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 dream of bringing Manhattan traffic flow to a total standstill draws nearer every day," writes Bruce McCall in an op-ed piece in Wednesday's New York Times. McCall is a humorist as well as artist. Even so, his 13 "new regulations" suggest that...
DecoBike's demonstration bike-sharing program in West Palm Beach during CNU 20 "was a smash hit," says Raphael Clemente of that city's Downtown Development Authority. DecoBike is unusual in that it was founded with money that was privately raised,...
Across America, rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) lines have proliferated during the past decade. Los Angeles will have a total of 71 light-rail and BRT stations operating by the end of this year. The Boston region is extending heavy rail for the...
A 20-year resident of the Kentlands community in Gaithersburg, Maryland, has become the new planning director of Gaithersburg, a town with about 60,000 residents located northwest of DC. John Schlichting was a developer with the JBG Companies of...
A story by Michael Mehaffy and Dr. Richard Jackson in Atlantic Cities argues that the loss of traditional neighborhoods and the decline of activities such as walking to school are drivers of childhood obesity, which they call "an alarming epidemic...
Norton Commons, near Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the few traditional neighborhood developments in the US that is currently selling well. Better! Cities & Towns has a new story on the troubles affecting many TND developers and the successes...
US DOT announced its fourth round of competitive TIGER Discretionary Grants, giving $500 million to 47 projects that run the gamut of transportation modes — many of them multimodal. Our analysis finds that 15 of the projects, totaling $161 million,...
Across the US, more than 400 Complete Streets policies have been adopted—by governments in nearly every state. Barbara McCann, who founded the National Complete Streets Coalition seven years ago, will step down as executive director July 1 when the...
The prominent modernist firm of Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo "built some real stinkers, and they were working on such a scale that when a bulding failed, it failed big, bad and awful," Washington Post architecture critic Philip Kennicott says in...
Arlington County, Virginia, has had great success in transforming the Rosslyn-to-Ballton corridor over the past 30 years. Now the county, across the Potomac from Washington, is planning the addition of up to 6,000 rental apartments in another...
Sustainable Fellwood is a LEED-certified new urban neighborhood near the historic district of Savannah, Georgia. The $50 million redevelopment of public housing has a mix of housing types (220 units), including single-family and multifamily, and...
Lots of cities are starting bike-sharing programs or thinking of doing so. But in Vancouver, British Columbia, a decision to subsidize a new bike-share system has sparked debate over whether the program can thrive if the province retains its 1996...