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.
CNU calls on new urbanists to review and comment on the latest draft of the rating system by June 14.
The San Diego Smart Growth Fund, one of a number of funds devoted to smart-growth projects across the US, has succumbed to the real estate depression.
The Center City District has been systematically improving lighting for pedestrians in the core of Philadelphia since 1997. “We’re about two-thirds of the way through replacing highway-scale cobrahead light fixtures with shorter, pedestrian-scale...
Compact, mixed-use development linked to lowered greenhouse gases.
Edited by Alex Krieger and William S. SaundersUniversity of Minnesota Press, 2009, 392 pp., $25 paperback
A 25-acre organic farm in Serenbe, a new urban development about 30 miles southwest of downtown Atlanta, was the focus of a March 1 travel feature in The New York Times. The farm, established by Steve and Marie Nygren, supplies food for the...
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has begun distributing Portland: Quest for the Livable City, a 57-minute film that examines the Oregon metro area’s efforts to reduce incursions on the natural environment and grow more densely within an urban...
Traffic congestion fell in 99 of the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas in 2008, according to Inrix, a company that studies data from vehicles equipped with GPS devices. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) declined about 3 percent on urban interstate...
A federal study confirmed what many in the real estate industry have observed — the share of development in cities and first-ring suburbs has increased significantly since 1990 — and this trend continues in the wake of the real estate recession.
The Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), which has jurisdiction over most streets and roads in its state, is — like Virginia — requiring that new subdivision streets be connected to neighboring areas.
Since March 2008, DelDOT has...
Momentum is growing for what the US Environmental Protection Agency calls “green infrastructure.” Tom Low of the Charlotte, North Carolina, office of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. reports that 130 people from across the country participated in March...
Hutto, Texas, became the second city in that state to adopt a citywide SmartCode, according to Community Development Director Matthew Lewis. The consultants on the project were Placemakers, Gateway Planning Group, and the architecture firm ERO....