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.
A student project to radically rethink housing projects on New York’s Lower East Side and a holistic approach to a Rwandan village took top honors at the 2013 CNU Charter Awards, announced at CNU 21 in Salt Lake City.
“Flyovers are rarely constructed where there is economic wealth and development, and they tend to cause blight and have a chilling effect on economic development and property values,” says Richard Birdoff.
On April 26, CNU hosted a technical assistance workshop aimed at guiding future development and design in the City of Twinsburg, Ohio, and highlighting the Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares manual as a tool for achieving that vision.
When we reported on Poynton, England, in the January issue of Better! Cities & Towns, the video (click on headline to see it) was not publicly available. Now it has 90,000 views on You Tube, and tells a remarkable story about a £4 million ($6.4...
US Department of Transportation (DOT) officials would consider a change in the way they classify thoroughfares — to the benefit of pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users — but they need political support.
How San Marcos, Texas, chose a new land use and development path founded on a Transect-based comprehensive plan.
Smart growth strategies can help any town or city improve its finances, Smart Growth America concludes in a new nationwide analysis.
How do they relate to the highest-frequency transit network? Where the two do not connect reveals opportunities for revitalization.
In the March 2013 issue we reviewed Arthur C. Nelson’s book, Reshaping Metropolitan America, and some of his numbers are further analyzed in an article in the current issue of Better! Cities & Towns. One of Nelson’s main findings is that a...
According to the book Reshaping Metropolitan America, about half of all nonresidential structures in the US will be “ripe for redevelopment” in 2030. Many of these are commercial strip retail buildings with large parking lots or dated office...
Transit-served neighborhoods are rising in value -- sometimes skyrocketing —- when they have good urbanism and are perceived as safe, according to an article in the April-May issue of Better! Cities & Towns. But many are losing value and...
“Mobile is a wonderful city: It’s smaller and more damaged than New Orleans, but absolutely taking off and full of young people,” planner Andres Duany told Better! Cities & Towns, which published a report in the current issue. Duany Plater-...