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.
Work has begun on the commercial town center in Lowry, the redevelopment of an 1,866-acre Air Force base on the Denver/Aurora town line in Colorado. A 50,000 sq. ft. Al-bertson’s supermarket anchors the town center, which will include 118,000 square...
New urbanist design firm Correa Valle Valle of Coral Gables, Florida, has won two smart growth awards for its charrette and plan for a redevelopment of a historic industrial neighborhood in Asheville, North Carolina.
Morrison Homes, a national building firm with experience in several new urbanist developments, has conducted a study to determine how appreciation rates in three traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs), Kentlands, Celebration, and Laguna West,...
John Anderson of New Urban Builders offers 10 tips on designing neighborhoods and homes for energy conservation in sunny north central California: 1) Orient the long side of a rectilinear block running north/south — this allows narrow and deep lots...
The new master plan for Gorham’s Bluff in Alabama strives for greater economic diversity and proposes an innovative integration of an assisted living center.
When this remote community in the Appalachian Mountains was first designed in 1993, it...
SprawlWatch Clearinghouse offers “How Smart Growth Can Stop Sprawl: A Briefing Guide for Funders,” by David Bollier. Contact: (202) 332-7000 or see www. sprawlwatch.org.
In a clear break with the “bigger is better” philosophy of
street design, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) has released a revamped third edition of its guide to residential street design. Residential Streets attempts to demonstrate that streets in...
The town remains a remarkable and influential achievement two decades after its founding.
In many ways Seaside, Florida, is antithetical to what many would consider
to be the ideal new urbanist icon. It is a “greenfield” project, far from any...
In May, Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening appointed Harriet Tregoning as Special Secretary for Smart Growth, establishing a new cabinet post which will focus exclusively on transportation, land-use, and growth issues.
“The governor created the...
Thousands of local codes nationwide prohibit small lots and blocks, narrow streets, shallow setbacks, a mixture of uses, and other elements of pedestrian-scale neighborhoods. This reality makes it difficult for new urbanist developments to gain...
In Lakewood, Colorado, 100 acres of shopping mall and parking lots is about to yield to an urban center.
The Villa Italia Mall is typical of the ailing, greyfield malls that line the nation’s suburban corridors. On the cutting edge of retail...
Van Meter Williams Pollack of San Francisco has hired Kevin Gardiner, an urban designer formerly with Malcom Carpenter Associates.