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.
Bill Lennertz and Steve Coyle, of Lennertz Coyle & Associates in Portland, Oregon, founded the nonprofit NCI to research “the art and science” of design charrettes and educate professionals on the subject. Board members are Elizabeth Plater-...
Whitman’s speech caps a well-attended event in San Diego.
Speaking to a sold-out crowd at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in San Diego, California, in late January, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Christine...
The Greater Minnesota Housing Fund has published “Building Better Neighborhoods,” a 92-page book which describes and illustrates urban design principles for towns and cities. Contact: (615) 221-1997.
The Envision Utah Partnership is the winner of the American Planning Association’s Daniel Burnham Award for 2002. The jury cited the partnership’s “masterful job of bringing public and private interests together.”
The Miami Congress will turn the spotlight on the role the New Urbanism can play in the transformation of suburbs into towns. Over the past five years, an increasing number of postwar suburbs and small cities have taken on the challenge of turning...
The new urban master plan and overlay zoning for the area surrounding Dadeland Mall in Kendall, Florida, is beginning to bear fruit. The Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners passed the zoning in 1999 (see January/February 2000 New Urban...
The City of Greenville, South Carolina has a new master plan for the Haynie-Sirrine neighborhood, a predominantly African American community degraded by the conversion of the main thoroughfare into a six-lane highway in the 1950s. The master plan by...
A master plan for the Ocean View section of Norfolk, Virginia, was unveiled by architect Ray Gindroz of Urban Design Associates (UDA). The plan recommends the creation of a “village center” adjacent to the site of a new urban neighborhood soon to be...
Robert and Daryl Davis, the founders of Seaside, Florida, received the 2001 Seaside Prize in a ceremony in December. The award has been given annually since 1993 to individuals or organizations making significant contributions to the quality and...
CNU has released a new report, “Correcting the Record,” which corrects
some of the misinformation spread by pro-sprawl impresario Wendell Cox. The CNU report was released at Rail-Volution, a national transportation and land-use conference at which...
The Segway machine, a motorized, gyroscope-balanced scooter, was unveiled in early December. The early reports, that this scooter — originally known as “Ginger” or “it” — would drastically change personal transportation, seems like hype. Segway...
A three-day design workshop was conducted recently to examine new urban development alternatives for Ashford Barracks, England, a 132-acre brownfield site owned by the Ministry of Defense. The workshop was led by Ashford Borough Council, the...