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 bill to create 1.5 million units of affordable housing during the next 10 years through a National Housing Trust Fund was introduced by US Sen. John Kerry. The bill was endorsed by the Sierra Club.
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
In understanding the components of urbanism at any point along the Transect, it is useful to differentiate between the organization of movement and the organization of spatial...
Randal O’Toole is a man whose neighborhood was replanned by government officials as part of Portland Metro’s 2040 planning process in the mid-1990s — an event which launched his career as an anti-new urbanist. O’Toole is profoundly pessimistic about...
The Great Lakes Television Consortium has released “The Sprawling of America,” a comprehensive two-hour documentary in two parts examining land use over the last 50 years. The video is obviously slanted towards smart growth and New Urbanism, and may...
Smart Growth, Better Neighborhoods: Communities Leading the Way, a 204-page report from the Neighborhood Coalition, looks at how community-based organizations are tackling negative consequences of sprawl and divestment in low-income neighborhoods....
Sales have begun at three of the eight projects profiled in this report, and so far the consumer response has been positive. Washington Town Center opened sales at the beginning of 2001 and has sold 185 of the 560 homes planned for the first phase....
With the full support of local officials, a number of significant new urbanist projects are on the fast track.
Most new urbanist projects are held back by something — incompatible zoning codes, lack of financing, inappropriate street standards,...
Research at the University of Southern California finds that demographics and social change are brewing up tremendous demand for "dense, walkable neighborhoods."
Researchers at the University of Southern California have released a study that...
Coastal Living Magazine’s 2001 Idea House has opened in Habersham, a TND in Beaufort County, South Carolina.
Streetcars have returned to downtown Portland, Oregon, after an absence of 51 years. The line runs for 2.4 miles through some of the city’s densest neighborhoods. Developers have covered part of the $57 million cost of the streetcar in return for...
Suburbia is denser out West than it is in other parts of the country, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Rolf Pendall, assistant professor at Cornell University and one of the study authors, reports that smaller lot sizes, larger...
Supervisors in Fairfax County, Virginia, approved changes in the master plan to allow higher density development around proposed commuter rail stations along a proposed Metro line to Dulles Airport, according to the Washington Post.