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.
Classical Architecture, by James Stevens Curl, published by W. W. Norton, describes the origins and principles of Greek and Roman architecture, and outlines the development of classical architecture during the Renaissance, its tranformations in...
New urbanist designer and writer Jeff Speck has been named director of design for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), with responsibility for supervising the panel selection and grant making process in design and overseeing the Mayors...
Steven Bodzin and Erica Mohar are both leaving CNU for greener pastures. Mohar, CNU’s Membership Coordinator for a year, is moving to Los Angeles. Bodzin, who has been communications director for three years and was membership coordinator before...
At CNU XI, CNU’s Board of Directors selected Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist as the organization’s new president and CEO after a national search. Mayor Norquist will assume the post upon his resignation as mayor at the end of 2003. Norquist succeeds...
New urbanist developer George de Guardiola and his partner Bruce Rendina sold Town Center holdings in Abacoa, according to the Palm Beach Post. The developers declined to reveal the sales price, but Rendina told the paper that the Town Center, with...
In the Brush Park area of Detroit, Crosswinds Communities is developing 700 to 800 townhomes and loft units with prices starting from the $190,000. The units range from 1,300 to 2,000 square feet. The development, called Woodward Place at Brush Park...
The North Hills Mall in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the oldest enclosed malls in the South, is being demolished. A 14-screen Marquee Cinemas theater will sit on top of a Target store when the property is redeveloped by John Kane, owner of the...
The challenges to fighting sprawl in Chester County, Pennsylvania, are analyzed in “Visions of Landscapes,” a report sponsored by the Chester County Community Foundation and the Chester County 2020 Trust. Three projects that attempted to incorporate...
The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Arlington, Virginia, may be the best prototype in America for transit-oriented development. Dense, mixed-use, walkable development has been built around five stations in recent years, with dramatic results in terms...
Mixed-use project gives Southern California a taste of convenient, walk-to-everything living.
When Paseo Colorado opened in downtown Pasadena, California, just one week after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, some felt nervous about its...
Barring unforeseen events, Petaluma, California, on July 16 will become the first municipality in the US to adopt the SmartCode. The 55,000-population city in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, sees the new code as its best route for regulating...
The National Charrette Institute (NCI), based in Portland, Oregon, received a $76,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. NCI will develop a best practices forum of experts from many disciplines (health, land-use, politics) to use the...