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 clue to the unfolding transformation of Beekman Street in Saratoga Springs is a tiny barber shop with a sign in its window announcing that the 15-by-20-foot building is soon to become a coffee bar.
Beekman Street, which decades ago boasted a mix...
Lee Sobel, former Knight Fellow with the University of Miami and author of the CNU publication Greyfields into Goldfields, left CB Richard Ellis to work with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Smart Growth Division, where he will focus on real...
A sampling of recent media reports shows the New Urbanism is making inroads in the Midwest. Three prime examples:
Akron, Ohio. An embattled new urbanist project, Canal Town Builders’ ten-acre Hickory Street residential development, won city council...
Robert Kramer and Jeffrey Fleeman, two of the principal developers of Haile Village Center in Gainesville, Florida, expect to develop a 500-acre mixed-use community on Mexico’s Pacific coast 75 miles north of Puerta Vallarta. “It will range from...
A new ordinance in Howard County, Maryland, requires developers to set aside a portion of their housing production for moderate-income families. The first beneficiaries of the ordinance are nine families that were allowed to buy townhouses for half...
An international group of planners rethinks how the city’s industrial waterfront should mature.
Toronto residents are getting excited about the idea of creating “water rooms” on underused land between the Canadian city’s downtown and nearby Lake...
Saratoga Springs, an Upstate New York city best known for spas and horse racing, may become one of the first municipalities in the Northeast to apply Andres Duany’s Transect concept to its zoning. The 26,000-population city about 30 miles north of...
Forest City looks to develop 12,400-acre community in Albuquerque.
Anew urban project so immense that it may take 70 years to complete is envisioned for the southeastern section of Albuquerque.
Denver’s City Council has adopted “Blueprint Denver,” a plan that aims to integrate the city’s land uses and transportation for the first time. “Blueprint Denver suggests that transportation and land-use improvements be joined at the hip, and that...
A state law — even one without teeth — can exert a strong influence on municipal planners. Wisconsin’s law mandating that every municipality above 12,500 population adopt a traditional neighborhood development (TND) code has caused a unique outcome...
Plans for New Daleville, a 90-acre Traditional Neighborhood Development with 125 houses and 12,500 square feet of retail space, have won approval from officials in Londonderry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. The developer, Arcadia Land...
River Ranch in Lafayette, Louisiana, is becoming an influential model of new urban community-building. More than 100 developers have visited the project, under development by Robert Daigle and designed by architect Steve Oubre, according to the...