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.
What can philanthropic foundations best do to revitalize troubled neighborhoods? Living Cities, a national organization based in Harlem, has begun seeking answers to that question. Four foundations involved in Living Cities have launched Pilot...
Plans are progressing for a 110-mile Texas commuter rail line running from San Antonio to Georgetown, 30 miles north of Austin. The Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Rail District selected PBS&J and its team of eight subconsultants to provide...
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...
Hellgate Meadows, the first neighborhood to be developed under a Traditional Neighborhood Development ordinance that the City of Missoula, Montana, adopted in February 2002, is rapidly heading toward completion. Developer Bob Brugh says the core of...
Nothing better demonstrates the hardened arteries of the conventional American development system than its lag in understanding and producing true live-work units. Largely oblivious to changes in the character and stability of modern work, and to...
By Howard Husock Ivan R. Dee, 2003, 256 pp., $26. When President Bush proposed eliminating any new money for the HOPE VI program, he was following a recommendation of Myron Magnet, editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, and of Howard...
In 1988, civic leaders in Smyrna, Georgia, several miles northwest of Atlanta, realized they needed a town center. The old downtown had practically ceased to exist, becoming not much more than a collection of “antique shops and a few other things,”...
New president/CEO will try to heighten federal encouragement for mixed-use development.
Influencing federal housing policy is going to be a top goal of the Congress for the New Urbanism under its new president and CEO, former Milwaukee Mayor...
Celebration Company, a real estate
development division of the Disney Company, sold the Celebration, Florida, town center Jan. 21 to Lexin Capital, a New York-based private investment firm. Neither party disclosed the price. However, GlobeSt.com...