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 Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU XII) in late June in Chicago hosted a session, The Coming Demand, which examined an “increasing demand for accessible and visitable housing and neighborhoods.” Accessibility/visitability advocates also staged...
Marc Wouters, who worked extensively on HOPE VI public housing redevelopment projects for Torti Gallas & Partners, has moved to Cooper Robertson & Partners in New York.
With a grant from the John Nolen Family Fund, Lee Sobel of the US...
Congress passed legislation June 29 that extends the expiration date of the federal TEA-21 transportation law until the end of July. Even so, the Surface Transportation Policy Project says most observers see no chance that the House and Senate will...
Robert Orr & Associates is also designing a proposed mixed-use redevelopment along the Quinnipiac River in the Fair Haven Heights section of New Haven for an investment group that includes Joel Schiavone, his daughter Allyx Schiavone, and...
One indicator of the growing desire to live in Manhattan is the conversion of gas stations to more valuable uses. “Since 1999, the number of gas stations in Manhattan has declined by 18 percent, to 207,” The New York Times reported June 7. “Cropping...
New urbanists often design infill projects in cities, new neighborhoods in the suburbs, and even create visions for growth on a regional scale. Rarely if ever do they get the opportunity to design a medium-sized city from scratch. That was...
Adoption of form-based codes in Petaluma, California, and Arlington County, Virginia, is quickly paying off with new buildings that line the sidewalks and streets. In Petaluma, which enacted a version of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s SmartCode...
By Urban Design Associates W.W. Norton, 2004, 230 pp., $55 paperback. In the 1970s, Pittsburgh-based Urban Design Associates (UDA) photodocumented every house in a historic district in York, a small southcentral Pennsylvania city that had...
Jaime Correa, formerly of Correa Valle Valle and the Knight Professor of Community Building at the University of Miami, has formed a new architectural and town design firm, Jaime Correa and Associates. The new firm is currently working on three...
In addition to offering engaging speakers, lively debates, and
abundant opportunities for new urbanists to learn from each other, the Twelfth Congress for the New Urbanism in June distinguished itself as the largest Congress ever, drawing 1,370...
New urbanists have designed mixed-use office districts and retrofitted suburban office parks by adding walkable town centers. The transformation of an existing suburban office park into a mixed-use urban workplace district has never been attempted,...
In greater New York, suburban development no longer outcompetes development in the urban core. In a 31-county region centered on New York City, the urban core began in the mid-1990s to gain residents and jobs at the same rate as the periphery,...