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.
Ken Hughes is staffing the task force, which he says is “on a fast track (pun intended) to get support for TODs, to complement the new intercity rail service the governor is pushing.” Hughes notes, “We’re slated to have rail service up and operating...
The Vermont Forum on Sprawl has issued a four-page color publication on the Vermont Neighborhoods Project, showing how new housing can be inserted gracefully into three Vermont communities: Shoreham, Middlebury, and Vergennes. The plans reflect...
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...
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,...
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...