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.
The Northshore Town Center, described as a 141-acre new urban development near Knoxville, Tennessee, is slated to break ground soon. The James Doran Company is planning 120 detached houses, 450 apartments, 150 townhouses, shops, a 20-screen movie...
Westhaven, a new urban project in the very early stages of construction near Nashville, Tennessee, appears to have strong momentum, according to an article in the Tennessean newspaper. One hundred thirty homes were sold as of February in the 1,540-...
Surrey, British Columbia, has adopted a plan that requires small developers to cooperate in creating neighborhoods that are walkable, connected to transit, close to stores and services, and environmentally benign.
The city, working with Patrick...
I. The Ancillary Unit: E. The Live-Work Unit: Layout and
material preconditions
There are reasons beyond developer inertia that true live-work units have not proliferated as society's need for them has expanded. Live-work production has not...
Under a new mayor, the character-rich Rhode Island city hopes to roll back the damage done by I. M. Pei’s master plan.
Nearly 500 people crowded into the ballroom at the top of the Biltmore Hotel March 11 to hear Andres Duany tell how downtown...
Big box debate: are new urbanists elitist?
Retail consultant Robert Gibbs accuses new urbanists of opposing stores used by ordinary shoppers. Others say it’s not so simple.
New urbanists need to rethink their attitude toward chain stores and big...
A planned book on new urbanist street and road networks is being split into two separate volumes. Peter Swift of Longmont, Colorado, and Rick Chellman of Ossipee, New Hampshire, have nearly completed a “context-directed street design manual,” which...
How Baltimore and Washington, DC, compete with each other for young urban professionals is discussed in issue number four of The Next American City. In “The Race for Residents: DC and Baltimore Go Head to Head,” Elizabeth A. Evitts tells how both...
The Congress for the New Urbanism thanks Jean Driscoll for her years of service as a board member. Driscoll resigned from the board in late 2003. As a board member, Jean performed valuable work as treasurer and as a member of the executive committee...
The 2020 Community Plan in Bozeman, Montana, calls for development of about a dozen neighborhood commercial centers, where nearby residents can get basic goods and services such as a cup of coffee, a meal, or a haircut. One such center is up and...
In a Feb. 24 Washington Post column about the “niggling NIMBYs of negativism,” Marc Fisher noted that a “relative handful of very loud people” who own homes near downtown Bethesda, Maryland, have continued trying to stop Federal Realty Investment...
Syracuse, New York, is interested in developers who can transform its Inner Harbor waterfront to a new urban development with a mix of uses, according to statements attributed to Mayor Matt Driscoll in The Post-Standard. About $20 million in...