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.
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...
City planners in Punta Gorda, Florida, won a dispute with the city housing authority over plans to replace public housing destroyed by Hurricane Charley, according to the Herald-Tribune newspaper. The authority originally planned 184 campus-style...
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...
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...
Oregon is struggling with the consequences of Measure 37, a ballot initiative last November that increased the rights of many property owners at the expense of growth management. Measure 37 stipulated that governments must pay owners, or forgo...
As residential construction moves closer to urban rail lines, bridges, and freeway ramps, developers are increasingly using sound-muffling windows and other techniques to keep noise out of new housing. A window wall for a 60-story condo tower next...
By Alexander Tzonis Rizzoli International, 2004, 432 pp., hardcover $75. From Athens to Zurich, to Bilbao, to Milwaukee, structures designed by Santiago Calatrava have been inspiring awe among citizens of the world for nearly 20 years. The...
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...