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.
Three years ago, Trammell Crow, the Dallas-based company that calls itself America’s largest commercial developer, organized a wholly owned subsidiary, High Street Residential, with the aim of pursuing mixed-use projects, transit-oriented...
From 1999 to 2004 only one private-sector traditional neighborhood development (TND) was under construction in Louisiana. That first project, River Ranch in Lafayette, achieved commercial and aesthetic success, and New Urban News reported last year...
Planners and public officials are now free to use text and images, in whole or in part, from Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s SmartCode without paying a licensing fee, according to Andres Duany. DPZ, the author of the code, previously charged $10...
After seven years, Elizabeth Humstone has left the Vermont Forum on Sprawl to become director of US Initiatives for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, at its home office in Montpelier, Vermont. The website is www.iscvt.org. Her first project...
The Project for Public Spaces has developed a website on “context-sensitive solutions” in road design, with support from the Federal Highway Administration. Visit www.contextsensitivesolutions.org. The site suggests readings on context-sensitive...
Regulations that restrict development in Loudoun County, Virginia, were struck down March 3 by the Virginia Supreme Court. The ruling, decided on a technicality, will allow much more development in the western portion of Loudoun, said to be the...
Phoenix, Arizona, has a light-rail line under construction that will connect the city to Mesa and Tempa, due for completion in 2008. Community Design + Architecture of Berkeley, California, was hired to create vision plans for transit-oriented...
Dan Burden, who for years operated Walkable Communities Inc. (see Dec. 2004 New Urban News), joined the firm of Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart Feb. 7. Burden is now part of the urban design and transportation service group at...
Before it became famous for the nearly inescapable sprawl stretching from San Bernardino to Ventura, Los Angeles was a place of distinguished urbanism — a constellation of towns and compact cities that grew up along the stops of the “Red Car” rail...
Azusa Land Partners — a joint venture of PLC Land Company, Fieldstone Communities, Rockpoint Group, and Starwood Capital Group Global — will begin grading land this spring for a 517-acre development on the site of the Monrovia Nursery in Azusa,...
In Issue 7 of The Next American City, contributing writer Kenneth Naylor offers a nuanced view of the not-quite new urbanist development known as Aqua, on Allison Island near Miami Beach. Naylor suggests that new urban planning and Modernist...
By Mark C. Childs University of New Mexico Press, 2004, 230 pp., hardcover $45. At first, Squares annoyed me. The Table of Contents fills five entire pages, the “Table of Queries” goes on for seven more, and then the Table of Figures consumes...