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.
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...
The Orton Family Foundation in Rutland, Vermont, helped the Vermont Forum on Sprawl create “Pathways to Planning,” a web-based tool that helps people assess conditions in their communities and figure out how to act against sprawl. “Our hope is that...
Registration is open for the twelfth Congress for the New Urbanism, "Blocks, Streets, and Buildings Today: The New City Beautiful," in Chicago, June 24-27, 2004. Visit www.cnu.org to register and learn more, or call AHI at 1-800-788-7077.
Though it doesn’t have the reform mission of CNU, the American Planning Association is growing more and more welcoming to new urbanist thought and technique. APA established a New Urbanism division two and a half years ago. With 300 members, the...
The Buzzards Bay Village Association is planning an international design contest, with a prize of up to $20,000 for the architect who can create a new design scheme for the village. “We don’t want any more strip malls,” said Tom Moccia, executive...
If governments throughout the US required more rational, compact development patterns, they would save 11 percent, or $110 billion, on road-building over 25 years. They would save 6 percent, or $12.6 billion, on water and sewer costs in those 25...
New Longview, a 260-acre traditional neighborhood development in Lee’s Summit, Missouri (near Kansas City) has named its first commercial tenant, the Citizen’s Union State Bank & Trust. New Longview is planned by 180 Degrees Design Studio and...
Philip Bess, director of the graduate program in architecture at Notre Dame, led a March charrette aimed at planning a mixture of market-rate and “special needs” housing in the sprawling, lightly populated town of Wasilla, Alaska, in the Matanuska...
London-based architect and theorist Demetri Porphyrios is the recipient of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture’s second annual Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. Known for his work in traditional and classical...
Urban Initiatives beat out the Prince’s Foundation and several other competitors to design a major new English town in Ashford, Kent, a stop on the railway just north of the Channel Tunnel. The town is proposed to accommodate 31,000 people and 28,...
Metropolitan areas with more “smart growth” characteristics tended to outperform more sprawling regions of similar population in many transportation measures, according to a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study, “Characteristics and...