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.
Albuquerque developers Rob Dickson and Christopher Leinberger co-chaired the Governor’s Task Force on Our Communities, Our Future, which criticized contemporary development patterns such as large residential subdivisions with “suburban garage-scapes...
By Steven W. Semes
W.W. Norton, 2004, 192 pp., hardcover $55.
“Despite the urgings of the avant-garde in favor of radical experimentation and the relentless search for the unprecedented, traditional design remains the overwhelming choice of...
Few California cities in financial difficulty carry out first-rate planning. When governments feel pressed for income, they usually grab for auto malls, big-box stores, or whatever else will bring tax revenue.
The developers of Meriam Park in Chico, California, are proposing a bold plan which, for the first time in the US, would embed a professional baseball stadium into the urban fabric of a new town center.
The stadium for approximately 5,000 fans of...
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...
The future of residential construction within reasonable commuting distance of the nation’s capital lies in higher-density and transit-oriented development, says Robert Kettler, chairman of KSI. “The Washington marketplace has been picked pretty...
About 1,000 people — the most ever — attended the fourth annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Miami Beach, addressing topics such as implementation, social equity, transit-oriented development (TOD), and the importance of smart growth...