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.
Arcadia Realty hired Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to help design North Richland Hills Town Center, which is in the early stages of construction. The laboratory advised the developer and planner on the best ways to reduce heat retention in...
The nation’s largest urban redevelopment has broken ground and construction of homes and retail begins this fall.
The sheer size of Stapleton explodes previous notions of new urbanist infill. The site of Denver’s old airport covers 4,700 acres...
Community by Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities joins a long list of books extolling the virtues of mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented neighborhood planning.
This book, by landscape architects Kenneth Hall and Gerald Porterfield,...
National Geographic now offers a new urbanism primer online that compares the effects of urban and suburban design. An interactive tour allows the user to select images within a main street scene while text explains advantages of transportation,...
Sales have begun at three of the eight projects profiled in this report, and so far the consumer response has been positive. Washington Town Center opened sales at the beginning of 2001 and has sold 185 of the 560 homes planned for the first phase....
The Brookings Institution’s discussion paper “Exposing Urban Legends: The Real Purchasing Power of Central City Neighborhoods” dissects and disproves private marketing data fed to the public about inner city neighborhoods. See www. brookings.edu.
With the full support of local officials, a number of significant new urbanist projects are on the fast track.
Most new urbanist projects are held back by something — incompatible zoning codes, lack of financing, inappropriate street standards,...
Allison Ramsey Architects of Beaufort, SC, has published Carolina Inspirations, a classic collection of house plans featuring a variety of styles and appearances and ranging from cottages less than 500 square feet to homes of more than 3,600 square...
The proposed Montecito Town Center in Las Vegas, billed as the “largest town center in the United States,” is designed with substantial new urbanist elements. The project is on a 254-acre site that the city had planned for a new urbanist type town...
The commercial portion of the mall redevelopment Paseo Colorado in Pasadena, California, is 90 percent leased and ready to open in September. Exterior construction of the residential buildings will be completed at the same time, and the first...
New urbanist developer Vince Graham, a partner in acclaimed TNDs I’On and Newpoint, has run into political interference in Norfolk, Virginia. Graham’s firm, Civitas, was chosen as the developer of East Beach, a 100-acre project designed in 1994 by...
Federal Realty Investment Trust appears to be succeeding with its new urbanist projects in the Washington, DC, area. Bethesda Row, which includes 340,000 square feet of shops, offices, and restaurants in downtown Bethesda, Maryland, is 99.6 percent...