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 first phase of the Martin Luther King development, a HOPE VI project designed by Torti Gallas & Partners, opened in Philadelphia in April. Phase 1 features 49 rental townhouses. The total project will have 247 houses, 109 of which will be...
Carol Coletta has been named president and CEO of CEOs for Cities. She will continue to host and produce the public radio program “Smart City.”
Active Living Research has released three new research summaries that present scientific findings for policy makers, planners, developers, public health officials, and others trying to increase physical activity in communities and reduce childhood...
New Urban News won an award for Best Single Topic Newsletter in 2005 from the international Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Association, based on “overall excellence, clarity and thoroughness of writing, and usefulness to subscribers.”
The higher the initial cost of a given public transit technology, the less likely a system using it will be built. From the outset, this tough reality must be recognized. The last Technical Page considered the higher levels of technology and...
Ohio developer Robert Stark has created a new urban town center by the name of Crocker Park outside Cleveland. Now he is eager to use the ideas to revitalize the historic city.
“I feel I am in possession of a great truth,” he told Cleveland Plain...
Transect-based codes like the SmartCode provide new opportunities for municipalities to promote New Urbanism and smart growth. But the difficulty of applying these codes to local conditions remains a hurdle to widespread implementation. One method...
A design competition for a state capitol building for Alaska — the only state without one — generated extremely modernist entries that are at odds with the urban context and the traditional style of most state capitols. The winner, from Morphosis of...
A suburban city that never had a center moves forward with a downtown.
For more than three years, Temple Terrace, Florida, on the
northeast edge of Tampa, has been preparing for what Ralph Bosek regards as the municipality’s one big chance to...
While many developers simply allow churches to compete on the open market for available parcels of land, some developers provide incentives to help attract a community of faith to a particular location.
Architect Frank Greene is closing his practice in his native Chattanooga and moving to Florida, where he will be a senior officer in the Rosemary Beach office of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects.
The Selectboard in Bennington, Vermont, adopted a zoning bylaw in January prohibiting any store from exceeding 50,000 square feet in one part of town and 75,000 square feet in two other areas. Wal-Mart wants to raze its existing 50,000 sq. ft. store...