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.
A land use change was approved to put a 45,000 square foot supermarket in the town center of Middleton Hills, a traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Middleton, Wisconsin (see October/November 2003 New Urban News). Now the developer must get...
New Urbanism has been slow to catch on in New England, partly because many suburban and rural municipalities don’t want much residential development and especially don’t want the expense of educating more children. That’s certainly the case in...
Maryland’s smart growth program, one of the most widely noted efforts by a state government to curb sprawl, has largely survived the shift to a new Republican administration. Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. recently introduced a “Priority Places Strategy...
Better internal connectivity, smaller blocks, and pedestrian accessibility to shops and other commercial uses are reasons why buyers are willing to pay more to live in a new urban community, according to a recent study on New Urbanism and Housing...
Inner-city retail development continues to lag in all but a few US cities despite an expansion in real estate financing instruments, according to a new report from Brookings Institution. “Shopping the City: Real Estate Finance and Urban Retail...
The first TND in Montana is under way. Baxter Meadows, in Bozeman, has a handful of houses occupied. The site is 440 acres, and not all of it is TND. About a third of the site is estate lots. Two-thirds of the site has an interconnected network of...
Anyone familiar with demographics in California knows about the state’s surging Latino population growth. By the year 2020, the numbers of Latinos in the state will exceed the number of non-Hispanic whites, says the California Department of Finance...
The Mansfield Downtown Partnership in November selected Storrs Center Alliance LLC as master developer for the planned commercial town center near the south end of the University of Connecticut campus in Storrs, Connecticut. The Storrs Center...
The Seaside Institute awarded the 2003 Seaside Prize in October to Giancarlo De Carlo and Donlyn Lyndon. The prize is awarded each year to the individuals or organizations making significant contributions to the quality and character of communities...
The City of Temple Terrace, near Tampa, Florida, is moving forward with its plans for a mixed-use new urban town center. The city is reportedly negotiating with Dover Kohl & Partners to put tegether a design charrette. With the recent purchase...
Professionals from many nations and disciplines gathered in Stockholm in early November to sign the Charter for European Urbanism. The signing officially forms the Council for European Urbanism (CEU). The event followed a spring council in Bruges...
In what may be a first, public officials in Lancaster, Texas, approved three new urban developments in one meeting in November. In October, officials approved a form-based code and street standards to govern development of the projects. Developers...