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.
Jane Jacobs's concept of "border vacuums" explains why some Baltimore neighborhoods and have come back to life, and others have not.
Pittsburgh has developed software to calculate the value of street trees, and found that it gets far more benefit than it spends, according to Next City. "Pittsburgh found that the city’s street trees — strictly those planted in sidewalks and...
The Ohio Kentucky Indiana (OKI) Regional Council of Governments, which represents Greater Cincinnati, has released the findings from its 2012 "How Do We Grow From Here" survey. The results show strong public support for compact, walkable...
We take a break from the usual reporting to show this social housing — which means subsidized — in a suburb of Paris. The architect, Edouard François, explained: "I cannot do beauty, because it will make the rest look ugly, so I decided to do...
A study by University of Connecticut researchers compares three cities that have supressed parking with three that have provided plenty — with surprising consequences.
With parking now consuming as much as 30 percent of precious urban land in some American cities, it’s no wonder that parking has become one of the leading hot-button issues in planning and urban design. Rethinking A Lot enters the parking fray with...
“Never before have we seen such crowds downtown,” says Jason Caudle, deputy city manager, of the 30,000 people who attended a Holloween and Harvest festival on the new downtown boulevard in Lancaster, California. The nine-block project, costing $11....
The Old Colony housing project, which is considered the most physically distressed site in the Boston Housing Authority portfolio, is being redeveloped as The Homes at Old Colony. The first phase of 116 units includes an apartment building, five...
"Our smaller cities were once very vibrant urban centers, built at a rewarding human scale, and I believe they will be that way again as events unfold," Crary says.
The Florida state Greenbook, developed by professional engineers representing every geographic district in the state, has historically supported conventional suburban development patterns and highways. The 2012 Greenbook includes a new chapter,...
Made for Walking by Julie Campoli offers a recipe for creating great urbanism in the 21st Century. Take a neighborhood with good bones and historic buildings. Fill in the gaps with New Urbanism and contextual infill development. Reinforce the good...
Arverne-by-the-Sea, on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, surprised many residents by its resilience to Superstorm Sandy. While many nearby neighborhoods were heavily damaged or destroyed, the new urban Arverne, one of the largest current...