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.
By Malcolm MillaisIf you want to know where all of the Modern Movement’s bodies are buried, this is the book.
Town-Green of Oakland California is teaming with the National Charrette Institute NCI of Portland Or
Town-Green of Oakland, California, is teaming with the National Charrette Institute (NCI) of Portland, Oregon, on a $180,000 pilot project called Emerald Cities, designed to help the City of Tracy, California, meet climate, energy, and environmental...
New York City has published its first Street Design Manual, and it’s winning praise from urbanists. In a review on the Design Observer website, Jeff Speck, an urban planning consultant based in Washington, DC, wrote that the 232-page publication “is...
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On its second try, the Miami City Commission on Sept. 4 approved the “Miami 21” zoning code, which would place South Florida’s biggest city under a form-based code. The new code would be “the largest form-based code adopted anywhere,” says Marina...
Frank Gruber writes about the town he knows, Santa Monica. The narrative that emerges could be about your town or mine.
A special report released in August by the National Research Council, Driving and the Built Environment: The Effects of Compact Development on Motorized Travel, Energy Use, and CO2 Emissions — Special Report 298, estimates that compact development...
A 20-mile light-rail line from central Phoenix to Mesa and Tempe, Arizona, which opened last December, is surpassing ridership projections by more than 25 percent. The line — which initially provoked controversy because of its $1.4 billion cost, its...
Beyond economy-wide pricing measures, land use strategies are the most effective long-term way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report’s authors, Cambridge Systematics.
Over the last few years, CNU’s annual transportation summit has become one of the nation’s top forums for advancing highly-connected, multimodal transportation networks.
The Smart Growth Schools website, designed to help people understand how they can improve their schools and communities through smart growth principles, was created recently. Overseen by Nathan Norris, Director of Implementation Advisory for...