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.
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...
Seth Brown, co-founder of a quarterly magazine called The Next American City, has launched Aspen Equities LLC, a real estate investment and development company focusing on environmentally sustainable projects in greater New York. The firm’s first...
“Complete Streets” movement presses a growing number of cities to plan for multimodal transportation.In 2003, bicyclists intent on obtaining safer routes for cycling concluded that they needed a slogan — one that would communicate their goal to the...
A US group devoted to traditional architecture and urbanism made its debut at the Traditional Building Show in New Orleans this October. The new organization — the American affiliate of the International Network for Traditional Building,...
Landmark buildings can more than pay for themselves through weddings and other functions.Landmark buildings can more than pay for themselves through weddings and other functions.
A new owner, Woolbright Development, is trying to fill empty retail spaces and overcome persistent problems at the Abacoa Town Center in Jupiter, Florida. About a third of the storefronts in the 91,400 sq. ft. town center stood empty in mid-October...
The Louisiana state housing board cleared the way in late October for construction of 75 “Louisiana Cottages” at Jackson Barracks, the National Guard’s headquarters in New Orleans. The modular units, designed by new urbanists for hurricane-damaged...
The Metro system in greater Washington, DC, has failed to work effectively on attracting transit-oriented development (TOD) to many of the properties the system owns near its commuter rail stations, according to a recent report by a panel of experts...