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.
CEOs for Cities has produced a publication of some 70 pages that helps people evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their cities. Titled “City Vitals,” it contains statistical measures intended to help leaders understand their cities’ performance...
Question: What do you do when builders, planners, developers, and public officials come from all over the American heartland to inspect your large, partly built traditional neighborhood development?
Answer: Package everything you know and offer it...
For all their success nationally and internationally, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk have yet to design a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in their home base, Miami-Dade County, and get it built. Their first success on that score...
Did you know it’s safer to live in cities or old suburbs than at the outer edge of metropolitan development? A book by William H. Lucy and David L. Phillips
Ankeny, Iowa, a community of 36,000 a few miles north of Des Moines, unveiled plans in August for development of Prairie Trail, a 1,031-acre project that is expected to be one of the largest new urban endeavors in the Midwest. The site, most of...
Deadline for comments on “Context Sensitive Design for Urban Thoroughfares in Walkable Communities,” the manual coauthored by the Institute for Transportation Engineers and the Congress for the New Urbanism has been extended to December 31. It can...
Maryland is experimenting with a private initiative aimed at reducing sprawl, now that the Smart Growth and Neighborhood Conservation program launched by Governor Parris Glendening in 1997 has lost momentum under his successor, Robert L. Ehrlich.
Mixed-income housing should be encouraged around the 300 transit stations in metropolitan New York as part of a strategy to moderate the region’s exceptionally high housing prices, says a new report from the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and...
A first portion of Classical Architecture: A Handbook of the Tradition for Today has been posted on the website of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. That section, “The Elements of Classical Architecture,” will be...
Ann Daigle has been named special assistant to Leland Speed, director of the Mississippi Development Authority. A Louisiana native active in Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts for the past year, Daigle is aiding in town planning, coding, and design, and...
Habitat for Humanity is seeking to raise its design standards through a collaboration with the Institute for Classical Architecture & Classical America (ICA&CA). Three architects selected by ICA&CA are designing houses in Rochester, New...
Downtown Montgomery will soon have a new plaza much like those in Europe. The Alabama city was about to rebuild an intersection around the 1885-vintage Court Street fountain when Ken Groves, head of the city planning department, asked Rick Hall and...