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.
Chicago downtown residential population surged 36 percent in the last decade. The city handled 134,000 residential building permits, many in the Loop and the Near North Side, the two downtown neighborhoods that have experienced the most growth....
Metro Centre at Owings Mills, Maryland, is a mixed-use, transit-oriented development (TOD) that will support more than 1.2 million square feet of commercial office space and 1,700 residential units.
The movement for "complete streets" remained strong in 2012, according to a new report by Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition.
Development near transit stations is often compact and intense, but it offers another critical opportunity -- placemaking. Civic places and parks can give a transit-oriented neighborhood identity and fulfill an important need in compact, urban...
Michael Bloomberg has added or extended more historic districts than any previous New York City mayor, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. This policy has provided a counterpoint to an otherwise aggressive development approach, the...
Arthur C. Nelson, author of Reshaping Metropolitan America, projects that between 2010 and 2030, nearly 80 billion square feet of nonresidential space will be replaced or redone in the US. Retail structures have a short lifespan, he points out. The...
The Grand Concourse in the Bronx is undergoing an $18 million renovation, one of the largest complete streets projects in the US — and perhaps the one that directly affects the most people. The project, much of which is completed, is about 1 mile...
This time let's look at elevated corridors and how their impacts can be softened in Baltimore and other cities.
In a few short years, 85 percent of residents in Somerville, Massachusetts, will be able to walk to rail transit — up from 15 percent today. The Somerville story, reported in detail in the March 2013 issue of Better! Cities & Towns, is an...
A new book, Reshaping Metropolitan America, explains regions will take a more compact, mixed-use form in the next two decades, especially in the suburbs.
The New York Times ran a trend article on the changing preference of retirees — away from distant Sunbelt retirement developments and more toward real communities. As we have predicted at Better! Cities & Towns, The Times article says Baby...
CNU's annual Congress will be organized around the program tracks, with more than 50 concurrent sessions thaåt make up the heart of the programming.