New Urban News

Bristol Rising in Connecticut is one of the most comprehensive small city redevelopment plans in the US.

Vancouver, British Columbia, could eventually have up to 60,000 small dwellings along lanes — if people can afford $300 a square foot.

Review of Designing Healthy Communities, by Richard J. Jackson with Stacy Sinclair, Jossey-Bass, 2011, 261 pp., $50 hardcover.

As urban planners and architects, we are focused on “health, safety and welfare” — but our solutions have not always put human nature at the forefront.

Rental options will drive the early phases of residential construction as value is built for for-sale opportunities in the future.

There’s tremendous capital waiting to be invested in urban real estate, but capital funds managers face a gap in experience and expertise.

Yes, but don’t worry. New Urban News will continue under a new name.

McCamant and Durrett, architects based in Nevada City, California, have designed and developed more than 50 cohousing communities across the US.

In the 24 chapters of Making Healthy Places, some four dozen contributors offer information and advice on a wide variety of health and planning issues.

Defenders of traditional architecture are pressing for a new interpretation of troublesome Interior Department standards.

The $95 million Sustainable Communities planning grant program was a minuscule speck in the $3.7 trillion 2012 federal budget.

Sustainable Maryland Certified will assist communities in planning and implementing “green” practices, which may help them cope with tight budgets.

During the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ annual meeting, Heather Smith, program director for CNU, hailed the response that a CNU-ITE manual has generated.

The City Council of South Padre Island, Texas, adopted a redevelopment plan and form-based code for the 6-mile commercial corridor along Padre Boulevard.

Livability Solutions helps communities with problems such as outdated zoning codes and a lack of consensus on where and how to grow.

A careful analysis of Schooner Bay in the Bahamas shows the financial and other benefits of taking a slower, culturally attuned, lower-debt approach to development.

How does a gritty West Virginia town revitalize itself into a thriving, mixed-use, walkable community in a down economy? A week-long charrette and federal livability grants help figure it out. 

An updated edition of Donald Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking tells how to introduce “performance parking” systems and other innovations.

As Walk Score’s calculations gain sophistication, planners are using the system to determine where to put light-rail stations.

The “Incremental Sprawl Repair” project identifies methods for remaking road corridors when financing and transit are limited.

Financing for smart growth and TOD faces possible cutbacks as redevelopment agencies are caught in California budget battle.

“Walmart Express” units of just 15,000 square feet are on the way — responding to Americans’ growing reluctance to drive long distances.

In 2008, when Walk Score’s first ranking of cities came out, San Francisco was number one. This year New York pushed the Golden Gate City into second place.

Norton Commons has been growing steadily throughout the economic downturn and is outperforming its surrounding neighborhoods.

For the first time, Sarah Susanka, architect and best-selling author of the popular Not So Big House book series, has designed a house for a development.

Participants in CNU 19 question whether communities are doing enough, and whether bike lanes may worsen conditions for people on foot.

This year’s winners of the Driehaus Form-Based Codes Awards are the Development Code Rewrite of Livermore, California and the Compact Communities Code of Lee County, Florida.

Vancouver, Canada, intends to fill much of a transit corridor from downtown to the airport with buildings mostly four to 12 stories high.

Every city has the capacity to make its own stuff, declares a Providence artist-developer.

Fruitvale Village installs professional and community services in some ground-floor spaces, filling empty retail spots.

The $4 million in grants to 17 cities build on the HOPE VI program. Finalists for larger implementation grants were also announced.

The strategic approach in Huntington Beach divides the corridors into three broad categories based on potential for change.

Transit-oriented development is the key to cutting energy consumption — even more so than Energy Star construction or green cars, according to a peer-reviewed study supported by EPA.

An EPA study reveals that smart growth communities achieve higher sales prices and value per square foot.

Recognition programs help good projects gain approval, but occasionally some extra tweaking is in order.

Portland has created more than 300 miles of bicycle facilities. Among the most effective are “neighborhood greenways.”

Using Baltimore as a case study, a UMass researcher finds that bicycle and pedestrian upgrades generate substantially more jobs than road repairs and improvements.

Youngstown, Ohio, needed to think smaller, but the strategy has helped only to a limited extent.

Ideas are being sought for improving LEED for Neighborhood Development and other LEED programs.

From a 100-foot-long section of Linden Street in San Francisco to the diminutive Palmer Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Americans are dipping their toes in the shared-space street movement timidly.

A ciclovia is either a permanently designated bicycle route or a temporary event, the closing of the street to automobiles for use by others.

New Yorkers are America’s greatest walkers, and increasing numbers pedal bikes, too, but not everyone is happy with the situation.

Kenneth Groves, whose nine years as director of planning and development in Montgomery, Alabama, resulted in an overhaul of the city’s zoning and more urbane development downtown, died Sept. 28 after a brief struggle with cancer.

The county board in Arlington, Virginia, unanimously approved a new "sector plan" that will enable Crystal City to continue to grow.

Plan El Paso, led by Dover, Kohl & Partners, examines how transportation dollars and development can promote smart growth and great streets.

A parking lot is being converted to a civic space in the center of Camden. Next up is a “road diet” for a downtown thoroughfare.

Resources may be focused along a light-rail line and on downtown, Midtown, and the better-positioned neighborhoods.

North Little Rock, Arkansas, has begun implementing a plan for construction of 1,400 apartments, condominium units, and detached houses, establishment of a farmers’ market, and other improvements in its downtown.

A new report, "Driven Apart," argues that the Texas Transportation Institute has overlooked the benefits of more compact development.

LeylandAlliance has signed an agreement with Educational Realty Trust that should lead to development of a town center next to the University of Connecticut.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu should demand significant changes in the design of a successor to Charity Hospital, consultant David Dixon told city officials in August.

Studies in Florida and North Carolina show that dense urban development pays off for local governments. Big-box retail doesn’t.

Having failed last February to win $298 million in federal stimulus funds for a 9.7-mile streetcar system, the City of Atlanta and the Georgia Transit Connector initiative asked this August for $52 million for a line considerably shorter: 2.6 miles.

The Smart Growth Public Policy Infrastructure Policy Act, which aims to spend more of the New York State’s tax money on infrastructure in compact communities and less of it in sprawling locations, was signed into law at 8 PM Aug. 30 by Gov. David Paterson.

Thirteen new urban and smart growth developments were named as Catalyst Projects on August 24 by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

How can communities get more people onto bicycles, and yet make sure that the space for biking doesn’t undercut good urban design?

Downtown Ventura, California, has its first new Class A office building since the 1920s, and it’s a beauty.

Louisiana demolition plan contrasts sharply with new urbanist charrettes sponsored by a hospital system in Richmond, Virginia.

Dr. John M. MacDonald, a criminology professor and behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wanted to know whether switching from driving to riding mass transit would help people lose weight. To find out, he surveyed Charlotte, North Carolina, residents who had become regular users of that city’s nearly three-year-old Lynx light-rail line.

Seven years after they were first proposed, 47 sometimes controversial affordable dwelling units are nearing completion in Barrington, Rhode Island, a well-heeled town about 10 miles south of Providence.