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.
Young adults are moving to Washington, DC, in much greater numbers than suburban counties. About half of the District's 30,600 population growth from 2010 to 2012 consisted of people 25 to 34 years of age, according to a report in The Washington...
The growing bicycling industry, like the car-share industry, has an interest in boosting walkability.
It’s time to recognize that we can’t maintain the roads we have now, and that continuing down the path of highway expansion is both unaffordable and unnecessary.
When cities invest in infrastructure, it’s often the gray stuff like roads and bridges. Or it’s hidden away like water and sewer pipes. Not to say that infrastructure isn’t interesting and vital to a city’s success, but it’s hard to get excited...
A book by by June WilliamsonIsland Press, 2013, 138 pp., $35 paperback, $70 hardcover
Regions Field in Birmingham is a recent example of baseball adding to the appeal of an urban place.
Many cities have recently welcomed mini-apartments. Among them are these:
The fiscal case for smart growth is gaining steam. New Urban News (now Better! Cities & Towns) reported on a groundbreaking study in Sarasota, Florida, in September of 2010 that showed enormous advantages in per-acre tax yields for mixed-use,...
The nation has a huge quantity of “Leave it to Beaver” neighborhoods from the postwar housing boom that are ripe for changes that will make them more walkable and appealing to new generations of residents.
Households grew faster in “transit sheds,” areas within a half-mile of fixed-guideway transit service, than metro regions as a whole from 2000-2010 in four of the five major US transit regions.
Raquel Nelson pays a jaywalking fine, but the task of making pedestrian-hostile suburbs like Marietta walkable has just begun.