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.
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...
Authentic Development Patterns for Small Towns and Rural Areas By Christopher J. Duerksen and James van Hemert American Planning Association, 2003, 248 pp., paperback. $59.95. “The Old West is rapidly giving way to a New West that bears...
The first phase of Cornerstone, a $60 million town center in Parma Heights, Ohio, will open late this year or early in 2005. Anchored by Claire’s Folly, an 84,000-square-foot family entertainment center including a dinner theater, a brewpub, and a...
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...
Segways, the two-wheeled, self-balancing transports sometimes ridden on sidewalks, have been banned for safety reasons from the three Disney theme parks — Disney World, Disneyland, and California Adventure — as well as from Sea World Orlando....
By the end of this year, Kennecott Land Company expects to build the first 300 houses in Daybreak, a pedestrian-oriented community that the company had Calthorpe Associates plan on 4,216 acres in South Jordan, Utah, 21 miles southwest of downtown...