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.
“We’ve spent years designing [neighborhoods] that take us from house to lawn to street [with no socialization]. We’re going to have to build differently.”
—Watts Wacker, futurist and author of The 500-Year Delta, speaking in November to the fall...
To the Editor:
In an article in the December issue, I was quoted as stating that, two years ago, the new urbanist community of Civano was not making money and that the ambitious design and performance goals imposed by the City of Tucson added extra...
December 9, a historic meeting brought advocates of walkable, transit-oriented streets together with the transportation establishment. It was a promising start on joint work on street design guidance for walkable communities.
Sharbell Development Corporation is finalizing construction plans for Village Center, in Plainsboro, NJ, with an eye to breaking ground in the spring. The site plan for the 16-acre development in Middlesex County won final approval on December 16th...
By a farecard-thin margin of 94,993 to 94,116, Seattle voters decided in November to build a monorail system. Voters authorized a 1.4 percent annual motor vehicle excise tax to build the first 14-mile, $1.7 million north-south leg of the system —...
III. The Deflected Vista
The deflected vista is a promise. Its job is to provide visual interest at key points along a line of movement, but in a way that clearly defers to a prospective goal. To succeed in this ambivalent task, a deflected vista...
A 1,200-unit new urban development in the small coastal town of Brookings, Oregon, will carry on the building traditions of the early 20th-century San Francisco Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck.
From 1913 to 1915, Maybeck worked on a company...
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is supporting a program to ‘change the mindset of the whole country.’
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s campaign to reform Americans’ unhealthy way of life is growing into an impressively well- financed effort —...
A five-story, 65-foot-high apartment building has been approved for construction near Federal Realty Investment Trust’s Bethesda Row project in downtown Bethesda, Maryland. The Montgomery County Planning Board gave the go-ahead to the project –- to...
II. Terminated Vistas
Considering what the pedestrian and driver see ahead is one of the basic tasks of good urban design; management of vistas is not an empty formal gesture. It helps people get around more easily and interestingly, and it...
Deep pockets of developer keep town, built on the site of a former airport, moving forward.
Bombardier, the big Canadian manufacturer of trains, planes, and watercraft, has found a way to keep its 500-acre Bois-Franc development in Montreal...
As part of a strategy announced in 1998, the city of Albuquerque set out to convert its one-way downtown streets back to two-way. One pair of one-way streets reverted to two-way traffic two years ago, and four other pairs – eight streets – are now...