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.
Transit-oriented development makes inroads in a conservative region.
In July, organizations in Idaho's Treasure Valley joined CNU in kicking off
a series of workshops to create a deep local consensus around the New Urbanism. The Treasure Valley...
Norton Commons, a TND in Louisville, Kentucky, has broken ground after four years of design and approval. The 600-acre site will include 2,800 new residences, retail, and a 20-acre commercial office campus. Triad Development Co. of Louisville is the...
Montebello Village is a 36-acre TND designed at a recent charrette and scheduled to break ground this fall in Greenville, South Carolina. The design by Alberto & Associates of Haddonfield, New Jersey, with architect David Mayernik, proposes 110...
Lennertz Coyle Associates of Portland has begun planning the first new urbanist community in Wyoming on the site of a 329-acre ranch in Teton County. The county has purchased the site with the goal of reducing the deficit of affordable housing in...
The planning commission in Woodford County, Kentucky, recently approved both a plan for a TND extension of Versailles, the county’s biggest town, and a proposed industrial park, also with new urbanist design.
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) takes a new urbanist approach with its planned Santa Monica, California, workplace.
The NRDC wants to make its 15,000 sq. ft. building a showcase — not just environmentally, but also in terms of...
The new economy may have foundered, but most new urbanists report that they are as busy as ever.
Though growth has slowed in the national economy, internet firms have crashed, industrial output has declined, and the stock market has floundered,...
A bill to create 1.5 million units of affordable housing during the next 10 years through a National Housing Trust Fund was introduced by US Sen. John Kerry. The bill was endorsed by the Sierra Club.
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
In understanding the components of urbanism at any point along the Transect, it is useful to differentiate between the organization of movement and the organization of spatial...
Randal O’Toole is a man whose neighborhood was replanned by government officials as part of Portland Metro’s 2040 planning process in the mid-1990s — an event which launched his career as an anti-new urbanist. O’Toole is profoundly pessimistic about...
The Great Lakes Television Consortium has released “The Sprawling of America,” a comprehensive two-hour documentary in two parts examining land use over the last 50 years. The video is obviously slanted towards smart growth and New Urbanism, and may...
Smart Growth, Better Neighborhoods: Communities Leading the Way, a 204-page report from the Neighborhood Coalition, looks at how community-based organizations are tackling negative consequences of sprawl and divestment in low-income neighborhoods....