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.
CNU made news in New England in recent months. At its late winter meeting, CNU’s board was pleased to name Providence, Rhode Island, the site of the 14th Congress for the New Urbanism in 2006. In choosing Providence, board members cited the strong...
Torti Gallas & Partners was scheduled to hold a series of workshops and public design sessions in May and June, 2004, to create a downtown plan for Temple Terrace, Florida. Torti Gallas, which won four Charter Awards this year, will create a...
As the City of Alexandria sets about hiring a consultant to guide the redevelopment of its Braddock Street Metro station area, it is already well-armed with information and ideas, thanks to preliminary consultations by Virginia Tech adjunct...
Peter Katz, a “professor in practice” at the Alexandria branch of Virginia Tech, visited the main campus in Blacksburg April 19 to talk about New Urbanism and form-based coding. “I was surprised at the reaction,” said Diane L. Zahm, associate...
Voters in Inglewood, California, rejected a ballot initiative that would have allowed a 60-acre Wal-Mart shopping complex to be built without being subject to many state and local regulations. Sixty percent of the voters in the racially mixed...
The first town center in Denver’s 4,700-acre Stapleton development has opened on East 29th Avenue, with tenants that include a 58,000 sq. ft. King Soopers grocery store, a series of small shops and restaurants, and 34,000 square feet of offices.
In the following discussion of characteristic code issues with live-work units, three assumptions are made. The first is that the work component occurs on the ground floor only, directly accessible from a public face of the building. The second is...
Facing a worsening shortage of inexpensive housing, officials in San Diego are devising a plan aimed at spurring construction of tiny, single-room occupancy units known as SROs.
Susan Tinsky of the San Diego Housing Commission says development of...
The cost of owning a car went up to $6,890/year, up from $6,420/year last year, says the American Automobile Association. The rates are calculated for a 2004 vehicle driven 10,000 miles a year and owned five years.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in collaboration with Northern Light Productions, has produced a documentary called Making Sense of Place — Phoenix: The Urban Desert. The 58-minute film explores the tensions caused by rapid growth and economic...
Zoning codes are like the DNA of the built environment – unseen but hugely influential in determining shape and function. As long as conventional, mid-20th century codes remain the law, as they do in most communities in the country, they effectively...
Taking advantage of a lull in development in Silicon Valley, the Greenbelt Alliance sponsored a plan that demonstrates an alternative to proposed sprawl in the 6,800-acre Coyote Valley. The plan, which preserves most of the land as farms and natural...