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.
Urban Design Associates (UDA) has been selected to prepare the rebuilding plan for the Lafitte, Treme, and Tulane-Gravier neighborhoods in New Orleans. Providence Community Housing of New Orleans and Enterprise Homes of Baltimore, commissioned UDA...
Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland is collaborating with two local developers, MRN Limited Partnership and Zaremba Inc., to create a $150 million arts, retail, and residential development on 8.5 acres at University Circle, the city’s...
The Mississippi Renewal Forum, the CNU-organized effort to plan the future of 11 coastal communities flattened by Hurricane Katrina, received a Gulf Guardian Award in December from Gulf of Mexico Program. The Gulf program, underwritten by the US...
More support for the idea that street trees are a civic amenity, not a safety hazard, is offered by the study “Street Trees and Intersection Safety,” by University of California, Berkeley, urban design professor Elizabeth Macdonald. The study notes...
Writer, teacher, and architect Witold Rybczynski is winner of both the 2007 Seaside Prize, to be presented Jan. 27, in Seaside, Florida, and the Vincent Scully Prize, to be awarded Jan. 17 at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC....
Leland Speed has stepped down as executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority, a position in which he worked on the redevelopment of communities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
The SmartCode cleared a hurdle in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where it was approved by the planning commission in December. Pass Christian was one of the communities on the coast devasted by Hurricane Katrina.
Table title: Pedestrian Survival Rates — Vehicle Speeds
New urbanists call for changes in ITE guide to “context-sensitive” design.
Richard McLaughlin, a Minneapolis-based architect and town planner known for his work on public-sector charrettes and for his efforts to systematize New Urbanism, died on New Year’s Eve of pancreatic cancer. He was a former principal of the Town...
Firmitas, a subsidiary of the I’On Company, is redeveloping a 32-unit apartment complex in Charlotte into a 1,000-unit, Morningside Village, which will also include 30,000 square feet of commercial space. According to the Charlotte Business Journal...
Brown University is planning to expand into the Jewelry District of Providence, Rhode Island, by purchasing seven buildings containing 232,000 square feet. Past expansion by the university on the city’s East Side often brought Brown into conflict...
In Paris, a motorist with a cellphone or a GPS navigation device will soon be able to find out whether there’s a parking garage nearby that has space available. An organization of French parking garages announced in November that approximately 120...