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.
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...
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.
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...
In Atlanta — as in most US metropolitan areas — traffic congestion is getting far worse, imposing real costs on every driver, according to a recent New York Times editorial by Paul Krugman. Moreover, commuters who drive to work during the city’s six...