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.
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...
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...
The winners of the 2001 Charter Awards are celebrated in a 32-page booklet available from CNU. The publication shows how these 15 projects fulfilled the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, and why the jurors picked them from the 208...
Tysons Corner in northern Virginia is one of the largest “edge cities,” with the nation’s 14th largest daytime office population and a retail concentration second only to New York City on the East Coast, according to the Washington Post. But the...
A 680-acre new urbanist development, the Village of WestClay, is also located in Carmel. Brenwick TND Communities plans for up to 1,362 residential units, including apartments, single-family dwellings on a variety of lot sizes, attached townhomes,...
A substantial amount of new construction has taken place in Olde Towne Gaithersburg, Maryland, since a new urbanist plan and urban design guidelines were adopted in the mid-1990s. Recent developments include a building with 65,000 square feet of...
NorthWest Crossing, a new urbanist project with offices, shops, civic buildings, parks, and 1,300 housing units, has been planned for Bend, Oregon. The project, designed by Walker Macy Landscape Architects and Planners and Fletcher Farr Ayotte...
The first grouping of homes around a square has been completed in Annesgrove, upstate New York’s first traditional neighborhood development. The houses in the Onondaga County project are clad in vinyl, but the developer has taken advantage of new...