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.
With a grant from the John Nolen Family Fund, Lee Sobel of the US Environmental Protection Agency will be at Cornell University in mid-July to study the origins and principles of town plans that John Nolen produced. “My goal is to codify the...
Homeowners in Norfolk, Virginia, are responding enthusiastically to a 70-page pattern book that presents a wealth of ideas on how to enlarge, remodel, or restyle houses in that 234,000-population city.
Fanis Grammenos, senior researcher for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in Ottawa, has devised another approach to connectivity, which he calls the Fused Grid. Grammenos does not connect the streets nearly as much as new urbanists...
The most entertaining character in Toward the Livable City is not an author or essayist. It is a talking squirrel with tire tracks across his abdomen and tail: Roadkill Bill. Ken Avidor, a 49-year-old Minneapolis illustrator and sculptor, created...
Architect Richard McLaughlin has created the N-vision Neighborhood Modeling System, which consists of a handbook and CD-ROM, plus a 1,000-piece “wood chip” set, enough to model a 40-acre mixed-use neighborhood. Additional wood chips — small wood-...
When it convenes in Chicago from June 24 to 27, the Twelfth Congress for the New Urbanism will convey both a respect for tradition and openness to debate and innovation.
Enriched by their connections to CNU’s host city — a storied metropolis...
You’ve heard pop sociologists talk about “cocooning” — the tendency of families to retreat from the outside world. The marketing consulting group Yankelovich says cocooning is being challenged by a newer trend: “hiving.” “A hive is a home designed...
Brian Hendrickson and Kevin Klinkenberg are planning to develop 12 townhouses, two duplexes, and two single-family detached houses on a one-acre site in the Longfellow neighborhood just south of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Hendrickson and...
University of Maryland won a Charter Award this year in the student/faculty submissions category for an urban infill project in Italy. It also won honorable mention for a Maryland transit-oriented development and a downtown redevelopment in Hawaii....
A new study by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute shows that in cities with large rail transit systems, per-capita traffic fatalities are 36 percent lower, per-capita consumer transportation expenditures are 14 percent lower, and per-capita...
The Architects’ Guild came into existence three years ago, intent on selling stock house plans, generating other avenues of work for new urbanist traditional architects, and helping those architects to make a growing impact on the built environment...