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.
A traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, provides evidence that a walkable community can be popular and have a measurable impact on school traffic.
Mary Scroggs Elementary School in Southern Village has 450...
Ordinance, Austin, Texas
Optional, adopted 1997.
Applies to sites from 40 to 250 acres.
TND must have neighborhood center area (NCA) and at least one mixed residential area (MRA).
Allocates minimum and maximum land use area percentages...
Market Place has pedestrian-oriented design elements, but critics argue that it will displace local merchants and diminish local character.
Is Market Place going to create a new neighborhood or destroy one? Is it an example of forward thinking...
Public transportation ridership has risen to a level not seen since 1960. New statistics from the American Public Transportation Association reveal that Americans took 9 billion trips on mass transit in 1999, up from a low of 6.5 billion trips in...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is launching Design Advisor, a web-based tool for community development organizations building affordable housing. The goal of the program is to improve design literacy and help community organizations...
On the subject of dysfunctional zoning: Karrie Hanson, a resident of the historic town of Westfield, New Jersey, reports that the town’s zoning regulations jeopardize porches. The problem is that zoning rules are based on the footprint of a house –...
Dave Mayfield, developer of Afton Village in Concord, North Carolina, and landscape architect Richard Burck visited cities across the Carolinas and Georgia to survey and measure porches and to discover what elements create the right balance between...
Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening (D) has decided that a new campus for the University System of Maryland be housed in three vacant buildings in downtown Hagerstown instead of in a planned suburban building. Anti-sprawl groups applaud the...
The site of a planned new urbanist town in Ada, Michigan, designed by John Anderson and Philip Bess at a 1999 charrette, has changed hands. Ada Holdings LLC, owned by Amway Corporation president Dick DeVos and family, bought the 536- acre parcel...
The Seaside Institute will award its annual Seaside Prize posthumously to the Italian architect Aldo Rossi who died in 1997. In his practice as an architectural theoretician and teacher, Rossi used the city as his central theme. His best known works...
About 200 townhomes have been built in Winchester Greens, a project for low to moderate income residents south of Richmond, Virginia, being developed by the Richmond Better Housing Coalition (RBHC). Winchester Greens is like a little bit of downtown...
Vince Graham and Robert Turner share a formula for success.
Down in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, two young developers are mastering the art and technique of building neighborhoods and towns. Vince Graham and Robert Turner have known each other...