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.
The new federal Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot program (TCSP) offers cities funds to explore the links between transportation and land use. TCSP is developed by the Federal Highway Administration, the Department of...
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) has introduced H.R. 1231, the Post Office Community Partnership Act, to address the problem of downtown post offices around the country being closed or relocated in outlying areas. At the moment the Postal Service is not...
The architectural firm Wolff-Lyon worked with city planners to create the new Business Main Street zoning district in Boulder, Colorado. The previous Commercial Business zoning mandated large setbacks and prohibited residential construction. One of...
The Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA) is one step closer to making East Beach, a proposed traditional neighborhood development (TND) on the Chesapeake Bay, a reality. Ten developers expressed an interest in becoming the master...
Construction is underway in West Park Village, a 225-acre TND located in the 2,000-acre Westchase development near Tampa, Florida. Designed by RTKL, the project is one of the first transit-oriented developments in Florida. It features several...
Playa Vista in West Los Angeles recently lost its most prominent tenant when DreamWorks SKG scrapped their plans for a studio. The facility represented only 4 percent of the entire development, and the loss won’t affect the rest of the building...
The physical components of the New Urbanism — the houses, streets, and neighborhoods — are designed to foster social cohesion and civic engagement, but an attractive public realm alone does not make a vibrant community. A relatively new type of...
Whether you measure the New Urbanism (NU) by the diversity of its enemies, or by the power of its friends, it has come a long way in 1999, the year suburban sprawl was elevated to a national issue. Environmental groups, the vice president, the...
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released the report “Challenging Sprawl: Organizational Responses to a National Problem.” The report gathers viewpoints on sprawl and alternative development patterns from representatives of national...
David Rusk’s new book, Inside Game, Outside Game: Winning Strategies for Saving Urban America, provides a critique of the efforts of the federal government and community development corporations to revitalize urban neighborhoods. A former mayor of...
“Exploring (New) Urbanism,” the conference held at the Harvard Design School in March 1999, is now available on CD-ROM. The disc contains complete, unedited video footage of the proceedings, including speeches by Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, and...
If California wants to continue to attract new businesses and remain a good place to work and live, the state must support smart growth with public funds, concludes California State Treasurer Philip Angelides in a recently released special edition...