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 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.
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,...
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.
Town Planning Studio is a new joint venture of new urbanist practitioners from the Midwest and the West. The venture is made up of R. John Anderson from Chico, California; Peter Swift from Longmont, Colorado; and Patti Banks, Brian Hendrickson,...
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...
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.
A new group, Pennsylvania Association of New Urbanists, has begun meeting. Among the members are state Rep. Robert Freeman, who authored a traditional neighborhood development section to the state Municipalities Planning Code, town planners Thomas...
A Seaside historic district? The oldest buildings in the first new urbanist town are only 20 years old, but the idea is not as absurd as it sounds, according to attorney Doris Goldstein, who advises the Seaside Development Company. The earliest...