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.
Federal Reserve governor Edward Gramlich says the US could save $250 billion over the next 25 years by adopting smart growth strategies in preference to continued sprawl development.
In Gwinnett County, Georgia (suburban Atlanta), a new smart growth overlay ordinance targets a landscape of aging malls and big-box stores for redevelopment as mixed-use neighborhoods. Eligible developments—at least 10 acres and built on already-...
A new ordinance in Howard County, Maryland, requires developers to set aside a portion of their housing production for moderate-income families. The first beneficiaries of the ordinance are nine families that were allowed to buy townhouses for half...
An international group of planners rethinks how the city’s industrial waterfront should mature.
Toronto residents are getting excited about the idea of creating “water rooms” on underused land between the Canadian city’s downtown and nearby Lake...
Saratoga Springs, an Upstate New York city best known for spas and horse racing, may become one of the first municipalities in the Northeast to apply Andres Duany’s Transect concept to its zoning. The 26,000-population city about 30 miles north of...
Lee Sobel, former Knight Fellow with the University of Miami and author of the CNU publication Greyfields into Goldfields, left CB Richard Ellis to work with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Division, where he will focus on real...
A sampling of recent media reports shows the New Urbanism is making inroads in the Midwest. Three prime examples:
Akron, Ohio. An embattled new urbanist project, Canal Town Builders’ ten-acre Hickory Street residential development, won city council...
Robert Kramer and Jeffrey Fleeman, two of the principal developers of Haile Village Center in Gainesville, Florida, expect to develop a 500-acre mixed-use community on Mexico’s Pacific coast 75 miles north of Puerta Vallarta. “It will range from...
Some high schools in Connecticut are imposing stricter limits on how many students can drive to school, The New York Times reports. Adolescents’ cars are filling parking lots and nearby streets to overflowing. Safety is also an issue. The...
“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.