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.
With some exceptions, such as Peter Calthorpe’s work, new urbanists have focused more of their attention on integrating retail into residential areas than on creating what policy specialists call a “jobs/housing balance.” A new study by Robert...
About 70 architects, planners, developers, and other new urbanists toured Paris, France, for four days in late September with the Seaside Pienza Institute. The three founders of the Institute, architects Ray Gindroz and Leon Krier and developer...
Cagan Crossings was designed 15 years ago by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) as a high-density neighborhood with affordable rental units near Orlando, Florida. For a long time, only the latter were built, with a small amount of mixed-use....
The new owners of Coffee Creek Center in Chesterton, Indiana, have abandoned the development’s nine-year-old new urbanist plan, saying it failed to appeal to homebuyers. “You’re not in an area where urbanism exists,” James Gierczyk, one of the new...
At the Providence Congress, a talent-packed panel of former jury chairs or multiyear jurors of CNU’s Charter Awards gave audience members a behind-the-scenes look at the selection process for New Urbanism’s most coveted awards. Stephanie Bothwell,...
Slowly but surely, local governments in the Syracuse, New York, area are implementing ideas that Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) introduced during an October 1999 charrette. The DPZ-prepared Settlement Plan for Onondaga County has still not...
New urbanists converged on the New Orleans area this fall for four more planning charrettes. One was a follow-up on an earlier charrette in St. Bernard Parish, to design a new town center. The others were part of the Unified New Orleans Plan for...
Conceived in the coastal misery of post-hurricane Mississippi, the Katrina Cottage is the house that refuses to be restricted to its native turf. On the last week of October, the latest version of this diminutive new urbanist dwelling opened a...
The most recent Technical Page outlined the idea of typology — an ordered assembly of building types — as a basis for making good urbanism. Any fully developed building type manifests three consistently characteristic aspects; its function, its...
Paul Ostergaard, a principal in Urban Design Associates, will produce a pattern book containing controls and standards for Storrs Center, a mixed-use development to be built by Leyland Alliance adjacent to the University of Connecticut’s main campus...
The plans for a new South Dakota town for sign language users designed by new urbanists have been shelved in favor of the redevelopment of an existing town. The Town of Laurent, which received national media attention and was featured on page one of...
Working families pay more for transportation than they save on affordable housing, according to Center for Housing Policy in Washington, DC. The research centered on low-to-moderate income families — with incomes between $20,000 and $50,000 — who...