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.
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....
Miami, Florida, and St. Paul, Minnesota, decided in March to adopt Complete Streets policies. Enactment of Complete Streets policies, which aim to make the transportation system work for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders as well as for...
Developer 620 Main Street Associates hopes to start construction in September on a cluster of cottages that architect Donald Powers sees as a model of how new urbanists can operate at a time when financing is hard to obtain. For an approximately 180...
Local road networks are included in “CLEAN TEA” legislation that was introduced in both the US Senate and House of Representatives in March. CLEAN TEA allocates revenues from carbon trading, which according to one estimate could generate $3 trillion...
A “Laneway Loft House” — a 624 sq. ft. dwelling designed to be placed along an alley — was the star of this year’s BC Home + Garden Show in Vancouver, British Columbia. At the urging of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association, Smallworks...
Oklahoma City, which ranked dead last in Prevention magazine’s 2008 assessment of sizable American cities for walkability, commissioned Jeff Speck to tell the city how to improve conditions for pedestrians downtown. Speck says Oklahoma City’s...
Brent Warr, the mayor of Gulfport, Mississippi, who participated energetically in the Mississippi Renewal Forum after Hurricane Katrina, announced in March that he will not seek reelection. The Sun Herald said Warr “is facing Katrina fraud charges...
Coming to Denver, June 10-13, the 17th Congress for the New Urbanism gathers the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the New Urbanism under one roof.
“Lifelong Communities” charrette spurs a warming of relations between new urbanists and disability-rights activists.The Atlanta Regional Commission had Andres Duany lead a charrette in February aimed at helping municipal and county governments...
Recently released and soon-to-be released studies show that people who live in cities and near transit generate substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions, both in the US and internationally.
A study by the International Institute for Environment...
The current downturn, says a top retail expert, is “shaking out plans and centers that were poorly conceived.”