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.
Salinas, California, where novelist and short-story writer John Steinbeck was born, is trying to encourage new urbanist forms of development in an eight-block section of downtown and in “future growth areas” that until now have remained largely...
Leading figures in the Congress for the New Urbanism are trying to overcome a simmering conflict with advocates of the disabled. For more than two years, groups such as the Disability Rights Action Coalition for Housing (DRACH) have complained that...
Producer Kyle Justice has put together a 22-minute promotional video/DVD for the new town of Seabrook in Pacific Beach, Washington. The high-quality video includes footage of TNDs and interviews with developer Casey Roloff, designer Laurence Qamar,...
The transformation of suburban office parks into new urban town centers caught the attention of USA Today, which ran a lengthy feature on September 13 that focused on Legacy Town Center in Plano, Texas, among other projects. “Many of today’s young...
Developer Casey Roloff is getting ready to begin construction of homes in Seabrook, the first full-scale new urban beach development on the West Coast. The project in Pacific Beach, Washington, occupies 88 acres and is planned for 400 housing units...
Producer Kyle Justice has put together a 22-minute promotional video/DVD for the new town of Seabrook in Pacific Beach, Washington. The high-quality video includes footage of TNDs and interviews with developer Casey Roloff, designer Laurence Qamar,...
CNU members should watch their mailboxes for issue eight of Zoning Practice of the American Planning Association, provided as a CNU membership benefit. Produced in cooperation with CNU, this issue focuses on creating and modifying zoning codes to...
By Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson Island Press, 2004, 338 pp., hardcover $60, paperback $30
Decades ago, alleys in eastern seaboard cities were inhabited mostly by the poor. Today, by contrast, they are becoming increasingly alluring to middle- and upper-income people, some of whom are willing to pay large sums for an alley home possessing...
Now that his Seaside, Florida, development is well established, Robert Davis is focusing much of his attention on two distinct parts of the world environment: the “urban room” and the “agricultural edge.” In 2002, Davis, Raymond Gindroz of Urban...
The City of Madison, Wisconsin, recently approved the Village of Autumn Lake, a 285-acre mixed-use project based largely on traditional neighborhood design. The project will be the fourth TND underway by Veridian Homes, the largest builder in the...
In an unusual plan to rid Britain’s skylines of their worst eyesores, George Ferguson, head of the Royal Institute of British Architects, has proposed financial and tax incentives for demolition of offensive buildings. “All you have to do is look...