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.
An estimated 200,000 evacuees from New Orleans settled in the Baton Rouge area in late August, straining the resources of the principal local government — the consolidated City of Baton Rouge and Parish of East Baton Rouge, which had a population of...
Hopes that the Civano development in southeast Tucson might continue to develop along new urban principles have now been pretty much extinguished. Pulte Homes, which took over the “environmentally sustainable” Arizona project from Fannie Mae, is...
Tim Keane, an architect and former director of planning for Charleston, South Carolina, and Davidson, North Carolina, has created an urban design and development firm called Keane & Company, based in Charleston. Keane hired Jacob Lindsey, a...
By Charles Jencks Rizzoli, 2005, 224 pp., hardcover $35. New Urbanism has yet to produce its equivalent of Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: a building so astonishing that it generates excitement worldwide.
Virginia Tech is offering the nation’s first program leading to certification in form-based codes. An introductory workshop Nov. 3-5 at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria Center, in Old Town Alexandria, will draw its faculty from among the following: Paul...
Georgetown, Texas, has hired Rick Chellman of TND Engineering to redesign a four-lane, high-speed, rural road leading into the courthouse square. State Highway 35, also known as Austin Avenue, is proposed to be rebuilt as a boulevard with a 14-foot...
The federal government has pledged $2.5 million for road improvements in Storrs, Connecticut, as part of a plan for developing a mixed-use center adjoining the main campus of the University of Connecticut. The local Mansfield Downtown Partnership...
Schools for Successful Communities: An Element of Smart Growth, was published in September 2004 by the Council of Educational Facility Planners International in cooperation with the US Environmental Protection Agency. “It explains why and how...
Aspecial Walgreens design for the village of Poland, Ohio, has stirred interest in northeast Ohio and beyond. Walgreens recently opened a 14,000 sq. ft. store that stands just 20 feet back from Poland’s main east-west road, and draws from the...
Carothers Crossing called “precedent-setting project” for the Nashville area.
Nashville Metro Council has approved the city’s largest traditional neighborhood development (TND) to date, the 603-acre, 2,300-unit Carothers Crossing, to be developed...
Michael Leccese, CNU member and principal of Fountainhead Communications, is the new director of ULI Colorado, a local district council of the Urban Land Institute. The job is part time, so Leccese will still be working at Fountainhead with his wife...
Frontage is the general term for what happens in the space
between private buildings and public streets. The frontage includes all building and landscape elements forming the pedestrian experience. As explained in the previous installment of the...