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.
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...
Rendering caption (on page 1): Walthamstow city center in London, England, is one of many new urban plans that take inspiration from the organic, cranky street patterns of old Europe. See articles on pages 6.
In 1999, Wisconsin passed the first and only state law in the US requiring municipalities to have traditional neighborhood development codes. Eight years later — and five years after the initial deadline for adopting these ordinances — many...
Dover, Kohl & Partners led a week-long charrette in mid-September aimed at bringing order, pedestrian comfort, and a degree of architectural grace to the jumbled section of Miami containing the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine,...
Tesco, a big British supermarket chain, is planning to open at least 21 Fresh & Easy stores — most of them about 10,000 sq. ft. — in the Phoenix area, and to establish additional stores in Las Vegas, San Diego, and Los Angeles, according to The...
Sarasota County, Florida, commissioners unanimously endorsed a zoning ordinance amendment in August, establishing form-based code as an option for mixed-use, commercial development, according to the Sun newspapers. “If someone is considering whether...
As of early this summer, Buffalo looked like a promising site for CNU’s Highways to Boulevards initiative. Elected leaders such as Congressman Brian Higgins, a speaker at CNU’s 2006 Congress in Providence, were calling for the removal of the...
The University of Michigan Graduate Real Estate Development Program chaired by Chris Leinberger has become so popular that it’s seeking a codirector who will supplement Leinberger’s involvement. The program, spearheaded by the university’s Taubman...
Product diversity, closeness to transit, and the appeal of urban living help offset the biggest housing decline in years. Sales of new housing slowed in August to the most laggard pace in seven years, and some conventional homebuilders reported...
A major suburban center near Baltimore will likely become much more congenial for pedestrians, thanks to a six-day charrette sponsored by Baltimore County. The charrette, led by Stuart Sirota of TND Planning Group, produced a plan that calls for...