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.
The Beer Line B neighborhood in Milwaukee is flourishing on the former industrial Commerce Street corridor located minutes from downtown with bluffside views of the Milwaukee River. The blighted brown-field sites attracted no investment until 1997,...
In a move that may take it deeper into urban areas, the Home Depot chain is experimenting with downscaling the big box. A prototype store in Brooklyn is half the size of suburban Home Depots, and similar stores are planned on Long Island and in...
Dates have been announced for next year’s CNU XI. It will be at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, DC, June 19-21, 2003. If you are in the DC area and would like to take part in the local host committee, please call or write the Congress for the...
With an estimated 18 to 22 percent of Americans now afflicted by obesity, health professionals are beginning to view New Urbanism as a potential way of injecting needed exercise into everyday life.
Since 1980, obesity and overweight have grown to...
Wisconsin’s smart growth law required, among other provisions, cities and villages with populations above 12,500 to adopt a model traditional neighborhood development (TND) ordinance by January 2002. The idea behind the statewide model ordinance — a...
Infrastructure work is progressing on the future site of South Park Village, the redevelopment of an Air Force base in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The $20 million cost of the new street grid, a landscaped parkway, sewers, and parks is covered...
A 40-acre brownfield neighborhood, Lantern Hill, is now under construction in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The project, planned by Thomas Comitta Associates and being developed by Granor Price Homes, will have townhouses, apartments, and 20,000 square...
The crime-ridden Riverdale Apartments complex in the Middle River-Essex area of Maryland is no more. In its place, Mark Building Co. and Enterprise Homes Inc. are constructing WaterView, a Traditional Neighborhood Development of 175 single-family...
Following a $5.9-million renovation of a 1914 high school, residents are moving into The Lofts at Albuquerque High in New Mexico’s largest city. (see July/August 2001). Developed by Rob Dickson’s Paradigm & Company, The Lofts include 70 rental...
Bethesda Row, Federal Realty Investment Trust’s pedestrian-friendly redevelopment of part of downtown Bethesda, Maryland, continues to get rave reviews. “Delightful” was design critic Roger K. Lewis’s word for it recently in the Washington Post. The...
II. The forecourt Category: Semi-Public Space Subcategory: Courts The varieties of semi-public spaces must be differentiated from the family of wholly public spaces that includes the square (in its various sub-species), the plaza, and the...
Much of the current TOD is poorly designed; a report recommends a series of steps to meet smart growth goals.
The good news is that we’re mov-ing beyond the auto-oriented paradigm of the last half of the 20th Century, when commuter rail stations...