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 a Livable Western New York, based in Buffalo, has about 60 members, including many who belong to the Congress for the New Urbanism. The group consists mainly of professionals — i.e., architects, planners, traffic engineers, attorneys,...
A four-screen theater in the town center of Southern Village is running movies every Friday and Saturday night on the town green. Moviegoers bring blankets and chairs and are charged three dollars. The event has been very popular and adds energy to...
Narrow streets are not only safer and more pedestrian-friendly, they also cost less. According to recent calculations by a Utah consultant, the cost of resurfacing a 24 ft. road with two inches of asphalt is $45,619 per linear mile. The cost...
The US Department of Energy has developed a “New Tools for Community Design and Decision Making” website based on a presentation by Peter Katz. Contains ideas, tools, and resources from professionals in the field. See www.sustainable. doe.gov/...
A 10,000 sq. ft., two-story mixed-use building has replaced an abandoned gas station at the gateway to historic Beaufort, South Carolina. Offices and retail stores face the street, while five loft apartments occupy the second floor of the building,...
Urban Parks Institute, a program of Project for Public Spaces, has developed the website http://urbanparks.org/ to provide information and resources on revitalizing urban public spaces.
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
Rotary, circle, and circus identify urban spatial elements associated with circular traffic movement. The first tends to occur towards the Rural end of the Transect, the last towards...
In May, Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening appointed Harriet Tregoning as Special Secretary for Smart Growth, establishing a new cabinet post which will focus exclusively on transportation, land-use, and growth issues.
“The governor created the...
Thousands of local codes nationwide prohibit small lots and blocks, narrow streets, shallow setbacks, a mixture of uses, and other elements of pedestrian-scale neighborhoods. This reality makes it difficult for new urbanist developments to gain...
In Lakewood, Colorado, 100 acres of shopping mall and parking lots is about to yield to an urban center.
The Villa Italia Mall is typical of the ailing, greyfield malls that line the nation’s suburban corridors. On the cutting edge of retail...
Van Meter Williams Pollack of San Francisco has hired Kevin Gardiner, an urban designer formerly with Malcom Carpenter Associates.
A new group, Pennsylvania Association of New Urbanists, has begun meeting. Among the members are state Rep. Robert Freeman, who authored a traditional neighborhood development section to the state Municipalities Planning Code, town planners Thomas...