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.
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 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.
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...
Fifty-two juniors in the Georgia Tech College of Architecture’s design studio got hands-on experience in new urban community design this semester by developing concepts for the town center of Serenbe, a 900-acre development in Palmetto, GA (New...
New urbanists in New England are hoping the University of Hartford will seize the opportunity to turn its fledgling architecture program into a much-needed center for urban design with a new urbanist bent. “That’s something I’ve been advocating to...
By Bob Regan; photos by Tim Fabian The Local History Company, 2004, 142 pp., paperback $21.95. Clambering over the hills above the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers, Pittsburgh is one of the most up-and-down cities in North America. To...
On a 100-by-100-foot lot in Hoboken, New Jersey, stands a parking garage that’s only slightly taller than a four-story rowhouse, yet which holds 324 vehicles — more than three times the number that would fit into a conventional parking ramp of that...
With a $1.1-million, three-year challenge grant in hand, the University of Miami School of Architecture has set its sights on continuing the Knight Program in Community Building for three more years and on gaining new donors to support it. Charles C...
Wal-Mart is proposing to build a 40,000 sq. ft. Neighborhood Market in Highlands Garden Village in Denver, the first such store in a new urban community. The proposal has stirred up controversy for developers Charles Perry and Jonathan Rose, who are...