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.
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...
Home sales are brisk in Belmont Greene, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Loudoun County, Virginia. Master developer Waterford Development reports that 50 homes have been sold before the first model homes open this spring, and 187...
CNU has released its mall study, Greyfields into Goldfields, in which PricewaterhouseCoopers concludes that approximately 7 percent of the nation’s regional malls are greyfields, i.e., in steep decline and ripe for redevelopment. The firm...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention turn their attention to the connection between community design and people’s level of physical activity.
For decades, health scientists have warned us that Americans are more sedentary and more obese...
An emphasis on urban design inspired by community involvement is evident at an increasing number of architecture schools. The College Architecture and Design at Lawrence Technological University in South-field, Michigan, has documented one such...
Canada’s Grow Homes and Next Homes have made home ownership affordable through reduced size and modular design. The concept may be a good fit for small-lot, traditional neighborhoods.
The first Grow Home prototype was built on the campus of...
Portland, Oregon, well known for its urban growth boundary and transit villages, may get the nation’s first Home Depot designed to fit into a Main Street setting. The 166,000 sq. ft. Halsey Place project represents a radical step for the nation’s...
The Hillier Group Architects has expanded to include an Urban Design Practice. Hillier staff members who will compose the core group of urban designers include: Scott Killinger, managing principal of Hillier Philadelphia; D. Thomas Stearns, a...
Montgomery County, Maryland, is pursuing two transit-oriented development (TOD) projects around the Twinbrook and Shady Grove stations on the Washington DC region’s Metro system. Two charrettes, led by Design Collective, an architecture and planning...
In Costa Contra County, California, a February charrette produced a new vision for development around the Pleasant Hill BART commuter rail station. The design team included architects and town planners Lennertz Coyle & Associates, New Urbanism...
Glatting Jackson of Orlando has hired Ian M. Lockwood, a nationally recognized traffic calming expert, as a Senior Transportation Engineer. Lockwood, formerly a transportation engineer with West Palm Beach, Florida, won the 1997 Past Presidents’...