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.
With registration open for the eleventh Congress, The Evolving City: From Ideals to Reality, CNU staff are working overtime to pack this year’s event with new perspectives and to make use of member expertise. The Congress promises to keep the...
Just 30 minutes outside of Nashville, the tiny village of Pleasant View was experiencing growing pains. Wanting to encourage expansion while effectively managing growth, it has become an example of expediting new urban projects through...
Though built on a slag heap 25 stories high, houses in a 710- unit new urban development called Summerset at Frick Park are selling well to people in Pittsburgh. Detached dwellings fetch $200,000 to $700,000 on the 238-acre hill where 20 million...
Planners and public officials promoting New Urbanism sometimes struggle with defining it. DeKalb County, Georgia, commissioners recently passed a 90-day moratorium on applications for approval of traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs), a new...
In February, CNU’s board of directors appointed three new members. Longtime members Todd Zimmerman and Stephanie Bothwell join the board, offering expertise in market research and urban design as well as organizational expertise. They also appointed...
Torti Gallas and Partners/CHK, of Silver Spring, MD, is working with the military’s housing privatization program and creating award-winning TNDs such as the Naval Training Center in San Diego, CA.
Named the 2002 “Niche Market Project of the Year...
The Next American City, a quarterly journal, makes its debut this spring with an issue devoted about half to smart growth — what it is, why building “smart” is hard, whether downtown Los Angeles is a model of multi-centered growth — and about half...
America’s newly minted Smart Growth Leadership Institute says that to make smart growth the status quo, “You have to set a framework in which it is financially better to invest in existing communities than it is ‘out there,’ adding to the sprawl...
New Urbanism’s first champion at HUD discusses his philosophy and strategy as a private-sector developer of housing in cities.
With the Bush Administration proposing to end new funding of the HOPE VI redevelopment program after the current fiscal...
While most US governors are fixated on fixing fiscal woes, a select few, like New Jersey’s James McGreevey (see March 2003 New Urban News), have managed to focus on smart growth:
Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Michigan). This freshman governor announced...
Avalon Associates, developer of Avalon Park in East Orlando, FL, has recently agreed to acquire a 3,000-acre business park just east of Orlando International Airport.
Currently zoned for 20 million square feet of high-tech commercial and industrial...
Habersham’s town center is beginning to take shape with the completion of its first live/work building and groundbreakings for four more units scheduled in two months. Waiting until the neighborhood just outside of Beaufort, SC, reached critical...