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.
Washington Town Center, the first New Jersey town center built from the ground up with the help of grants from the state, including a planning grant from the Office of Smart Growth, is experiencing growing pains.
The 400-acre Town Center, eight...
To overcome persistent conflicts between new urbanists and advocates for the disabled, the lobbying group AARP has agreed to host a conference in which the participants will try to reach a consensus on access requirements for one- to three-unit...
Starting prices at New Daleville have slipped a few thousand dollars further — to $269,990 — in the seven months since Last Harvest was written. “Instead of selling five houses a month, which I had hoped, they’re selling 2 a month,” Joe Duckworth...
Highlands Garden Village, a new urban infill development in Denver, Colorado, won the Urban Land Institute’s Award for Excellence: The America Competition. The 27-acre Highlands Garden Village was developed by Perry Rose LLC and was planned by...
Peter Swift, director of town planning for Mid Atlantic Global LLC in Erbil, Iraq, is working on a three-square-mile new town plan for Dohuk in northern Iraq and on infill in the Ankawa Quarter of Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government...
Pass Christian, one of the Mississippi communities hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, adopted the SmartCode in principle in April. The expectation is that after the city draws maps and meets with residents of neighborhoods to make adjustments, 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...