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.
Bill Dennis and his firm, B. Dennis Town & Building Design, have moved from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Providence, Rhode Island. He is working on projects in England through the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, as well as on...
Developers of Blue Back Square, a large, planned new urban expansion of the West Hartford Center in Connecticut, are fighting a lawsuit from a national shopping mall operator, Taubman Centers of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (see Dec. 2004 New Urban...
Developers are showing substantial interest in the new urban downtown proposed by Temple Terrace, Florida. The suburban city with 22,000 residents hired Torti Gallas & Partners to design the town center on 38 acres in 2004, and to create a plan...
By Michael Lassell Disney Editions, 2004, 160 pp., hardcover $50. Those looking for a putdown of Celebration won’t find it in Celebration: The Story of a Town, which is a generally glowing account and assessment of Disney’s famous Florida new...
Crosland Inc. signed an agreement to develop two neighborhoods totaling 600 houses in Longleaf, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) north of Tampa, Florida. The move should speed the pace of development in Longleaf, which has relied on...
The third Australia and New Zealand conference on New Urbanism is being held March 11-13 in Sydney. The event, Australian Council for New Urbanism (ACNU), marks the first meeting of a group by the same name. The ACNU board of directors includes new...
Anumber of northern cities are known for weather-enclosed pedestrian bridges that allow people to circulate through downtown without venturing into the bitter cold. But after three decades of developing an extensive downtown “skyway” system, St....
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. has settled on a gradation of tree-planting for various parts of the Transect. In rural sectors of the Transect, T1-T3, “the plantings should be informally grouped (clustered), and can include various tree types and...
Andres Duany of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company was the only new urbanist to make Builder magazine’s list of 50 top industry power brokers. Duany was ranked number five, behind only Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Fannie Mae Chairman...
Advocates of transit-oriented development (TOD) in the San Francisco Bay Area are talking about reducing the number of parking spaces that must be provided when parking lots at BART stations are redeveloped for housing and other uses. TOD projects...
A proposal to build a Target in north Milwaukee will test that city’s new standards for retail development. Developer Redmond Co. of Waukesha, Wisconsin, wants to put in a typical 130,000 sq. ft. box with a massive parking lot in front, according to...
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed a law in December that encourages development around bus and rail stations. The law authorizes establishment of Transit Revitalization Investment Districts (TRIDs) — partnerships between local governments,...