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.
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...
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,...
“We’ve spent years designing [neighborhoods] that take us from house to lawn to street [with no socialization]. We’re going to have to build differently.”
—Watts Wacker, futurist and author of The 500-Year Delta, speaking in November to the fall...
To the Editor:
In an article in the December issue, I was quoted as stating that, two years ago, the new urbanist community of Civano was not making money and that the ambitious design and performance goals imposed by the City of Tucson added extra...
Matt Shannon, formerly of DPZ, has been named director of the redevelopment agency in Temple Terrace, Florida, outside Tampa. His biggest task will be to coordinate the development of a 33-acre, walkable, mixed-use town center.
A master plan for LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia, 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, calls for new college facilities and private development around the town’s Lafayette Square. Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh worked on the plan, which...