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.
he Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District has begun to encourage infill development by lowering sewer hook-up fees for development in established urban areas and raising the fees for greenfield subdivisions. The connection fee for a new...
A new survey finds social cohesion and above average use of transit among residents in the Hillsboro, Oregon, community.
The lots are smaller and the prices generally higher than in conventional Portland suburbs, but residents of Orenco Station,...
The New Urban Studio, a unit of the HOK Planning Group with offices in Washington, DC, and Miami, have hired Oscar Machado and Steven Schukraft as senior associates. Machado specializes in the design of new urbanist neighborhoods and buildings and...
The Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities have released “Education and Smart Growth: Reversing School Sprawl for Better Schools and Communities,” a paper that explores the impact of the trend toward building new schools on large...
CNU is proud to announce a new benefit of membership. All members will now receive reports from the periodic Charter Councils as well as the Kentlands, Maryland-based Town Paper. Members had been receiving these publications on an ad-hoc basis, but...
A plan for 60 square miles around Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina calls for mixed-use, transit-oriented towns and neighborhoods “resembling downtown Chapel Hill,” according to a report in the Raleigh News & Observer. RTP has 90,...
The City of Lenexa, Kansas, plans to acquire a $9-million parcel in the near future to develop a 62-acre downtown with 1,700 residential units, 1 million square feet of office, and 300,000 square feet of stores and restaurants. The Haile Group,...
Few new urban communities have done better than Fairview Village in terms of incorporating civic uses. The 137-acre project in Fairview, Oregon, includes an elementary school, post office, and city hall. The latter two are full-fledged, functioning...
I. The passage
Category: Circulation
Subcategory: Thoroughfare types
Pedestrian paths come in a wide variety and are anything but simple. To understand their variety and complexity, it is useful to begin by noting their relationship to other...
A new study by Kevin Leyden of West Virginia University explores how neighborhood form influences the generation of social capital, i.e., the level of political and social engagement among residents. Leyden’s analysis of a survey of residents in...
In a move that furthers the New Urbanism’s entry into the mainstream of the planning profession, the Board of Directors of the American Planning Association (APA) recently approved the formation of a New Urbanism (NU) division.
The Anacostia Waterfront Initiative continues to gather momentum for the redevelopment of miles of neglected land along the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. The Initiative, a partnership between the District of Columbia and 19 federal and local...