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.
Pedestrians account for 12 percent of U.S. traffic deaths, but less than one percent of federal transportation funds goes toward protecting people on foot, according to a report from the Surface Transportation Policy Project. Orlando is the most...
HOPE VI began with a simple mission: razing public housing that was so rundown and unsafe that nobody could fathom restoring it to livability. Incorporating ideas from Henry Cisneros, Bruce Katz, Richard Baron, Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany,...
Miami-Dade County, Florida, has created an Urban Design Center headed by new urbanists. Director Shailendra Singh worked for Correa Valle Valle architects, and principal planner Natasha Alfonso worked at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., both new urban...
Since CNU was founded, the movement has in large part developed in conferences, seminars, summits, and newsletters. But every week, hundreds of urbanists are learning from intense on-line discussions. Electronic resources, both from CNU and from...
The next phase of CNU's greyfields research is moving toward completion. CNU's Ellen Greenberg and members of the Development and Project Implementation Task Force are writing a how-to manual on greyfield redevelopment. It will address how more...
The suburban Toledo community of Perrysburg, Ohio, is moving expeditiously to adopt a proposed urban village overlay district plan. On Jan. 9, the planning commission officially recommended the measure to city council.
City planning and zoning...
Afton Village, a TND in Concord, North Carolina, is getting its town center underway this year, after a nearby interchange was built on I-85 that will generate more traffic to the area. The first commercial building is complete, providing retail...
For a quarter-century, the old Albuquerque High School— five big buildings built from 1914 to 1940 just two blocks east of downtown—stood empty, lurching from one failed development proposal to another. Now, Rob Dickson’s Paradigm & Company is...
Bradburn’s first commercial buildings — two 11,000 sq. ft., one-story retail structures — face one another at the primary entrance to the development. As such, they must enclose the street and make a strong impression on visitors. The original...
A $10.6 billion package of plans by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg would convert much of Lower Manhattan into what The New York Times calls “an urban hamlet of housing, schools, libraries and theaters, as well as other businesses.” In contrast to the...
“The improvements that HOPE VI has created in cities are dramatic,” says former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros. HOPE VI developments “may not be classical New Urbanism in every case, but they are uniformly better than what was there,” according to...
Leon Krier is lead architect for a new building for the University of Miami School of Architecture, home to America’s first program in town and suburban design. Krier and his collaborators — Merrill and Pastor Architects of Vero Beach and Ferguson...