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.
HUD recently announced $109 million in Choice Neighborhoods grants for four cities — Cincinnati, Seattle, San Antonio, and Tampa. The funding to "transform distressed communities" leveraged $393 million in private and local funds. Choice...
Dhiru Thadani is raising funds through Kickstarter to produce a definitive book on the history and plans of Seaside, Florida. The 608-page tome called Visions of Seaside would be costly to print and the publisher, Rizzoli, would need to set a price...
LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) was launched in 2009 as a private rating system, but it is being increasingly employed and promoted for use by municipalities. The US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Land Use Law Center at Pace Law...
A hundred years ago, Henry Ford was a visionary for what came to be the century of the motor car. Now the company he founded sees a different future.
NextGen new urbanists have published a booklet to makes the case that “Mid-tier” towns and cities represent the most dynamic opportunity for revitalization in the US presently.
The grant allows New Urbanist experts to teach the CNU/ITE Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares manual to Chicagoland’s transportation engineers, policy-makers and public officials.
With the action, FHA is recognizing the economic benefits of mixed-use development and taking steps towards aligning federal financing housing policy with the goals of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities.
If Shakespeare were alive today, and no doubt opposed to government waste, he might say kill the highway lobbyists — or at least their wasteful projects. The Sierra Club came out with its list of 50 best and worst transportation projects based on...
Staging events has been a key marketing strategy for an Oregon traditional neighborhood development (TND). An annual event called Hullabaloo attracts 10,000 people on a single day to NorthWest Crossing in Bend, and the community also hosts a popular...
The first building of Downtown Columbia, Maryland, is expected to be under construction in early 2013 — the first step toward realizing the dream of the late developer James Rouse of creating mixed-use town center for the 1960s new town. That vision...
The Civano development in Tucson, which started out as New Urbanism and devolved into conventional development after Pulte Homes purchased the second neighborhood, shows the potential wasted by the national builder. Pulte spent the last two years of...
Although city housing generally outperformed suburban housing in the recession, according to a Philadelphia-area study, there were significant exceptions. Prices in mixed-use, compact, suburbs with transit access declined — about 20 percent — less...