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.
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.
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.
Instead of calling for more discussion, LEED organizers want to put the Neighborhood Development program up for a yes-or-no vote.After five years of preparation and testing, members of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Congress for the...
David Cohen says he hasn’t given up on his dream of building defect-free houses in a factory and then wheeling them onto foundations in a new urban community. But he has recalibrated the number of houses that his company, Cohen Brothers Homes, must...
Reform of the state departments of transportation has been a key goal of new urbanists for years — and it appears to be actually underway in two major states, Pennsylvania and Texas.