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.
A dilapidated, World War II era apartment complex in Baltimore County, Maryland, was approved to be converted to a small new urban neighborhood under an innovative charrette-based entitlement process. The process, made law by the county in December...
Following the example of famous old bridges in Europe, a developer in Columbus, Ohio, has lined a bridge near downtown Columbus with rows of buildings containing stores, cafes, and restaurants. The “Cap at Union Station,” as some call the project,...
To understand where the best “affordable housing” production in the US is heading, an organization worth studying is Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE). Founded in 1986 after participants in a Chattanooga “community visioning” process agreed...
W.W. Norton & Company, 2005, 417 pp., hardcover $50. I first heard of Werner Hegemann around 1988, when his greatest book, The American Vitruvius: An Architects’ Handbook of Civic Art, was republished by Princeton Architectural Press after...
Frank Gehry received an award at the Congress for the New Urbanism conference in Pasadena for his Disney Hall, a move that was controversial among members and surprising to some outside of the organization.
Five Civic Art Awards were selected and...
Wal-Mart has abandoned its attempt to evade an ordinance in Calvert County, Maryland, that bans stores of more than 75,000 square feet in small town centers. The Bentonville, Arkansas, operator of more than 3,000 stores had intended to build a 74,...
Chris Leinberger of Arcadia Land Company, who has been a key figure in the renaissance of downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, will be a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, starting in July. Working with the Metropolitan...
On an opening night that includes a video message from the Prince of Wales, Villaraigosa says New Urbanism presents an “ideal opportunity” to transform the nation’s second-largest city.
The new Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa,...
A 30-acre downtown extension called South End is under construction in Memphis, Tennessee, and is expected to be home to 3,000 to 4,000 residents in five years, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The first residents of the mixed-use project...
Progress toward drawing up environmental standards for neighborhood design — and thus allying New Urbanism with the increasingly potent “green building” movement — was highlighted during the June annual conference of the Congress for the New...
Also planned adjacent to New Town is New Town Gateway — a mostly commercial town center that fits directly into the street grid of New Town. The 36-acre Gateway project was designed by 180 Degrees Design Studio, which completed architectural work on...
Calgary, Alberta, is moving forward on a plan to turn a bedraggled section of downtown into a predominantly residential “East Village” that will be home to 10,000 people. The City Council approved an Area Development Plan emphasizing ”high density,...