Better! Cities & Towns in print

Form-based codes voluntarily adopted by developers show how this kind of land-use regulation can offer high market adaptability while assuring a better public realm.

Much of the future built environment will be determined by how commercial sites are developed.

The Alabama city is poised for a new round of growth with construction of an Airbus factory, guided by a plan and code.

According to Reshaping Metropolitan America, about half of all nonresidential structures in the US will be “ripe for redevelopment” in 2030.

There’s not much single-family New Urbanism these days. Where it is happening, it is often small infill projects like this one.

LEED platinum apartment building brings seniors and children together in a downtown infill location.

Moderate and high-density urban environments are more appealing when residents can connect with nature through access to green space.

Upwards of 1.6 million young adults have college degrees in the New York City metro region, and many of them have grown fond of urban, walkable living.

The plan to transform Somerville, Massachusetts, and connect it to an emerging economy also honors and enhances old neighborhoods.

Made for Walking: Density and Neighborhood Form captures the aspirations of urbanism today.

Well-designed streets are the lifeblood of cities and towns, and they are the foundation of walkable, appealing communities.

A $6.4 million project in Poynton Town Centre, in Cheshire, UK, is pushing the limits of removing traffic controls — and the result has been good for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists.

The state Greenbook gives official guidance and seal of approval to the creation of narrow, interconnnected, walkable streets.

Arterial streets, typically multilane thoroughfares designed to speed cars from one destination to another, are often hazardous to people on foot.

The lake-belt city, having lost more than half its population since the middle of the last century, seeks to make development easier and better.

The key to combat this trend is adopting policies and taking actions that provide affordable housing, and more housing, in location-efficient areas, the report says.

The Charter-award-winning project is designed to transform a mall and realize the dream of late James Rouse.

Low-density suburbs lost more value than walkable neighborhoods in the housing downturn — and low-income city neighborhoods also suffered, according to a study of the Philadelphia region funded by the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Hurricane Sandy tore into the East Coast in late October, and North America’s most densely populated island proved resilient. Despite a direct hit from a 14-foot storm surge, Manhattan suffered minimal loss of life. Seven flooded subway tunnels were operating within a week and much of the island never lost power.

The plan calls for investments in the historic core that preserve the quality of its landmark districts and restore the humane scale of streets and parks.

The shift away from single-family detached houses and toward higher-density, transit-served neighborhoods is well under way.

The plan for ‘Restoration’ is a more compact traditional neighborhood with its own transit system.

The City wanted to let pedestrians and vehicles mix in a somewhat gritty setting. ADA requirements and corporate attitudes complicated the effort.

Less parking and more car-sharing would help make transit-oriented development more successful.

US DOT announced its fourth round of competitive TIGER Discretionary Grants, giving $500 million to 47 projects that run the gamut of transportation modes — many of them multimodal.

A decade into the plan, street life emerges on the suburban corridor in Arlington, VA — and an expanded code and streetcar are in the works.

Forty years ago this July the first stage of demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis was completed — a seminal moment in the history of modern architecture and planning.

The homebuilding bust has upended national chains’ strategy of growing in the distant suburbs.

In South Carolina, residents started organizing when a developer diluted the design of a promised new urban community.

Some new urbanist developers are shifting to infill projects rather than hope for revival of suburban traditional neighborhood developments.

One action the densely-built, approximately four-square-mile municipality took to alleviate the pressure was to adopt an inclusionary zoning ordinance.

The administration of Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder launched a program in April that ties placemaking to economic development and has the potential for far-reaching impact.

The US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and the Frontier Group have released a report showing that by 2011, the average American was driving 6 percent fewer miles per year than in 2004.

Especially interesting are these findings:

How Detroit might fashion a decent future is a recurring topic in urban circles. A new book, Detroit: A Biography (Chicago Review Press, 288 pages, $24.95) by Scott Martelle, gives readers much of the background they need to understand how Detroit got into such difficulty that it lost one resident every 22 minutes from 2000 to 2010. The city’s 139 square miles now contain about 714,000 people, down from 1,850,000 in 1950.

A new approach to the built environment requires comprehensive education on the part of regulators and land-use professionals, so that plans don’t just sit on the shelf. Like many aspects of Plan El Paso, the city has gone the extra mile in this area.

The Good City is a series of short, vivid essays on what Allan Jacobs, former San Francisco planning director and Berkeley professor, has seen or done in locales across the world.

Regional planners envision a finance system in which the state helps municipalities, and vice versa.

Fitchburg revised its SmartCode and then did something extra for cyclists.

In 10 years, household transportation costs rose nearly three times as much in heavely car dependent locations as in compact, transit-served neighborhoods.

On the far west of Texas, officials are showing how to bring back historical patterns of transit-oriented, walkable neighborhoods in a low-density, spread-out city.

A recently formed coalition, Livability Solutions, has received a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency that will help it give technical assistance to communities that face common development problems such as outdated zoning codes and a lack of consensus on where and how to grow.

A new 429-page paperback, The Built Environment and Public Health, by Russell P. Lopez, tells how community design and other facets of the built environment affect people’s health. The book, organized primarily with students in mind, points out that “for several decades, public health and urban planning were distinct and separate.”

The overall trend is toward a more place-based, character-based legal environment, according to one of the authors of the Codes Study.

The "tragic comedy of suburban sprawl" is dissected with humor and uncompromising candor in a new book.

While no city has figured out how to completely eliminate congestion, a few have developed some creative strategies for mitigating its impacts.

In the midst of a sprawling Latin American metropolis, a small town currenlty under construction recalls the urbanism of a previous era.

"Joint development" produces good projects, but it can be a complicated, time-consuming process.

"Transportation demand management" can greatly reduce the damage that cars and parking inflict on urban areas, experts say.

As communities seek to fix broken real estate economies, new building prototypes that can both repair damaged urban fabric and garner financing are needed.

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.

Installation of streetcars, and the use of special assessment districts to support them, have been inspired by the phenomenal success of the Portland Streetcar.

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

The agreement preserves funding for transit and the innovative TIGER grants program, while zeroing out high-speed rail

New York City’s Department of Transportation has carved 54 plazas out of streets and other areas. More are on the way.

All 17 houses in the new Artists Village in East Haddam, Connecticut, will be completed by the end of this year.

A Mercer University initiative, with aid from the Knight Foundation, and a class trip to confer with Richard Florida result in “The Lofts at Mercer Village.”

To create healthy places, America needs to groom leaders who combine techniques from planning and public health, a new book says.

Americans prefer smart growth to conventional suburbia by a 56 percent to 43 percent margin.

A new report from the Urban Institute urges planners and community leaders to include artists and art spaces in their community development strategies.

Progress on transit and transit-oriented development in many regions across the US is included in a new report from the Center for Transit-Oriented Development.

The Al Aqaba charrette planned for new growth in a Palestinian village and designed a West Bank version of the “Katrina Cottage.”

Smart Growth America and Charlier & Associates are helping five rural communities to submit TIGER III grants on October 31.

Three main principles; Beautiful Places, Defined Places and Anticipation of a Place, were used to build extra value out of typical suburban post-meltdown wreckage.

Bothell, Washington, adapts to current employment and living trends by redoing highways and making a walkable, mixed-use downtown.

Transportation planner Patrick Siegman lays out three approaches to parking regulations in an attempt to move municipalities away from parking minimums.

Breathtakingly broad in scope, the Obama administration’s redevelopment plan tackles nearly every problem known to afflict city-dwellers.

A suburban employment center aims to evolve into a pedestrian-oriented place.

Small families, rental apartments, and a right-sized central square are keys to development at Pleasant Hill in Contra Costa County, California.

Katrina Cottages, which were designed as alternatives to emergency trailers after Hurricane Katrina, are getting a second life in projects across the US.

The funds are intended “to strengthen the arts while shaping the social, physical, and economic characters of their neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions.”

Supermarkets are increasingly coming equipped with parking garages. Could “automated parking” be in the future?

What do you do when you have a strip of land 125 feet wide and a mere 15.25 feet deep?

Oklahoma’s down-home Carlton Landing will feature an organic farm with “the nicest chicken coop this side of the Mississippi.”

An unusual financial arrangement will provide most of the $1.6 billion needed to redevelop Quincy Center with a design by the architect of Mizner Park.

Elevated walkways are coming down and public spaces are being rethought as the business district tries to nurture downtown living.

Public health researcher Anne Lusk argues that installing bike routes separate from motor vehicles will boost cycling and make compact communities work better.

Smart growth proponents are fighting a state transit agency plan that would lease out dozens of parking facilities to private operators for 30 to 50 years.

A study of Denver, Charlotte, and the Twin Cities finds housing booming near some stations while languishing in more difficult locations.

One development would place hundreds of apartments above a store, but other projects emphasize parking, not pedestrian-friendly streets. Chicago and New York also face Walmart campaigns.

In the real estate downturn since 2007, houses outside state's Priority Funding Areas declined in value faster than those inside the boundaries.

Demand for housing in accessible close-in suburbs will outstrip supply in the next few years, predicts Patrick L. Phillips.

Each dollar used on transit was 75 percent more effective at putting people to work than a dollar used for highway work.

Planners brought in by the Haitian government propose a better urban environment than existed prior to the devastating earthquake.

With many scratching to make a living in a badly damaged economy, coworking is springing up to meet the needs of independent workers.

Now that the full-fledged LEED for Neighborhood Development program has been operating for several months, its rating system is being studied with an eye to making improvements.

Urban Land Institute leaders respond to a recent American Public Transportation Association survey in which nearly two-thirds of adults said they would definitely or probably use high-speed rail for leisure or business travel if it were an option.

Maryland’s proposed system for curbing water pollution raises alarm among smart growth advocates.

Britain is energetically designing streets that intermingle foot and vehicular traffic; the US follows ever so cautiously.

In late August the Commission celebrated completion of a new 75-foot clock tower adjoining the historic station on the eastern edge of downtown.

Connectivity, economic development, and zoning reform are also targeted, according to an in-depth analysis of TIGER and Sustainable Communities grants by Reconnecting America.

Small, well-constructed dwellings — efficient to run but not necessarily cheap to build — point to more-compact living.

Despite a sour economy, transit ballot measures scored 22 wins and eight losses in Tuesday’s voting across the US.

Lockers and other facilities for bicyclists are making it more convenient for bicyclists to pedal to and from transit stations.

A strategic framework breaks the city down into 11 kinds of neighborhoods, zones, or sectors, and recommends a different mix of techniques in each of them.

Target Field, the $545 million new home of the Minnesota Twins, may just possibly be the death knell for retro-style ballparks.

A complex with a 29,000 sq. ft. supermarket on its second level defies the depression in commercial real estate.

The findings could give encouragement to policy-makers who seek to promote compact, walkable neighborhoods for sustainability reasons, the authors write.

Bay Area communities look at how to shift from the industrial era to an atmosphere that appeals to “millennials.”

The City Council in Rohnert Park, California, voted approval August 24 for the transformation of a 175-acre light industrial business park into a new urban community that promises to be one of the “greenest” in the US.

Dublin, prosperous but worried, looks toward denser, more walkable development to thrive in the knowledge economy.

A new report prepared by Calthorpe Associates is described as "the state's first major planning document in almost 30 years."

A new book, Inclusive Housing, explains how to build in ways that reflect New Urbanism while meeting the needs of disabled people.

The federal HOPE VI program will disburse $124 million for five or six public housing redevelopment projects in the coming fiscal year, officials of the US Department of Housing & Urban Development announced today.

The City of Bristol, Connecticut, home to sports broadcaster ESPN, is teaming up with Renaissance Downtowns of Plainview, New York, to redevelop Bristol’s central business district.

Dr. Andrew Dannenberg and his co-authors describe the health impact assessment (HIA) as “a tool to help planners and other decision-makers better recognize the health consequences of the decisions they make.”

Washington, DC-based planning consultant Jeff Speck moved himself, his wife, and their 21-month-old son to Lowell, Massachusetts this April for what he calls a “slow charrette” — a full month of working on a plan for Lowell’s future development while living in a converted mill downtown.

Arterial roads — especially those with heavy traffic volumes, high speeds, and strip commercial development such as big-box stores — are undermining Americans’ safety. The extent of the danger was investigated recently by Eric Dumbaugh and Wenhao Li of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M.