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.
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...
The new US administration’s economic stimulus plan is sometimes framed as a battle between roads and transit. The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has a sensible proposal to bridge that divide — if anyone is listening.
While the CNU supports...
To create an attractive gateway to downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, and to serve the future NASCAR Hall of Fame, a 30-acre Interstate highway interchange near the city’s center is being replaced with a more compact urban interchange.
By Hank Dittmar BlackDog Publishing, 2008, 80 pp., $12.50Nations worldwide are setting ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases in response to dire scientific warnings of global warming’s consequences. Few if any leaders know how to...
Jamestown Properties has acquired the small Atlanta developer Green Street Properties to pursue the “green development” trend in the US. Green Street was cofounded in 2001 by former MindSpring Enterprises Inc. CEO Charles Brewer and fellow New...
The Mount Dora City Commission in Florida has approved plans by Crosland LLC to build a 162-acre traditional neighborhood called Indian Springs. The development, on the site of an old tree farm and nursery in a town of about 12,000, north of Orlando...
The US Green Building Council and Island Press, both nonprofit, are together starting GreenWorks, a book club that promises to offer “the newest and best books on green building at discounted prices.” The first four books to be featured are Emerald...
Bruce Tolar led a four-day planning session in October that proposed a new zoning code, tree-lined streets, a farmers’ market, a trackside entertainment district, and other ideas for enhancing Flora, Mississippi, a town of about 1,600 people near...
The City Council in Biloxi, Mississippi, voted in late December to allow “Mississippi Cottages” — state-supplied versions of Katrina Cottages — to remain permanently in some parts of the Gulf Coast community. Both Biloxi and the smaller city of Pass...
Andres Duany came up with a creative stimulus proposal that ties into the need to retrofit suburbia. A growing number of malls across the US are “going dark,” yet are in prime locations to build new urban centers. Such sites represent the most...
Large American cities increasingly are trying to improve the aesthetics, environmental performance, or sociability of their alleys. In 2007 the City of Chicago issued “The Chicago Green Alley Handbook,” which is aimed at installing permeable paving...
Mesa, Azizona, one of the nation’s largest suburbs, with a population greater than Miami, Florida, is switching to a new urban strategy for a five-square-mile site that the city annexed for development. The Mesa Proving Grounds were used by General...