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 67-acre tract called Reservation 13 in the District of Columbia, the site of the former DC General Hospital campus, is off the traditional street grid and constitutes a barrier between southeast Washington neighborhoods and the Anacostia River. A...
If you wanted to briefly summarize the lessons that have been learned recently about how to create and manage mixed-income housing, here are four items that would appear at the top of the list:
• Make sure the facades of the lower-cost housing look...
With funding from an investor, the architecture and town planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) & Company has created a $5-million venture capital fund to plan and permit new urban communities throughout the US. The Fund for New Urbanism seeks...
Getting more Americans out of their cars and onto buses or trains is the most effective way of cutting air pollution and reducing energy consumption without imposing new taxes, regulations, or government mandates, a new study says.
Public...
The Texas Department of Transportation has earmarked $3 million in federal funds for sidewalks, crosswalks, bike paths, and other elements that will make it safer for schoolchildren to walk or ride their bicycles to school. Much of the money will be...
A Modern Arcadia, by Susan L. Klaus, published by the University of Massachusetts Press, tells the story of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, New York. Designed in 1909 by Frederick Law Omsted Jr., this commuter rail suburb of Manhattan set one of the...
The plan for Lantern Hill (above), an 18-acre infill development in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, shows 117 homes and 80,000 square feet of commercial buildings grouped around three small greens. One of the greens is rendered below. The project, under...
“Houses could be spitting distance from one another, a big departure from the supersize lots in many Madison County subdivisions,” the Huntsville Times said in an April report about plans for a TND in that northern Alabama city.
A caption on the front page of the September New Urban News said Octavia Boulevard in San Francisco is “soon to be built.” This turns out to be not quite accurate. In November 1998 San Francisco voters passed a proposition to replace part of the...
Are New Urbanism and environmentalism potentially strong allies? One place to look for an answer is Denver’s Stapleton Airport redevelopment. Not only does the 4,700-acre project offer a combination of housing, employment, shopping, and neighborhood...
New urbanists have always been interested in street design. Since the New Urbanism was founded, its practitioners have experimented with street patterns, widths, and adjacent buildings. However, most of these efforts have resulted in one-time...
People who buy homes within a quarter-mile of a bus line or within a half-mile of a train station can now qualify with Fannie Mae for a mortgage eight percent larger in a growing number of cities. The company began offering larger mortgages three...