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.
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.
A 150-plus-acre tract in Ferguson Township, Centre County, Pennsylvania is planned for a mixed-use traditional neighborhood development, the Centre Daily Times reports. The plan was created by Thomas Comitta Associates of West Chester, Pennsylvania.
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.
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...
Yaromir Steiner explains four important rules for regional urban centers:
Rendering 1 caption (appears on page 1): A design for courtyard housing in Santa Fe, see story on page 9.
By Jeff MapesOregon State University Press, 2009, 288 pp., $19.95Seeking to alter decades of entrenched and outmoded transportation policies, an increasingly diverse coalition of progressive citizen-activists, planners, advocacy groups,...
A 90- to 100-room hotel planned for Southern Village, a traditional neighborhood development in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has been shelved in response to neighborhood concerns, according to the Herald-Sun newspaper. “Although some Southern...
The National Charrette Institute released an educational DVD useful for charrette sponsors. NCI Charrette System: Stories of Community Transformation gives day-by-day accounts of recent community planning charrettes in Fort Myers, Florida; Ocean...
CNU calls on new urbanists to review and comment on the latest draft of the rating system by June 14.