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.
Adopted Smartcodes 
The Codes Study is a collaborative effort led by Hazel Borys and Emily Talen, contributed to by many public and private planners. The Codes Study tracks SmartCodes, Transect-based codes, and other form-based codes in United States and abroad.
A waterfront site where Maxwell House coffee was once roasted and where the first known baseball game using modern rules was played has been redeveloped as a smart growth project.
The idea of collapse haunts our subconscious like a bad Freudian dream.Reviews by Robert Steuteville
A new report prepared by Calthorpe Associates is described as "the state's first major planning document in almost 30 years."
Arterial streets account for 60 percent of New York's pedestrian fatalities, says the New York City Department of Transportation. 
Many New Jersey schools have eliminated "courtesy busing" for students living within 2 miles — a move that could help fight obesity, Zoe Baldwin argues.
The proposed "Tuckahoe Main Street" mixed-use project in Southampton, New York — 10 percent of which would be residential — is being called a mall in disguise.
Higher parking prices at busy times are allowing businesses in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood to serve more customers, a review of the city's Park Smart program finds.
New Orleans has become higher-income, more expensive, and less African-American in the five years since Hurricane Katrina, demographers discover.
A report released by the American Public Transportation Association concludes that people who live in communities with high-quality public transportation exercise more, live longer, and are generally healthier.
Variably-priced parking, proposed by UCLA professor Donald Shoup, is being investigated by a "Parking Working Group" authorized by New Haven's Board of Aldermen.