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.
After 13 years as the executive director of the Seaside Institute, Phyllis Bleiweis is retiring to live in Serenbe, a traditional neighborhood development in Palmetto, Georgia. Bleiweis will continue to work as a consultant for the Seaside Institute...
After spending a week last August studying how to improve the downtown of Davenport, Iowa, Jeff Speck presented recommendations aimed at slowing the vehicular traffic and making the place more comfortable for pedestrians. The Washington, DC-based...
Blue Back Square, a 20-acre mixed-use addition to the long-established town center in West Hartford, Connecticut, has fared well during its first year despite the national financial crisis. “In a bleak economy, more than 90 percent of the retail and...
The Charlotte, North Carolina, office of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. completed a vision plan for Camden, South Carolina, and is being invited back to discuss additional work, including a zoning rewrite, adoption of “Light Imprint” New Urbanism...
The Vintage Group, led by Riverhead, New York, developer John Burke, is planning a four-acre mixed-use project that that would be a pivot point between downtown Riverhead and a panoply of transit connections — existing Long Island Railroad commuter...
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) set final targets for greenhouse gas reductions that included 5 million metric tons from land use and regional transportation sectors. That target, considerably lower than what environmental groups were...
The City of Baltimore unveiled the multiphase Charles North Vision Plan to turn a 100-acre arts and entertainment district north of Penn Station into a $1 billion “cultural crossroads” including 1,900 housing units, 557,000 sq. ft. of retail, 300,...
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...