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.
Partners for Livable Communities released The Livable City: Revitalizing Urban Communities. The report includes facts, profiles and best practices. Contact: www.livable.com.
The Planetizen website (www. planetizen.com) has named the all-time top 20 books on urban planning. The list is topped by The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, followed by Lewis Mumford’s The City in History. Among the most...
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.
Plans for revitalization of the District of Columbia’s Anacostia River waterfront are now on their way to being implemented. Lead consultants Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler and Wallace, Roberts & Todd will collaborate with seven other...
John Anderson of New Urban Builders offers 10 tips on designing neighborhoods and homes for energy conservation in sunny north central California: 1) Orient the long side of a rectilinear block running north/south — this allows narrow and deep lots...
The new master plan for Gorham’s Bluff in Alabama strives for greater economic diversity and proposes an innovative integration of an assisted living center.
When this remote community in the Appalachian Mountains was first designed in 1993, it...
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,...