.
Heather’s planning background spans...
Reason Magazine, a voice of libertarians, published an article in the February 2005 issue that accuses New Urbanism of promoting crime. The 3,000-plus-word article by Randal O’Toole and Stephen Town sounds scholarly, with references to Oscar Newman...
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...
The future of residential construction within reasonable commuting distance of the nation’s capital lies in higher-density and transit-oriented development, says Robert Kettler, chairman of KSI. “The Washington marketplace has been picked pretty...