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 Smart Growth Network has released the PowerPoint show, “Making Land Development Regulations Work for Smart Growth.” This presentation, aimed at a wide range of audiences, discusses the kinds of land development regulations found in many...
The City of Salinas, California is moving expeditiously to adopt a new urban zoning code. Cotton/Bridge/Associates has been engaged to draft the regulatory provisions, and Calthorpe Associates is creating the design features of a “Future Growth Area...
The initial 120 of 1,116 planned homes are rising on Maple Lawn’s 507 acres in Howard County, Maryland. Developer Greenbaum and Rose Associates’ first-phase agenda also includes 90,000 square feet of a planned one million square foot office district...
Norfolk, Virginia’s East Beach is at last on its way to becoming a reality. A public/private reclamation of 100 formerly blighted bayshore acres, the plan by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company has been delayed by land acquisition, relocation of...
The Livable Centers Initiative, which aims to encourage walking communities in metropolitan Atlanta, is providing $192,000 for engineering drawings that will be part of a plan for making Emory Village a high-quality mixed-use area serving Emory...
Christopher Leinberger of Arcadia Land Co., a leading new urbanist finance theorist, believes that financial returns from new urban communities lag behind conventional suburban development (CSD) in the first few years. But if done right, those new...
Transportation buffs: read and write, help CNU! Suzahna Poliwka is coordinating CNU’s literature review of materials relevant to context-sensitive design of major streets. (See the article at left for more about this project.) She needs reviewers to...
Saratoga Springs, New York, used its new Transect-based zoning to get a developer to devise a more urban, pedestrian-oriented character for a hotel, retail, office, and residential complex that will be built on Marion Avenue northeast of downtown....
Ferchill Group of Cleveland and Wispark LLC of Milwaukee have teamed up to buy the historic, long- empty Pabst Brewery complex west of downtown Milwaukee and convert it into “Pabst City,” a seven-block complex that will contain 450,000 square feet...
Once the garage placement on the lot has been settled, and the spaces immediately around the garage have been studied for their social and technical performance, it remains to design the garage itself. Two aspects are discussed here. Some are...
The first traditional neighborhood development in Iowa — the Peninsula Neighborhood in Iowa City — is off to a good start in terms of sales and aesthetics, but costs have been a problem. Three months after the grand opening, more than half of the 81...
It’s the season for state meetings of the American Planning Association and American Institute of Architects. If you will be speaking at or attending one of these state meetings, and would like to publicize CNU, please contact Sandrine Milanello (...