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.
“Urbanity is not a design concept, but a notion of inclusiveness and diversity: rubbing shoulders with people of different ages, from different classes, from different backgrounds. ... Despite what architects profess, socialization depends on people...
Virginia project features new urbanist design principles and looks like another Hope VI housing program success.
6Just a few blocks from downtown and adjacent to I-264 in Portsmouth, Virginia, a new neighborhood of vibrantly colored,...
Michael Lamb and Richard McLaughlin, formerly with Town Planning Collaborative, have joined Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, Inc., a Minneapolis-based architecture, engineering and planning firm. Lamb will be leading the new urban design and planning...
Following up on Principles for Inner City Neighborhood Design, published last year, CNU has released Strategies for Successful Infill Development, produced in cooperation with the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a policy think tank. The 130-page book...
A Circuit Court judge in Oregon has ruled that the controversial Ballot Measure 7 is unconstitutional. The measure, passed by Oregon voters last November, would require the state to compensate land owners for loss of property value due to planning...
The redevelopment of a naval base may become the first phase of a revitalization of 3,000 acres in the community of North Charleston, South Carolina. The city intends to buy 350 acres from the Charleston Naval Base Redevelopment Authority and then...
Three hundred units of rental housing and about 125 for-sale homes have been completed and occupied in NewHolly, a Hope VI redevelopment in Southeast Seattle. The new mixed-income neighborhood replaces Holly Park, a functionally obsolete and unsafe...
Suburban Nation by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck will be released in paperback on April 16. $18.
As ever larger schools on the urban fringe replace historic institutions, a new report identifies public policy changes needed to save neighborhood schools.
Why is only one in eight children walking or bicycling to school these days? Why do...
“The mistake cities get caught in is having to build a ‘good business climate.’ What they have to do is build a people climate.”
—Richard Florida, professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, quoted in The...
Planning for a New Century: The Regional Agenda brings together 12 planners, urban designers, and educators to examine smart growth and livable communities. The book is edited by Jonathan Barnett, an urban designer and a professor of the Practice of...
A small ski resort town wants to guide growth and calls in expertise from the outside.
This past February, CNU Director of Advisory Services James M. Moore and
a team of CNU members traveled to California's Sierra Nevada mountains to show how...