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.
By Mark L. GillemUniversity of Minnesota Press, 2007, 384 pp., $24.95 paperback.
Geoffrey Anderson, who had headed the smart-growth program of the US Environmental Protection Agency since 2000, has been chosen to lead the advocacy group Smart Growth America. He will start work Jan. 21 as Smart Growth America’s president and CEO...
Atlanta-based designer Lew Oliver, who has had a hand in many new urban developments across the US, won five gold awards and four silver awards in the annual Obie Awards of the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association. Oliver, founder and principal...
Baltimore-based Ayers Saint Gross is expected to begin work in January on SmartCode land development rules for Long Beach, Mississippi. The responsibilities of Ayers Saint Gross will include drafting subdivision requirements for the city, which had...
The Virginia Department of Transportation, which sets standards not only for state highways but also for many community streets, has historically been an impediment to new urbanist development.
Taubman Centers is not the only large mall owner to try to squelch plans for construction of a pedestrian-scale mixed-use center near one of its existing regional malls. A jury decided last month that General Growth Properties (GGP) must pay $74.2...
Conflicts continue to arise between privately owned town centers and people who think the centers should uphold all the freedoms the US Constitution guarantees in the public domain. In June a security guard at a large Maryland development known as “...
Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, editorsNorton Books, 2007, 336 pp., hardcover $50.Jane Jacobs having died in April 2006, it verged on perverseness when her great nemesis, planner Robert Moses, this year became the star of three New York...
Two proposed mixed-use developments in eastern Pennsylvania — the 210-acre Ellis Preserve Town Center in Newtown Square and the 418-acre Mountain Manor project in Smithfield Township, Monroe County — have won recognition from the Delaware Valley...
Pennsylvania municipalities are becoming increasingly receptive to New Urbanism, Tom Comitta says in a profile of his town planning and landscape architecture firm that was published in the August issue of Landscape Architecture. In 2002,...
The Orton Family foundation has released the Big Box Evaluator, a free tool “designed to help communities and individuals learn about the impacts of big-box stores.” People in communities that want to evaluate proposed big-box developments can...
Peter Swift returned to Longmont, Colorado, after nearly two years of working on planning and development in the Kurdish region of Iraq. He has reactivated his town planning, traffic, and civil engineering firm, Swift and Associates. He has recently...