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.
The Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees the Texas Department of Transportation, appointed an informal urban thoroughfare team that includes John Norquist, CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Scott Polikov of the Gateway Planning...
Three-fourths of Americans believe that being smarter about development and improving public transportation are better long-term solutions for reducing traffic congestion than building new roads, according to a survey sponsored by the National...
James Howard Kunstler appears throughout “Radiant City,” a recently released film that that The New York Times described as “an acerbic position paper on the cultural damage done by postwar architectural fads.” Reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz said the...
Ellen Greenberg has a one-year appointment as visiting practitioner at the University of California-Davis Sustainable Transportation Center. She left Freedman Tung & Bottomley in Berkeley, but remains involved in planning for Ventura, California...
CORRECTION: The plan below was misidentified on page 7 of the October/November issue. Called Sasay, it is located in Coban, Guatemala, and the developer is R&R Development. The designers are Seth Harry and Associates and Jaime Correa and...
By Douglas FarrJohn Wiley & Sons, 2007, 304 pp., $75 hardcoverAmericans love to celebrate “our robust range of life choices,” Chicago architect and urban designer Douglas Farr writes in this potentially important book. We express satisfaction...
Housing construction and mixed-use development are flourishing near commuter rail stations that carry Long Islanders into New York City, The New York Times reported. Condominiums have been completed or planned within walking distance of stations in...
By a margin of 62 to 38 percent, Oregon voters last month resoundingly rolled back many of the effects of a 2004 ballot measure that had weakened land-use planning. Three years ago, a ballot initiative known as Measure 37 required governments to pay...
Island Press has released a thoroughly updated second edition of Douglas Porter’s 1997 book, Managing Growth in America’s Communities. In the new 335-page edition ($35 paperback, $70 hardcover), Porter, a consultant on land use planning and policy...
Don Chen, founding executive director and CEO of Smart Growth America, is stepping down after eight years to join the Ford Foundation as program officer in community development. He will manage a substantial grants portfolio for the nation’s second-...
Maurice Cox, an architecture professor at the University of Virginia, is the new director of design of the National Endowment for the Arts. He will supervise panel selection and the grant-making process in design and oversee the Mayors’ Institute on...