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 awards have been granted for the Denver Commons, the Heart of Peoria, and Miami 21 codes, each outstanding for different reasons.
Georgetown Land Company, frustrated by its inability to obtain financing for infrastructure in a 55-acre transit-oriented development in Redding, Connecticut, expects to sell the project to new owners by June. The company has announced that the site...
Three charrettes were sponsored in March by the Scottish Sustainable Communities Initiative to create models for environmentally sound development. The lead planner was Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. The final presentation, in...
Up to 22 US cities could be laying track within two years.
The state Smart Growth program, which began in 2007 under then-Governor Eliot Spitzer, has taken a geographically targeted approach to allocating resources.
Norman Garrick, a leading researcher on how to make America’s transportation systems better serve pedestrians and communities, was removed in March from the directorship of the Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of...
A series of workshops will take place to create a regional transportation vision for the Baltimore Metropolitan Council. Portfolio Associates will lead the effort, which will also include Kittelson & Associates and TND Planning Group. The...
Looney Ricks Kiss (LRK), a Memphis, Tennessee, architecture and planning firm that has played a key role in Harbor Town and other traditional neighborhood developments, filed a petition Feb. 24 to undergo Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization....
A study of Hartford, Connecticut, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, finds that if employers subsidized transit and charged for parking, demand for parking spaces might fall by a fifth.
A recent survey of US communities finds that Form-based codes started to take off noticeably in 2007, and the surge of adoptions continues today.
Yarrow Ecovillage, near Chilliwack, British Columbia, is planning to build a mixed-use center that would compensate for the loss of its town center when shopping malls took customers away years ago. Co-housing expert Charles Durrett of McCamant...
Transportation for America released poll results in late March demonstrating overwhelming American support for more resources devoted to public transportation — especially trains. More than four in five voters (82 percent) say that “the United...