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.
A battle is being waged in South Carolina regarding a highway proposal that epitomizes the larger choices the nation faces on infrastructure investments. The highway is an extension of a beltway, I-526, that encircles much of Charleston, South...
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has continued to refine “agricultural urbanism” — the idea “in which all aspects of urbanism are focused on food production.” The firm is drafting a booklet covering what it has learned from agricultural urbanism...
The Center for Applied Transect Studies has launched a website “to gather the work and intelligence of New Urbanists who use the Transect as a tool against sprawl and climate change.” The Center, a nonprofit think tank supporting research,...
Peter Katz has been appointed director of Smart Growth/Urban Planning by Sarasota County, Florida. In his new position, Katz, founding president of the Form-Based Codes Institute, will work on implementing smart growth principles for development and...
Monica Quigley, vice president of sales and marketing for LeylandAlliance, has formed a consulting firm, New Urban Connections, based in Warwick, New York. Quigley will continue to work for LeylandAlliance but will also advise her own clients on...
The first completed Bywater Cottages — two-family dwellings that wrap around sheltered outdoor spaces — “blend perfectly into their 19th-century surroundings,” arts writer Doug MacCash observed Jan. 31 in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article about...
Oakridge Centre, which in 1959 became the first automobile-oriented shopping center in Vancouver, British Columbia, is expected to be reshaped in the next few years into a high-density transit-oriented development mixing retail, employment, housing...
A 120-foot-high hill of slag in Pittsburgh continues to be transformed into a neighborhood called Summerset at Frick Park. The development is selling about two units a month, says Craig Dunham, managing general partner of Summerset Land Development...
Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. and J. Carson Looney of Looney Ricks Kiss architects and planners were named as two of the “30 Top Innovators of the Past 30 Years” by Builder magazine during the 2009 International Builders Show. The...
Temple Terrace, Florida, City Council voted in February to work toward a development agreement and partnership of the Vlass Group, MJ Lant Developments, and Marketplace Advisors to create a new urban-style town center, reports the Tampa Tribune....
One of the newest instruments aiding smart growth and livable streets is a national blog network called Streetsblog. Streetsblog was conceived during debates over congestion pricing for Manhattan. It has since expanded, with locale-specific blogs...
Robert and Daryl Davis, developers of Seaside, Florida, will receive an Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America May 4 in New York.