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.
Just over a year after the Congress for the New Urbanism launched the Emergency Response & Street Design Initiative, the project is poised to change minds and national fire codes.
Joint US program of HUD, DOT, and EPA will target regional planning, zoning reform, and research.
Developer Robert Chapman has found a formula for succeeding with a new urban development in this severe real estate downturn: team up with a growing institution that can nearly guarantee a strong market.
The most recent census data shows that cities are growing at the expense of suburbs, according to a July 1 Wall Street Journal article. The demographic shift is a combination of preference for urban environments, and inability to sell homes in the...
Montgomery County, Maryland, a suburban area of nearly 1 million people bordering the nation’s capital, is considering adopting a system that would offer financial incentives and reduced impact fees to developers who build near mass transit, provide...
A page 1 article in the June 2009 issue referred to Hampton, Virginia, as a city with “little or no existing urbanism.” While mostly suburban in character, Hampton has a historic area with a grid of streets and a downtown. The city has been working...
Renaissance Downtowns says the Obama administration will be a boon to cities. Other developers at CNU agreed that plenty of urban investment is coming in the next decade. Equity will flow to urban undertakings because “people are more concerned...
Maryland’s Congressional representatives are being asked to insert $22.8 million of earmarks into the current federal transportation bill so that roundabouts can be built at five locations on busy Baltimore traffic corridors.
Frustrated by an inability to get financing for infrastructure construction, developer Steve Soler told The New York Times in June that he would like to sell the $300 million transit-oriented development in Redding, Connecticut, that he has been...
What is believed to be the first citywide, fully mapped adoption of the SmartCode took place in June in Pass Christian, Mississippi. SmartCode consultant Sandy Sorlien says the Gulf Coast municipality, where Jeff Bounds is city planner, has been...
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.