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.
After seven years of planning and nine months of site preparation, homes are slated to be under construction in Norton Commons in October. The 600-acre new town near Louisville, Kentucky, will eventually have 2,880 houses and 560,000 square feet or...
Dane County developed its model ordinance by researching codes approved in cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Austin, Texas, says county planner Steve Steinhoff. Elements of these codes were combined into an ordinance and refined by a multimunicipal...
The authors of two bibliographies of scholarly research on new urbanist topics share a few highlights from the lists.
“Factors influencing light-rail station boardings in the United States,” by Michael Kuby et al. in Transportation Research Part...
Mashpee Commons in Mashpee, Massachusetts, is getting close to completing three live-work units – the first of 30 to 35 that will be built, according to Doug Storrs of Cornish Associates, the developer. The 2,100 sq. ft., two-story shopfront houses...
Eight hundred acres of the former Fort Ord, an Army base about 100 miles south of San Francisco, are about to be developed into a mixed-use community featuring live-work lofts for artists and a large complement of permanently affordable housing. Two...
“A review of key state and local planning records” reveals “no significant shifts in Maryland’s development patterns since the passage of [former Governor Parris] Glendening’s smart growth package,” the Washington Post reported Aug. 10 in a detailed...
A new firm, DPZ-Pacific, has been formed by former Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) director Demetri Baches, and three former DPZ staffers: Mallory Baches, Ludwig Fontalvo-Abello, and Kamal Zaharin. The firm, a “DPZ affiliate,” Baches says,...
One of the first attempts to convert a historic hamlet into a village with the help of a new urban plan is moving forward in Kent County, Maryland. Developer Carl Wright attended a wedding in Kentlands, the noted new urban development in...
A development that is expected to more than double the size of the center of Woodstock, Georgia, has been proposed by Hedgewood Properties — a home builder. Hedgewood, which is building the traditional neighborhood development Vickery near Atlanta,...
Fifteen years after the initial design, the proposed town of Haymount in Caroline County, Virginia, is financed and moving forward with construction, says developer John Clark. Clark and his partner, Edward J. Miller, closed on a $14 million, five-...
A comprehensive list of research on new urbanist topics reveals some constructive studies — and the need for more.
At the first new urbanist Council in 2001, CNU cofounder Stefanos Polyzoides told the group that the new urbanist movement needed...
David Walters and Linda Luise Brown Architectural Press, 2004, 277 pp., paperback $44.95 Urban designers have benefited greatly from publications that have become available over the past few years. Some books are practical manuals that remain...