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.
Planners and public officials are now free to use text and images, in whole or in part, from Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s SmartCode without paying a licensing fee, according to Andres Duany. DPZ, the author of the code, previously charged $10...
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...
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.
Millennium Partners expects to start building a mixed-use development in August at the Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa County, California. Plans have changed greatly during 14 years of contention over what should be...
Ventura, California, where new urbanist Rick Cole became city manager in early 2004, has now hired Ann Daigle as urban development and planning manager. Daigle is a founding principal of PlaceMakers, an urban design firm that focuses on New Urbanism...
Brian O’Looney of Torti Gallas & Partners took issue with an article in the March issue of New Urban News, stating that a proposed plan in Chico would, “for the first time in the US,” embed a professional baseball stadium into the urban fabric...