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 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...
Pilot program for housing designed after Hurricane Katrina is declared “a great success” by emergency agency.
CityPlace as a whole “appears to be surviving OK,” says Dana Little, a designer who was on the DPZ team that planned the 72-acre development in 1993.
“The explosion of interest in streetcars stalled only slightly in 2008,” according to Gloria Ohland of Reconnecting America. Interest in streetcars moderated because of the national economic contraction and because it became evident that streetcars...
The Reburbia contest by Dwell magazine and Inhabitat.com, a design competition for reinventing the suburbs, is one clear case where the people are smarter than the experts. The most online votes, by a wide margin, were cast for the “Urban Sprawl...
As part of its ongoing Emergency Response and Street Design Initiative, The Congress for the New Urbanism is proposing changes to the International Fire Code that will empower local fire code officials to be more flexible on street designs. These...
The University of Utah has established a new professional education program, the Mountain West Planning and Design Academy. Reid Ewing, a well-known researcher in the smart growth field, will guide the program with Chris Arthur and Robert Young. The...
CNU members began voting on the proposed LEED for Neighborhood Development program Aug. 19 and will continue electronic balloting until Sept. 17. In a statement on the CNU website, the CNU Board and CNU’s representatives on the LEED-ND advisory...
Two studies reinforce the importance of walkable, compact development in dealing with climate change.
Paul M. Weyrich and William S. LindAll in all, Moving Minds is the most persuasive reading I have encountered on public transit.
A charrette in June led by TND Planning Group fleshed out ideas for a transit-oriented development in the Highlandtown area of Baltimore that could add up to 4,000 residences in the area of a Red Line transit stop, says The Baltimore Sun.
CNU’s annual Congress proved to be just what urbanists in the hard-hit fields of planning and community design and development needed.