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.
After coordinating more than 85 charrettes for Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. in the past several years, Debra Hempel has joined the architectural, engineering, and consulting firm HDR. From an office in Tampa, Hempel will coordinate HDR’s design...
The Arnold Fund builds new urbanist projects in Georgia and eyes the ‘Katrina Cottage’ model.The Arnold Fund builds new urbanist projects in Georgia and eyes the ‘Katrina Cottage’ model.The Arnold Fund is taking the lead in developing two sizable...
The Peerless Development Group has begun converting a 40 percent vacant shopping mall in Forest Acres, South Carolina, into the core of a development that may eventually contain a network of streets and sidewalks, street-oriented retail, a restored...
Dan Camp was elected mayor of Starkville, Mississippi, a college town with 22,000 people, in June of 2005. In the last year, Camp has made progress fulfilling a campaign promise to keep the police station and city courthouse downtown. Camp ran for...
Shaker Heights, Ohio, is considering an offer by developer Robert Stark to redevelop a sprawling intersection with two strip malls into a town center. A plan for the intersection of Warrensville Center Road and Van Aken Boulevard was created by...
The Vermont legislature approved a bill establishing a “growth centers” program, which encourages development and rehabilitation in existing downtowns and village centers. The legislation expands financial incentives for property owners in centers...
The Knight Foundation has chosen the investment collaborative organization Living Cities to help guide redevelopment in the eastern section of Biloxi, Mississippi, where the homes of many low-income and minority families were destroyed or badly...
The Urban Land Institute has released a 22-page booklet titled “Principles for Temporary Communities,” based on lessons learned from the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. It includes a new strategy from FEMA’s Joint Housing Solutions Center that calls...
Howard Katz, a former Knight Fellow in Community Building who worked for the Cuyahoga County treasurer’s office in Cleveland and the American Architectural Foundation in Washington, DC, will be a member of the “founding faculty” of the Charlotte...
Kenneth Hitchens was identified as being “of the Baldwin Park development” in the April 2006 article “New charrette system may bring more production builders into TNDs.” Hitchens, an independent architect, is a resident of Baldwin Park in Orlando,...
The Katrina Cottage is one of the most versatile ideas that have come out of the new urbanist Gulf Coast charrettes.
The development of housing and shops at Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia reveals some of the differences between how New Urbanism operates in a civilian setting and how it works on military bases. Herryford Village, the first completed portion of a...