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.
Temple Terrace, Florida, City Council voted in February to work toward a development agreement and partnership of the Vlass Group, MJ Lant Developments, and Marketplace Advisors to create a new urban-style town center, reports the Tampa Tribune....
One of the newest instruments aiding smart growth and livable streets is a national blog network called Streetsblog. Streetsblog was conceived during debates over congestion pricing for Manhattan. It has since expanded, with locale-specific blogs...
Robert and Daryl Davis, developers of Seaside, Florida, will receive an Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America May 4 in New York.
Moule & Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists, of Pasadena, California, won the 2009 Outstanding Architect Award from the Los Angeles Business Journal. The firm was selected for its leadership in transit-oriented development, mixed-use, civic,...
The first completed Bywater Cottages — two-family dwellings that wrap around sheltered outdoor spaces — “blend perfectly into their 19th-century surroundings,” arts writer Doug MacCash observed Jan. 31 in a New Orleans Times-Picayune article about...
Oakridge Centre, which in 1959 became the first automobile-oriented shopping center in Vancouver, British Columbia, is expected to be reshaped in the next few years into a high-density transit-oriented development mixing retail, employment, housing...
By Meg CalkinsJohn Wiley & Sons, 2008, 464 pp., $80 hardcoverFinding effective materials that are also environmentally benign is becoming an important task for designers, builders, and developers. This hefty new book by an adviser to the LEED (...
A plan for development in D’Iberville, Mississippi, including a casino district that would complement the waterfront, has been drawn up by Miami architect and planner Jaime Correa for presentation to the city’s Planning Commission Feb. 27 and...
Nashville’s Gulch neighborhood, a 60-acre urban redevelopment, has been certified as a LEED-ND (LEED for Neighborhood Development) project, according to a recent announcement by Mayor Karl Dean and developer MarketStreet Enterprises. “In the past...
A bill being debated in the State of Washington legislature would promote higher-density development around transit stations. The measure is aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but is generating significant controversy — especially in areas...
After 13 years as the executive director of the Seaside Institute, Phyllis Bleiweis is retiring to live in Serenbe, a traditional neighborhood development in Palmetto, Georgia. Bleiweis will continue to work as a consultant for the Seaside Institute...
New Urbanism writer Jason Miller is trying to raise money to resurrect a newspaper in Concrete, Washington, that published its last issue in September 1991. Miller, who moved in 2005 to the rural town (named in 1909 after its principal industry),...