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.
The Mississippi Renewal Forum provided one of the first opportunities to introduce an entire region to the SmartCode and the idea of Transect-based and form-based coding. In the weeks since the Forum ended, a number of officials along the Gulf Coast...
Transportation II. The pedestrian environment; frontages C. Dooryard & light court; forecourt; stoop
Of all the types of building frontages, the pattern known as dooryard and light court is the one demonstrating the greatest number of sophisticated variations. It was the model used in many neighborhoods, both elegant and modest, built during the...
Infill and redevelopment projects designed by new urbanists took most of the US EPA’s National Awards for Smart Growth achievement in 2005. The winner for overall excellence was the Denver Urban Renewal Authority for facilitating the redevelopment...
Las Cruces, New Mexico, has adopted a master plan that calls for restoring two-way traffic to Main Street, where business withered after six blocks were converted to a pedestrian mall in the 1970s. The New York Times reported October 12 that the 80,...
Charlotte, North Carolina, is in the process of adopting connectivity requirements, including deciding how long the city’s blocks can be. The government is “getting tremendous pressure from the development community on the block dimension issues,”...
Geoffrey Anderson, director of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Office, and Harriet Tregoning, executive director of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute, spent their honeymoon in Biloxi, Mississippi, both of them working in...
During the Mississippi Renewal Forum, retail specialist Robert Gibbs, architect Victor Dover, urban designer Laura Hall, and CNU President John Norquist all tried to persuade Wal-Mart to make the retailer’s next store in Pass Christian, Mississippi...
Students, retailers, and office tenants have begun moving into a $130 million mixed-use project known as South Campus Gateway, on High Street next to the Ohio State University campus in Columbus.
St. Lucie County Commissioners approved the North County Charrette Plan, which applies traditional neighborhood design to a 28-square-mile area (see the September 2005 issue for more details). After a 3-2 vote in October, commissioners sent the plan...
In the works for nearly two years, a manual to help people implement the SmartCode was scheduled for release in early October. Titled SmartCode Manual and subtitled The Complete SmartCode, Annotated Version 7.5, it will be downloadable for free and...
Bus rapid transit varies from one metropolitan area to another, but generally has the following characteristics: First, BRT vehicles enjoy priority treatment, usually through a dedicated busway and also through preferential treatment at traffic...
Frank Greene of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects has been appointed “town architect” for Rosemary Beach, a 105-acre new urban development about eight miles east of Seaside, Florida. The project will contain approximately 700 units when completed around...