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.
Reconnecting America, a nonprofit organization devoted to transit-oriented development (TOD), has established a Best Practices Clearinghouse — a searchable database on topics such as TOD affordability, funding, finance, zoning, and coding. The...
Each Congress for the New Urbanism is packed with much of the collective knowledge of an incredible group of people devoted to designing, building, and rebuilding better cities and towns. Many first-time attendees are overwhelmed to be exposed to so...
Emily Talen is leaving the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she has taught planning, to become a professor in the Urban and Metropolitan Studies Program at Arizona State University’s new downtown Phoenix campus, located on a light...
City pursues ‘EcoDensity Initiative’ that expands downtown housing boom to transit-friendly corridors.City pursues ‘EcoDensity Initiative’ that expands downtown housing boom to transit-friendly corridors.The government of Vancouver, British Columbia...
The first Driehaus Form-based Codes Awards were presented by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk on behalf of the Form-Based Codes Institute during CNU’s annual conference in Philadelphia. The four winners are:
• “Towns, Villages, Countryside,” a code for...
By Philip Bess
Bess has never advocated giving Christian witness a preferred place at the new urbanist table; he simply wants sound ideas to be given their due regardless of the convictions from which they emerge.
Cruising for on-street parking is responsible for about 30 percent of the traffic in central business districts, UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup said in an op-ed piece in the March 29 New York Times. Shoup used the Times article to promote the...
Tony Sease of Civitech in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is serving as the CNU’s representative on the Governing Assembly of PERSI, a new organization whose full name is Practices, Education and Research for Sustainable Infrastructure. Formally...
The US Environmental Protection Agency has issued a request for proposals (RFP) on how state policies and practices affect spending on school construction and renovation. One of the purposes of the RFP is to identify policies and practices that make...
SmartCode Complete, a kit of tools aimed at helping municipalities successfully enact the SmartCode, is being introduced by PlaceMakers. Scott Doyon at PlaceMakers (www.placemakers.com) says the kit deals with individual education on the code, the...
Geoff Dyer and Jaydean Boldt have ended their partnership in Civic Design Group in Calgary, Alberta, and established two separate firms. Dyer’s new firm, T|Six Office for Western Urbanism, will work on transit-oriented developments and other new...