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.
During the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ annual meeting, Heather Smith, program director for CNU, hailed the response that a CNU-ITE manual has generated.
The Al Aqaba charrette planned for new growth in a Palestinian village and designed a West Bank version of the “Katrina Cottage.”
The City Council of South Padre Island, Texas, adopted a redevelopment plan and form-based code for the 6-mile commercial corridor along Padre Boulevard.
Smart Growth America and Charlier & Associates are helping five rural communities to submit TIGER III grants on October 31.
Livability Solutions helps communities with problems such as outdated zoning codes and a lack of consensus on where and how to grow.
Three main principles; Beautiful Places, Defined Places and Anticipation of a Place, were used to build extra value out of typical suburban post-meltdown wreckage.
A careful analysis of Schooner Bay in the Bahamas shows the financial and other benefits of taking a slower, culturally attuned, lower-debt approach to development.
Bothell, Washington, adapts to current employment and living trends by redoing highways and making a walkable, mixed-use downtown.
How does a gritty West Virginia town revitalize itself into a thriving, mixed-use, walkable community in a down economy? A week-long charrette and federal livability grants help figure it out. 
Congress should recognize that President Obama has injected a considerable dose of wisdom into the government’s community-building efforts.
Transportation planner Patrick Siegman lays out three approaches to parking regulations in an attempt to move municipalities away from parking minimums.
An updated edition of Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking tells how to introduce “performance parking” systems and other innovations.