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.
The Virginia Department of Transportation, which sets standards not only for state highways but also for many community streets, has historically been an impediment to new urbanist development.
A sense of urgency ran through the Green Architecture and Urbanism Council held in Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, DC, just after Thanksgiving. Like other councils, this one was an independently organized meeting of peers (many of them CNU...
Mike Watkins, who has headed up the Washington, DC, office of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company for 19 years, has enrolled in the inaugeral class of a master’s program with an emphasis on classical design. The program is offered jointly by the...
Torti Gallas tells how it incorporated sustainability traits into its projects.“Is New Urbanism inherently sustainable? Only partly,” says Tom Gallas, partner and chief business strategist at Torti Gallas and Partners. That’s why the Silver Spring,...
Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets By Judith Rodin Review by Philip Langdon
Planners from Dover, Kohl & Partners of Coral Gables, Florida, spent more than a week in the Spring Hill area of Mobile, Alabama, working with residents, city planners, and traffic engineers on changes to three major intersections. The Press-...
Crosland LLC, developer of mixed-use communities such as Birkdale Village in Huntersville, North Carolina, has teamed up with Northwestern Mutual to create the Southeastern Investment Fund. The new fund is expected to have $225 million for land...
The City of Duluth, Minnesota, has received a $170,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and a $40,000 grant from the Minnesota Lake Superior Coastal Program to help create a new Unified Development Code. The code will update the...
Samuel Sherman Jr., cochair of the CNU XV local host committee, and a former suburban housing developer who has become a major force in Philadelphia’s development community since adopting New Urbanism as a guiding philosophy, joined the CNU Board in...
The Smart Growth Leadership Institute has released a toolkit to “help communities untangle the thicket of policies and procedures that get in the way of implementing smart growth strategies and sustainable urban development.” The tools were put...
“The miracle of New Urbanism is its simplicity. [Andres] Duany has designed whole towns under the movement’s principles — like Seaside, Fla., or Kentlands, Md. — and to walk their streets is to be transported back decades, before McMansions and SUVs...
Andres Duany identifies four main target groups and their outlooks.
To produce sustainable buildings and communities, it’s important to know who would like to live in them. Andres Duany identifies four target markets, which differ in outlook and...