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.
CNU members began voting on the proposed LEED for Neighborhood Development program Aug. 19 and will continue electronic balloting until Sept. 17. In a statement on the CNU website, the CNU Board and CNU’s representatives on the LEED-ND advisory...
CityPlace as a whole “appears to be surviving OK,” says Dana Little, a designer who was on the DPZ team that planned the 72-acre development in 1993.
“The explosion of interest in streetcars stalled only slightly in 2008,” according to Gloria Ohland of Reconnecting America. Interest in streetcars moderated because of the national economic contraction and because it became evident that streetcars...
Southport Green, an extraordinarily expensive new urban pocket neighborhood in Fairfield, Connecticut, is again trying to attract homebuyers — two years after the project was foreclosed on by TD Bank. This time, asking prices for the high-quality,...
With a unanimous vote of city council, San Antonio approved a form-based code for optional use citywide. The Form-Based Zoning District (FBZD), based on the SmartCode, began with a Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company charrette and was customized by...
New Urban Free Agents, sponsored by the New Urban Guild, is a network of free-agent planners, architects, and designers who have worked within the New Urbanism. “Almost all architecture and design firms have been laying off employees since the...
A four-year effort to place the city of Miami under a new urbanist zoning system failed in August when the City Commission deadlocked on the proposal, known as “Miami 21.” However, the code, which was formulated under the guidance of Duany Plater-...
This month, Vancouver, British Columbia, will begin allowing developers to build condominium units that include “secondary suites” — living quarters that can operate independent of the main portion of each condo. A condo owner could use the...
Cornell, once a star new urban undertaking, falls short on retail within walking distance. ��The failings of Cornell, a signature new urban project north of Toronto, were vividly laid out by a Canadian newspaper, the National Post, on March 13. In...
Instead of calling for more discussion, LEED organizers want to put the Neighborhood Development program up for a yes-or-no vote.After five years of preparation and testing, members of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Congress for the...
David Cohen says he hasn’t given up on his dream of building defect-free houses in a factory and then wheeling them onto foundations in a new urban community. But he has recalibrated the number of houses that his company, Cohen Brothers Homes, must...
Reform of the state departments of transportation has been a key goal of new urbanists for years — and it appears to be actually underway in two major states, Pennsylvania and Texas.