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 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...
With appeals, litigation could continue for several years over Miles Point, an 89-acre TND denied by the town of St. Michaels, Maryland. At issue, according to developer George Valanos of the Midland Companies, is an inherent conflict between the...
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...
Sarasota County in Florida has hired the Orlando planning and consulting firm Glatting Jackson to lead a team of advisors that will flesh out the details of the county’s Resource Management Area (RMA) approach to future growth. The incentives-based...
Recent developments in the Washington, DC, area demonstrate a variety of techniques for placing a large grocery store in a mixed-use urban environment.
Of all the big box store types, supermarkets are the most common, are used most frequently by...
The Congress for the New Urbanism prefaced its ninth annual congress with a daylong series of lectures and discussions by luminaries in the new urbanist (NU) movement. “New Urbanism 101” was designed to give an overview of NU history and principles...
No hurdles in sight for the passage of a code that 60 of the state’s largest cities and towns must adopt by 2002.
Wisconsin is the first state in the nation to attempt to set statewide standards for traditional neighborhood development (TND).
Urban Design Associates has published a textbook on pattern books for the Institute of Traditional Architecture. The book describes methods and includes various UDA pattern books, such as Ray Gindroz’s pattern book for Celebration. Pattern books...