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.
Developers Ken Talle and Brad Johnson have broken ground for 28 rental townhouses in Ramsey Village, a new urban redevelopment in the West Duluth section of Duluth, Minnesota. The century-old neighborhood has also been getting new detached houses,...
Two kayaking young developers in Colorado expect to break ground in the spring for a 40-acre new urban project overlooking the white water of the Arkansas River about 100 miles west of Colorado Springs. Katie Selby, 28, and her brother Jed Selby, 25...
Wal-Mart has backed out of plans to locate a 40,000 sq. ft. Neighborhood Market in Highlands Garden Village, a new urban redevelopment project in Denver (see the June 2004 issue of New Urban News). The store would have anchored the 27-acre project’s...
By Will Toor and Spenser W. Havlick Island Press, 2004, 293 pp., hardcover $60; paperback $30. This new book by Will Toor, director of the University of Colorado Environmental Center, and Spenser W. Havlick, retired professor of environmental...
Portland, Oregon, is seeking better designs for the so-called skinny house. The city’s R-2.5 zoning category allows the traditional 50-by-100-foot Portland lot to be halved lengthwise. When required sideyard setbacks are subtracted, the result is a...
New zoning for downtown Providence, Rhode Island, part of a package of measures recommended in a Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. charrette last March, suffered a setback when a judge ruled the zoning invalid because of the public hearing process in...
Carlos Rodrigues, implementation director in the New Jersey Office of Smart Growth for the past 10 years, is now working for Looney Ricks Kiss Architects in Princeton, NJ.
“Big-box stores married to residences are appearing in Chicago, Washington, Seattle and San Francisco,” The New York Times reported Aug. 19 in an article titled “Shopping on 1, Sleeping on 2.” “To satisfy the needs of commuters tired of commuting...
Winmore, a new urban project planned for 66 acres in Carrboro and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has changed hands for $5 million. Partners Phil Szostak, Bob Chapman, and Herman Greene sold to local developers Scott Kovens and Eric Chupp. With 232...
The owners of 70 houses on large lots in suburban Vienna, Virginia, are banding together to sell almost the entire Poplar Terrace development to Centex Homes, which would then try to build 1,326 townhouses and condominium units on the 40 acres...
By a 60 to 40 margin, Oregon voters approved Measure 37, a law that reverses land use regulations made over the last three decades if landowners owned their property before the restrictions when into effect.
The effect on urban growth boundaries (...
A report entitled “Making the Case for Mixed Income and Mixed Use Communities,” accompanied by a CD-ROM containing technical reports, has been produced by Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership. The Partnership’s website is www.andpi.org.