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.
High gas prices are resulting in an important health benefit — the plummeting of US automobile fatalities. The Associated Press reports a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths overall through May of 2008 compared with the first five months of 2007...
Since the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) helped to put a modicum of balance in federal highway and public transportation funding, planning and transportation advocates have had the opportunity every six years to...
Victor Deupi stepped down in August after more than three years as Arthur Ross Director of Education at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. He returned to full-time architectural practice and is collaborating with Pier...
The draft plan for meeting greenhouse gas reductions falls short, according to urbanists, but support is growing for more aggressive measures.
Environmental, housing, development, and land use organizations have joined a chorus of groups calling...
Edited by Douglas Kelbaugh and Kit Krankel McCulloughRoutledge (Taylor & Francis), 2008, 424 pp., $44.95 paperbackIn this long and often abstruse collection of writings on urbanism, one essay stands out as a marvel of imagination and observation...
El Paso, Texas, approved the SmartCode in late July as an optional alternative to the city’s conventional zoning and subdivision codes. With a population of 609,000, El Paso is believed to be the largest city in the US to have adopted the SmartCode...
Designs of three LEED-ND projects in Beijing feature green technology, but the rating system doesn’t guarantee good urban design.The Beijing Olympic Village, containing 22 six-story buildings and 20 nine-story buildings on 160 acres, won a Gold...
The Congress for the New Urbanism has created a six-minute video on the importance of urban design in fighting climate change. The video, A Convenient Remedy to the Inconvenient Truth, uses examples to show how the choice of a walkable, mixed-use,...
The Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law published a special June issue called “Active Living, the Built Environment, and the Policy Agenda,” which features articles on the impact that biking, trails, land-use policy, school planning, and...
New York City is planning to introduce variable parking meter rates in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, beginning in October. On certain congested corridors, the city will double the rates charged by the meters during heavy traffic periods. The goal...
Arthur C. Nelson, formerly director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, took a new position in July as “presidential professor” at the University of Utah’s College of Architecture + Planning. Nelson’s work on housing supply and demand...
A two-year study in New England found that when uses are mixed, 24 percent less parking is needed.
Norman Garrick and Wesley Marshall of the University of Connecticut examined six centers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Three were...