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.
This survey identifies site-specific projects — either in planning, in construction, or completed — that are at least 15 acres and are based on principles of New Urbanism. The projects are mixed-use, laid out with an interconnected network 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...
Urban design strategies for a neighborhood in San Jose, California, soon to be served by light-rail transit were the focus of a charrette conducted Nov. 13-18 by the University of Miami’s Knight Program in Community Building. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk...
Architect Witold Rybczynski, editor of the Wharton Real Estate Review, has written one of the best financial analyses to date of new urban communities. “The Art of the New Urbanist Deal,” in the fall issue of the Review, examines four new urban...
Large-scale new urban community is planned for brownfield site.
Sunrise, the first major new urban project planned in the wake of Envision Utah, is slated to break ground in 2003. The project is on 4,300 acres of former mining land within a new...
Philip Langdon, associate editor of New Urban News, is editor, with the late Jonathan King, of a new book, The CRS Team and the Business of Architecture (Texas A&M University Press, $39.95). The 325-page book alternates relatively brief...
Many players in New Urbanism headed for New Mexico recently, yet their agendas are mostly national, not local.
There’s a distinct Southwestern flavor to this issue. Philip Langdon reports on the remarkable revitalization of downtown Albuquerque,...
McGreevey wants to build more transit villages and fewer roads.
With Parris Glendening’s tenure as governor of Maryland about to end, it appears that leadership in the campaign for “smart growth” is now being claimed by New Jersey Gov. James E....
A two-year search for financing recently paid off for Terry Stamper, developer of the Peninsula Neighborhood in Iowa City.Stamper and his partners received a $2.25 million loan from a Kansas bank to move forward with the first phase. The lender,...