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 American Planning Association has published the report “Guide for Livable Communities Through ‘Smart Development.’” The report shows how communities are revamping development regulations and includes design guidelines and sample ordinances....
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...
Since early 1998, developers and planners in Western Australia have had an alternative model for future developments. The Western Australia Planning Commission issued Liveable Neighbourhoods: Community Design Code which advocates new urbanist...
Infill project fares better than suburbia in EPA report on travel behavior and air quality.
A proposed new urbanist brownfield development in downtown Atlanta has become a pilot project in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) program for...
If developers relied only on conventional market analysis, which focuses on what has sold in a given area in recent years, few if any new urbanist projects would be built. For that reason, new urbanist market analysts like Zimmerman Volk Associates...
Correction: an article on page 17 of the March/April 1999 issue misidentified the designers of Concord Village and Eagle Creek in Indianapolis. They are: Tise, Hurwitz & Diamond Inc. and Clyde E. Woods & Associates.
A recent New York Times article featured the New Urbanism as an antidote to the physical and emotional isolation encountered by teenagers living in suburban tract developments such as Littleton, Colorado. Typical suburban developments, with their...
Construction began this spring on Longleaf, a 568-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in New Port Richey, Florida. The project was developed by the Longleaf Development Company and designed by Geoffrey Farrell and Armando Montero. The...
A new study in support of transit was presented by the conservative Free Congress Foundation at the recent Congress for the New Urbanism conference. The study examines the percentage of trips that transit carries in comparison to the trips for which...