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.
Suburbia is denser out West than it is in other parts of the country, according to a study by the Brookings Institution. Rolf Pendall, assistant professor at Cornell University and one of the study authors, reports that smaller lot sizes, larger...
Supervisors in Fairfax County, Virginia, approved changes in the master plan to allow higher density development around proposed commuter rail stations along a proposed Metro line to Dulles Airport, according to the Washington Post.
Plans for revitalization of the District of Columbia’s Anacostia River waterfront are now on their way to being implemented. Lead consultants Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler and Wallace, Roberts & Todd will collaborate with seven other...
President Bush has nominated Emil Frankel for the position of Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Transportation Policy. Frankel currently serves on the board of directors of the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) and is an advisor...
A new urbanist plan unites public officials, citizens, and developers over a contentious transit-oriented project in the San Francisco Bay area.
The extensive surface parking around the transit station in Pleasant Hill, California, has been the...
The nation’s fastest-growing suburban centers also provide opportunities for new urbanist development.
The populations of Irving and Plano, both suburbs of Dallas, have grown by 7,211 percent and 5,909 percent respectively since census figures...
A bipartisan group of US Representatives from New York and Massachusetts have introduced the Brownfield Redevelopment Incentives Act in the House. The Act would fund site assessment and cleanup on abandoned industrial sites.
Narrow streets are not only safer and more pedestrian-friendly, they also cost less. According to recent calculations by a Utah consultant, the cost of resurfacing a 24 ft. road with two inches of asphalt is $45,619 per linear mile. The cost...
The US Department of Energy has developed a “New Tools for Community Design and Decision Making” website based on a presentation by Peter Katz. Contains ideas, tools, and resources from professionals in the field. See www.sustainable. doe.gov/...
A 10,000 sq. ft., two-story mixed-use building has replaced an abandoned gas station at the gateway to historic Beaufort, South Carolina. Offices and retail stores face the street, while five loft apartments occupy the second floor of the building,...
Urban Parks Institute, a program of Project for Public Spaces, has developed the website http://urbanparks.org/ to provide information and resources on revitalizing urban public spaces.
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
Rotary, circle, and circus identify urban spatial elements associated with circular traffic movement. The first tends to occur towards the Rural end of the Transect, the last towards...