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.
New Urbanism writer Jason Miller is trying to raise money to resurrect a newspaper in Concrete, Washington, that published its last issue in September 1991. Miller, who moved in 2005 to the rural town (named in 1909 after its principal industry),...
The study, “Beltway Burden,” found that in the Washington region, increases in a household’s transportation costs start offsetting the savings from lower housing prices when families live roughly 15-17 miles or more from employment centers.
Measuring the effect of regional growth on carbon dioxide emissions is likely to be on the cutting edge of planning in the next decade.
By Lance Jay Brown, David Dixon, and Oliver GillhamJohn Wiley & Sons, 2009, 304 pp., $80 hardcoverI was suffering a case of compendium burnout, a malady familiar to architectural book reviewers, and I suspected that Urban Design for an Urban...
Contention that dragged on for more than four years between the developer of Clarksburg Town Center in Montgomery County, Maryland, and unhappy residents of that traditional neighborhood development may be ending. Under a ruling from the county’s...
The Portland (Oregon) Bureau of Planning and Sustainability has recently released The Infill Design Toolkit: A guide to integrating infill development into Portland’s neighborhoods. It deals with issues such as parking, quality street frontages, and...
In an effort to promote transit-oriented development, the Portland City Council in January passed a resolution to do away a $20 million cap on the value of developments seeking tax abatements, according to the Daily Journal of Commerce. Under the...
Jackie Benson has formed a marketing consulting firm, J Benson Marketing in Atlanta, Georgia. Benson, a long-time marketing consultant for new urban projects, was with Milesbrand, which recently closed its Atlanta office. Contact: jackie@...
CNU’s seventeenth annual Congress, June 10-14 in Denver, focuses on New Urbanism as an economic beacon in these times. As the US and world economies face vexing related challenges — the mortgage crisis, economic recession, energy insecurity — CNU 17...
“I’d like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that’s energy-efficient. I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally in terms of how we plan our transportation infrastructure. The days where we are just building...
Government leaders in Toronto are planning to install a network of light-rail lines that will greatly expand transit service across Canada’s largest city. Mayor David Miller and the Toronto Transit Commission have championed a 75-mile “Transit City...
In two developments within the past year, Wolff Lyon Architects of Boulder, Colorado, has produced two-family houses that have two fronts. As designed by principal Tom Lyon, each of these duplexes has one façade that faces a street and another...