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.
Buff Chace and Douglas Storrs have won permission to construct two residential neighborhoods that they have long wanted to build adjoining their Mashpee Commons town center on Cape Cod. Over the next seven years, the developers will build 382 units...
The City of New Orleans is poised to invest at least $1.2 billion in reconstruction, possibly beginning as early as this April, recovery chief Edward Blakely announced March 23. “By September, we want to see cranes on the skyline,” Blakely said. The...
The City of Livermore, California approved Livermore Village, a 5.5-acre mixed-use catalyst project in their downtown. Opticos Design designed the plan and architecture in association with Thomas Dolan Architecture for Anderson Pacific, LLC.
The...
A number of recent books have come out that are of interest to new urbanists, including Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred, published by ISI Books and authored by Philip Bess, professor and director of graduate...
A study in the winter issue of the Journal of American Planning Association (JAPA) tried to determine the effect that three different kinds of development exert on housing values in low-income areas of Chicago.
Alley-loaded and on-street parking can easily make new urbanist neighborhoods more than competitive with sprawl in lower-density situations. In denser center and core zones, though, the parking issue truly comes to the fore. By its basic nature,...
A 54-acre expansion of the downtown of Savannah, Georgia, extends the historic city’s connection to the Savannah River. The plan for Savannah River Landing, initiated by the city, includes a series of squares based on the city’s famous Oglethorpe...
The image to the right accompanied a March book review of Australian New Urbanism, and originally appeared in that book. Contrary to the caption in March, the authors never said the approach at the left is the “Australian ideal,” although it is well...
Jeff Speck will step down in May as director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts and return to private practice as a city planner. “I signed up for two years and ended up staying for four,” Speck said, expressing satisfaction with...
At HomeTown, a 300-acre new urban development being built by Arcadia Realty in North Richland Hills, Texas, the Walker Creek Elementary School has been designed so that it forms a street wall and helps define an important corner in what will be a...
Edited by Eugenie L. Birch and Susan M. Wachter University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, 387 pp., paperbound $34.95.
The Vancouver City Council unanimously adopted the East Fraserlands Official Development Plan, a high-density town center and a major new development site with emphasis on sustainability and New Urbanism. Hired by ParkLane Homes and WesGroup, Duany...