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.
Australia and New Zealand are making their own way along a new urbanist path.
While Australia and New Zealand share many of the challenges facing North America, there are also some important differences in both context and outcomes. Proactive...
Building homes the old-fashioned way yields lucrative returns in North Carolina.
A development of new homes in a historic city neigh borhood riddled with vacant lots would seem an unlikely candidate for a 42 percent rate of return on investment...
Density is a crucial factor when measuring the environmental impact of development, because it affects land consumption, stormwater runoff, automobile usage, and transit usage. There is much misunderstanding on this subject, mostly because density...
Michael Medick, an architect and town planner formerly with Looney Ricks Kiss and CHK Architects and Planners (now Torti Gallas/CHK), has formed Medick + Associates in Baltimore. The firm offers architectural design and implementation services for...
The Community Building Program at the University of Miami (see January/February 2001 issue) has announced the 12 participants in its Knight fellowship program. The fellows meet six times during the year with community leaders, guest speakers, and...
Six years ago, the American Planning Association kicked off a major initiative aimed at helping states modernize planning law and manage change. APA staff decided to assemble a legislative guidebook for states and localities addressing issues from...
The mayor of Pittsburgh has dropped a controversial $480 million downtown redevelopment project called Market Place that would have gutted or razed 61 buildings and displaced up to 125 existing businesses. Mayor Tom Murphy has appointed a task force...
The now abandoned Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in Austin, Texas, lies only three miles from downtown and has been the focus of a redevelopment effort since 1996. A master plan was recently completed by Roma Design Group of San Francisco for the...
American CityVista, a venture between former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros and builder Kaufman & Broad (see October/November 2000), has begun its first residential development, Lago Vista in San Antonio, Texas. The company plans to build 600...
National Center for Smart Growth Research and
Education
Location: University of Maryland at College Park. Activities: Monitoring and evaluation of smart growth laws, education of public officials, research in growth management, development of...
Developers, environmentalists, Realtors, builders, planners, governors, citiizens — nearly everybody is talking about smart growth. In just three years this term has become a buzz word nationwide, a concept that makes so much sense “it’s hard to...
In the year 2018, the NIMBY wars are over, consumers have learned to recognize the difference between hybrid new urbanist developments and the real thing, and typological coding has replaced conventional zoning. These and other hopeful predictions...