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.
Jean-Maurice Moulene has left Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists to become vice president for development at Concert Realty Partners LLC in Los Angeles. He will use his experience in architecture and development to expand Concert’s...
Doris Goldstein thinks the time has come for new urbanists to consider forming a national organization that “would educate communities about new urbanist principles, provide support and information about community governance, and offer cultural...
Plan title: Parking Lot Guidelines
“Planners cannot significantly improve the design of cities without reforming local parking requirements to emphasize quality over quantity,” Vinit Mukhija and Donald Shoup declare in the Summer 2006 issue of...
By the National Charrette Institute, principal authors Bill Lennertz and Aarin LutzenhiserAmerican Planning Association, 2006, 208 pp., paperback $39.95.For the last two decades at least, new urbanists have been conducting charrettes to create...
“Agriculture is the new golf,” observes Andres Duany.An organic farm has been created at New Town at St. Charles, Missouri, a large traditional neighborhood development outside St. Louis. Developer Whittaker Builders is conducting a nationwide...
Towne Center at Haddon is the first project in New Jersey to win recognition from the Delaware Valley Smart Growth Alliance as a smart-growth undertaking. Fieldstone Associates of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is proposing to develop 25,000 square feet...
Public officials in Miramar, Florida, recently approved the privately developed portion of the city’s town center. The suburban city bought the 54-acre site for $7.8 million, according to assistant city manager Wazir Ishmael, and hired Torti Gallas...
Alameda, County, California, which encompasses most of East San Francisco Bay, including Oakland, has adopted a “pedestrian master plan” aimed at making streets and sidewalks in unincorporated areas of the 1,444,000-population county safer and more...
Wide traffic lanes may make traveling more dangerous, rather than less. Eric Dumbaugh at Texas A&M, who has studied road design and the frequency of accidents, has found that making traffic lanes wider than 11 feet does not improve safety....
The movement toward eliminating excessive parking requirements scored a victory this summer when San Francisco adopted new regulations for downtown. Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an ordinance that gets rid of all minimum parking requirements for...
Developers Frank and Trey Starkey of New Port Richey, Florida, are working on a new traditional neighborhood development (TND). Having sold a large part of Longleaf, their first TND — to Crosland Inc., which will complete the final two neighborhoods...
A 19-acre mixed-use development is being proposed on Lady’s Island in Beaufort, South Carolina, across the Beaufort River from downtown. Aslan Development Group of Louisville, Kentucky, has hired LandPlan Partnership of Hilton Head to do the urban...