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.
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...
By Christopher B. LeinbergerIsland Press, 2007, 224 pp., $25.95 hardcover.
Charles Bohl and the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami are running a series of workshops in Lexington, Kentucky, to help local leaders make decisions about “legacy projects” that will be created for the 2010 World...
An examination of the “transportation energy intensity” of buildings found that getting people to and from work uses more energy than the buildings themselves consume. The article in Environmental Building News shows that for an average office...
Katrina Cottages that were recently placed in Mississippi locations as part of the state’s $280 million alternative housing pilot program are able to withstand winds of 150 mph, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency confirmed in late September...
Sandy Sorlien, coauthor of the SmartCode v9.0 and Manual, is no longer working with the SmartCode Pro Sessions. Instead, to supplement both SCP and PlaceMakers’ SmartCode Workshops, Sandy has launched SmartCode Local, an intensive master class in...
The New Urban Design Group in Calgary, Alberta, is working on a resort village in the Canadian Rockies that will take its inspiration from some of the great hill towns in Europe. The project, Silvertip Village, is one of several new urbanist...
Glenwood Park, the award-winning traditional neighborhood development in Atlanta, now has a park for dogs and their owners.
Green Street Properties, which is developing the 28-acre community, donated land for a dog park after discovering that “...
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...