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 book that introduced North America to this community concept is Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves by Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, available in a second edition from Ten Speed Press ($29.95). The authors tell how...
No one has won more acclaim for designing mixed-use centers in recent years than Richard Heapes. His projects include Mizner Park, Bethesda Row, Santana Row, and Blue Back Square. Heapes has exhibited a flair for creating lively collections of...
Artists are moving into 61 loft apartments in the five-story Read’s Department Store building, which had stood vacant for more than 20 years in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut. Norwalk-based developer Bill Kraus worked with nonprofit Artspace...
Fourteen projects that fulfill and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism will be recognized as this year’s best examples of New Urbanism when the 2005 Charter Awards are formally presented in a ceremony at CNU XIII in Pasadena on...
Kennedy Smith, former director of the National Main Street Center of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was named Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Design School for the 2005-2006 academic year. Smith is principal of Community Land Use and...
A major development was approved for the South Miami Hometown District, which is a walkable, mixed-use, transit-oriented center in the City of South Miami. The 3-block, 5-acre First National Bank of South Miami property will be developed as a mixed-...
Edited by Rahul Mehrotra, Robert Fishman, and Roy Strickland University of Michigan, 2005, distributed by Distributed Arts Press, New York, 80 to 96 pp. each, $17.95 each. Doug Kelbaugh thinks Americans would understand cities better if we...
Millennium Partners expects to start building a mixed-use development in August at the Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa County, California. Plans have changed greatly during 14 years of contention over what should be...
Ventura, California, where new urbanist Rick Cole became city manager in early 2004, has now hired Ann Daigle as urban development and planning manager. Daigle is a founding principal of PlaceMakers, an urban design firm that focuses on New Urbanism...
Brian O’Looney of Torti Gallas & Partners took issue with an article in the March issue of New Urban News, stating that a proposed plan in Chico would, “for the first time in the US,” embed a professional baseball stadium into the urban fabric...
John Norquist, chief executive officer of CNU, submitted a “friend of the court” brief to the US Supreme Court, arguing that governments do not need the power of eminent domain to carry out economic development projects. Writing as an individual...
The City of Miramar, Florida, approved final agreements necessary for Rockefeller Group Development Corporation and Kimco Developers to begin construction of the private development phase of the 54-acre Miramar Town Center. Planned by Torti Gallas...