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.
New urbanist developer Robert Chapman is preparing to break ground on Winmore, 129-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) near the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. A neighbor sued to stop the project, claiming it would damage...
A municipally sponsored development in downtown Princeton, New Jersey, is converting two borough-owned parking lots into a $27 million mixed-use project that includes a new outdoor plaza next to Princeton’s new public library.
Edited by John Morris Dixon; designed by Harish K. Patel Visual Reference Publications, Urban Land Institute, 2004, 328 pp., $59.99. The introduction and preface to Urban Spaces cover many of the talking points that are familiar to new...
Mark Schimmenti, design director of the Nashville Civic
Design Center, says design professionals and grassroots activists began thinking in the 1990s that Nashville needed a design center because “they had noticed that cities that seemed to be...
By one estimate, roughly 1,500 new housing units are needed to build one new block of stores.
Many communities hunger these days for “Main Street retail” or “neighborhood retail.” Few, however, know how many households — and shoppers’ dollars —...
For three years, The Round at Beaverton, Oregon, was a high-profile poster child for the failure of a transit-oriented development (TOD). When opponents of transit wanted to show that the market rejects TOD, they showed pictures of The Round, where...
Widespread opposition to sprawl caused developers John and Leslye Wuerfel to cancel plans for building a 4,000-seat minor-league baseball park on 45 acres of farmland in Elmwood Township, near Traverse City, Michigan. “I think if you’re going to...
The Smart Growth Network has published Getting to Smart Growth II: 100 More Policies for Implementation. As the name implies, this is the second volume, and offers useful advice and quality illustrations on public policy for planners and elected...
Pulte Homes, the nation’s largest residential builder, paid $8.57 million in early January to purchase approximately 480 acres in Civano, a development on the southeast fringe of Tucson that combines principles of New Urbanism and environmental...
Coatesville, Pennsylvania, a faded 11,000-population steel town 46 miles west of Philadelphia, is trying to move forward with ideas that were generated last October in a charrette organized by the Knight Fellows in Community Building at the...
The City of Claremont, California, has approved two development agreements with the Tolkin Group of Pasadena to expand and redevelop the city’s downtown. The Claremont Village Expansion project calls for 61,000 square feet of ground-level retail and...
Victoria Gardens — a new downtown for Rancho Cucamonga, California — broke ground in September 2003. Designed by Field Paoli, it is being developed by Forest City. Victoria Gardens will be anchored by three department stores, a movie theater, and a...