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 nation’s largest charitable foundation dedicated to health issues, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has funded a new, $24.5-million project that links health and smart growth principles. Active Living Through Design, to be headquartered at...
Yet problems persist with acceptance and service, particularly in greenfield developments. The bus is the most frequently used mode of public transportation in the US today, but in transit-oriented development planning the bus tends to play...
The Segway machine, a motorized, gyroscope-balanced scooter, was unveiled in early December. The early reports, that this scooter — originally known as “Ginger” or “it” — would drastically change personal transportation, seems like hype. Segway...
Project New Town is the provisional name for what could become Wisconsin’s largest development with a new urbanist pattern. The project is proposed for a 430-acre greenfield site in Sun Prairie and would include 1,600 residences, retail, and a...
Plans for Bloomfield Park have been formally submitted to the planning department in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. The township has a building height restriction of 32 feet in its master plan, but developer Harbor Cos. proposes to build office...
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) has recently undertaken several new urbanist retrofits of conventional communities already under construction. In the firm’s first foray inside the Charlotte, North Carolina, city limits, DPZ conducted a charrette...
Federal Small Business Administration loans support sprawl, according to a lawsuit filed by environmentalists. Friends of the Earth and the Forest Conservation Council analyzed SBA loans in the Washington, DC, area during the last three years and...
Edwards Construction Co. was awarded a contract to build a four-story, 100,000 sq. ft. building with 51 rental apartments above commercial in the town center of Avalon Park, near Orlando, Florida. Construction bids for a 8,000 sq. ft. medical center...
Since 1996, CNU has been working with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to reform the design of public housing. That partnership is about to produce a major tool to promote new urbanist principles: the HOPE VI design manual,...
Developers of downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, have temporarily given up on luring a major cinema chain as part of the city’s million-plus sq. ft. new urban redevelopment. Still, developers say they remain confident, citing the Discovery...
Codevelopers Leyland Development Co. and East Beach Renaissance — together East Beach Co. — signed a letter of intent with the city of Norfolk, Virginia, to break ground on the $200 million East Beach project. It appears that after years of site...
According to Joe Barker of the development partnership Nashville Urban Venture LLC, the Gulch Neighborhood is the single largest redevelopment project in Nashville’s history. Strategically located between the downtown business and entertainment...