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.
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...
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...
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 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.
“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.
Research tells us that CO2 from transportation is the result of a location’s accessibility to major destinations and the design characteristics of an area. Thus, both where development goes and how it is designed matter.
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...