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.
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.
Through the first quarter of the 20th century, the United States developed mainly in the form of compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. The pattern began to change with the emergence of modern architecture and zoning and the ascent of the automobile...
The rural-to-urban Transect is based on the idea that there is a place for everything in the human habitat. Where elements of the built environment are in their proper place, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
If the New Urbanism can be boiled down to a single idea, perhaps it would be making places walkable. But what makes pedestrians feel attracted to one place and want to avoid another?
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Environmental Health released a major policy statement in late May calling for communities to be designed to facilitate physical activity, especially among children. About 17 percent of American...
Despite the improvement in the fortunes of many urban centers in the past decade, the Brookings Institution says “employment steadily decentralized between 1998 and 2006: 95 out of 98 metro areas saw a decrease in the share of jobs located within...
“The Story of Sprawl,” a two-DVD set of historic films ranging from Lewis Mumford’s The City, produced in 1939, to No Time for Ugliness, produced by the American Institute of Architects in 1965, has been released by Planetizen at $29.99. Viewers can...
After 5 years, Dhiru Thadani “disbanded” the Washington, DC, Town Planning Studio of Ayers/Saint/Gross, explaining that the firm no longer supports his approach to traditional town planning. The studio won 4 CNU Charter Awards and 3 AIA Chapter...
Mixed-use development at the Columbia Town Center in Columbia, Maryland, and at Cottonwood Mall in Holladay, Utah, is being delayed by the depressed economy and by the bankruptcy filing of the Chicago-based owner, General Growth Properties (GGP)....
While the other three architects’ house proposals were all “contemporary” in design — in one case weirdly so — Mouzon’s energy-efficient house had a traditional appearance except for a few unfamiliar elements.