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.
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...
Gondolier Press has released The Forgotten Child: Cities for the Well-Being of Children, by Henry L. Lennard and Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard. The book explores the failure of the modern city to provide a suitable habitat for its children. Contact...
After several slow years, Middleton Hills near Madison, Wisconsin, is hitting its stride. Last year was the project’s best, with sales of 29 single home lots, plus 8 townhomes and live/work units. Fifty-five units of senior housing were completed....
“It [New Urbanism] is currently a boutique market that appeals to a segment of the home-buying market (empty nesters, singles, young professionals). Unfortunately, there are still many government regulatory and community perception hurdles to...
Rep. Mark Udall (CO) recently introduced the Urban Sprawl and Smart Growth Study Act. The Act requires the Council on Environmental Quality to update previous studies of the economic, environmental and land-use
effects of sprawl; make...
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...
The six neighborhoods that make up Baltimore’s Midtown district contains some of the city’s finest residential architecture and many cultural and educational institutions. But the neighborhoods are in decline, rowhouses are dilapidated and there is...