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.
Development of Cornerstone, a new town center in Parma Heights, Ohio (see April 2004 New Urban News), came to a halt after a principal developer, Joanne Schneider, was forced out of the $85 million project because of allegations of state securities...
Researchers presented findings at
the Congress for the New Urbanism annual conference that show substantial energy savings from higher-density urbanism — greater savings than can be achieved from the US government Energy Star program (see...
The full 12 miles of the Hiawatha Line, the first light-rail route in the Twin Cities, opened last December and is now attracting about 20,400 passenger trips each weekday. High ridership — the line is exceeding projections by 46 percent — is...
For years, one of the biggest disappointments of Columbia, Maryland, has been that rather than erect a real town center, the Rouse Company built an enclosed shopping mall in the heart of its 1960s “new town.” Now, however, there’s serious talk about...
A meeting will be held in Manhattan in September to organize the NY/NJ Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Contact Ted Andrews (edandrews@earthlink.net or 212/514-7500) for the date and meeting place. u
Developer Scott Wolstein is proposing a $225 million mixed-use neighborhood on the east banks of “the Flats,” an entertainment-oriented area along the Cuyahoga River near downtown Cleveland. In an area that has deteriorated during the past several...
New data has come out quantifying office workers’ support for retail, according to retail consultant and town planner Robert Gibbs. “A recent survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers found that office workers make a significant amount...
Matt Taecker has left Catalyst to form his own firm, Taecker Urban Design & Planning in Berkeley, California, which will focus on revitalization of urban neighborhoods through design and community organizing. Taecker intends to emphasize...
Danish architect Jan Gehl, who shared CNU XIII closing keynote duties with author James Howard Kunstler, was a modernist and “less is more” believer when he graduated from architecture school in 1960. Then he married a psychologist and set himself...
Post Properties, a leading new urbanist developer in the late 1990s, is constructing its first project in several years. Like many real estate investment trusts (REITs), Post saw its profits fall with the slow economy of the early part of this...
Granor Price Homes, a developer of mostly conventional suburban projects since the early 1970s, got a taste of the New Urbanism with Lantern Hill in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, an infill development of 117 townhouses and 60,000 square feet of office...
Americans paid more for gasoline in 2004 than in 2003, and the biggest cost escalation occurred in metropolitan Los Angeles, where the average household’s expenditure rose by $316. That finding is contained in “Driven to Spend,” a new report from...