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.
Like to know how to dispute the calculations of transportation engineers? A helpful guide is an article by Donald Shoup, “Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong,” in the Spring 2002 issue of Access magazine, published by the University of California...
The Prince’s Foundation in London recently appointed two American new urbanist practitioners, Michael Mehaffy and Melissa Saunders. Mehaffy is director of education, and Saunders is director of consulting. The organization founded by Prince Charles...
Approving several proposals of student member Zach Borders, the CNU Board of Directors made new plans at its fall meeting to expand CNU’s Charter Awards to include a category for student work, and to program a student session at CNU XII. Awards...
ULI honored a number of new urban projects in its 2003 Awards for Excellence competition. Seaside, Florida, which began construction 20 years ago, was honored. Seaside was developed by Robert Davis and planned by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.
The...
A new development incorporating aspects of New Urbanism and sustainability is getting underway 32 miles south of Atlanta. Serenbe, a 900-acre project in Palmetto, Georgia, is designed in the form of two mixed-use hamlets. Seventy percent of the land...
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...
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...