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.
Having made a fortune by founding the Internet service provider MindSpring and later merging it into EarthLink, Charles Brewer is in an enviable situation: he’s able to develop a new urban project in Atlanta “without borrowing a dime.” In the past...
When Disney started developing Celebration, it called on nationally known architects to design many of the downtown buildings. At Baldwin Park, by contrast, famous architects haven’t been needed.
• The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU XII) in late June in Chicago hosted a session, The Coming Demand, which examined an “increasing demand for accessible and visitable housing and neighborhoods.” Accessibility/visitability advocates also staged...
Jaime Correa, formerly of Correa Valle Valle and the Knight Professor of Community Building at the University of Miami, has formed a new architectural and town design firm, Jaime Correa and Associates. The new firm is currently working on three...
In addition to offering engaging speakers, lively debates, and
abundant opportunities for new urbanists to learn from each other, the Twelfth Congress for the New Urbanism in June distinguished itself as the largest Congress ever, drawing 1,370...
Robert Orr & Associates is also designing a proposed mixed-use redevelopment along the Quinnipiac River in the Fair Haven Heights section of New Haven for an investment group that includes Joel Schiavone, his daughter Allyx Schiavone, and...
One indicator of the growing desire to live in Manhattan is the conversion of gas stations to more valuable uses. “Since 1999, the number of gas stations in Manhattan has declined by 18 percent, to 207,” The New York Times reported June 7. “Cropping...
New urbanists often design infill projects in cities, new neighborhoods in the suburbs, and even create visions for growth on a regional scale. Rarely if ever do they get the opportunity to design a medium-sized city from scratch. That was...
Adoption of form-based codes in Petaluma, California, and Arlington County, Virginia, is quickly paying off with new buildings that line the sidewalks and streets. In Petaluma, which enacted a version of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company’s SmartCode...
By Urban Design Associates W.W. Norton, 2004, 230 pp., $55 paperback. In the 1970s, Pittsburgh-based Urban Design Associates (UDA) photodocumented every house in a historic district in York, a small southcentral Pennsylvania city that had...
Pittsburghers are up in arms over a proposal to stop spending municipal funds to repair the hundreds of stairs that climb the city’s hills. In The Steps of Pittsburgh (reviewed in the June 2004 New Urban News), author Bob Regan reports that the 2002...
The following letter from CNU Board Chair Hank Dittmar is adapted from his opening address at CNU XII in Chicago.
It was especially gratifying to be part of CNU XXII in Chicago.