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.
The Smart Growth Network has published “Getting to Smart Growth: 100 Policies for Implementation,” a guide for states and local communities. The publication is available free of charge at www.smartgrowth.org or by calling Juanita Smith at (202) 260...
Collaborating with a landowner, the City of Azusa attracted national firms to design a a transit-oriented community on one of the largest undeveloped infill sites in the Los Angeles region.
In a region where the Playa Vista
project in Los...
Sales in 14 selected new urban pro-jects cooled off by 4.5 percent in 2001, after they rose 34 percent in 2000.
After a year characterized by tur-
moil, uncertainty, and low interest rates, the picture emerging from New Urban News’ annual...
International Making Cities Livable is hosting its annual conference in Alpbach & Salzburg, Austria, on September 15-19. Conference topics include: New Urban Neighborhoods, Community Participation in Planning & Design, and more. To submit...
The City of Toronto has hired Robert Freedman as its new Director of Urban Design. Prior to his appointment, Freedman was a project manager at Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh.
Homebuilders in Palm Beach County, Florida, are not thrilled at the prospect of proposed zoning calling for traditional neighborhood design. The Florida county won an award from the American Planning Association in 2001 for its Managed Growth Tier...
The proposal for a five-acre new urban village in Southport, Connecticut, designed during a charrette in October 2000, has been turned down once, but the developer and designers will soon submit a revised plan. “It’s been a raucous public process,”...
The Inner City Christian Federation (ICCF), a nonprofit development company that has built affordable housing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for nearly 30 years, recently joined with new urbanist professionals in a charrette that generated a master plan...
The Southern California Association of Governments has selected a team headed by John Fregonese and Peter Calthorpe to lead a “ Growth Visioning” project, one of the largest such exercises undertaken to date. The region has a population exceeding 15...
The Brookings Institution has released “The Link Between Growth Management and Housing Affordability: The Academic Evidence,” which concludes that housing prices are primarily determined by the strength of local demand for housing. The report...
As American-style sprawl begins to take root, two German academics argue that the New Urbanism is the missing link in the strategies to preserve and renew cities. In Berlin, an infill project showcases the principles in action.
The German...
A growing number of governors and state legislatures introduce bills to update planning statutes and promote smart growth principles.
By sheer volume alone, the state-level activity on planning reform is impressive. Between 1999 and 2001, lawmakers...