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.
Narrow streets are not only safer and more pedestrian-friendly, they also cost less. According to recent calculations by a Utah consultant, the cost of resurfacing a 24 ft. road with two inches of asphalt is $45,619 per linear mile. The cost...
The US Department of Energy has developed a “New Tools for Community Design and Decision Making” website based on a presentation by Peter Katz. Contains ideas, tools, and resources from professionals in the field. See www.sustainable. doe.gov/...
A 10,000 sq. ft., two-story mixed-use building has replaced an abandoned gas station at the gateway to historic Beaufort, South Carolina. Offices and retail stores face the street, while five loft apartments occupy the second floor of the building,...
Urban Parks Institute, a program of Project for Public Spaces, has developed the website http://urbanparks.org/ to provide information and resources on revitalizing urban public spaces.
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
Rotary, circle, and circus identify urban spatial elements associated with circular traffic movement. The first tends to occur towards the Rural end of the Transect, the last towards...
Work will soon begin on a long-term, $193-million, public-private initiative to revitalize the depressed Greenlaw-Manassas area of Memphis. A plan for the 160-block area north of the central business district, now called Uptown Memphis, was created...
CNU members are the key to making CNU.org as accurate, up-to-date, and informative as possible. Members can provide information about themselves and their practices. They will update information about development projects. They will upload new...
New Urban Communities of Del Ray is developing BotAnica/Sea Plum in Jupiter, Florida, the company’s first neighborhood-scale project. This 143-acre TND, designed by Cotleur-Hearing, will include 360 apartments, 138 single family homes, 132 townhomes...
The majority of transit-oriented developments (TODs) are built adjacent to rail lines, but the Twin Creeks project under construction in Central Point in southwestern Oregon, is part of an effort to boost regional bus service. Comprised of 1,500...
In California, ground has been broken for the Hercules Waterfront District, the first new urbanist development project in the San Francisco Bay Area city, which last year adopted a regulating plan and a typological code created by Dover Kohl &...
Despite numerous setbacks, Pulte Home Corp. is not giving up on Salamanca, the 160-acre traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Dade County, Florida. The project, the nation’s largest homebuilder’s first attempt at TND and the first test of...
Fairfax County, Virginia, supervisors approved a $100 million transit-oriented development on 58 acres at the Huntington Metro Station, the first project under the county’s new “smart growth” measure. The developers plan to build a combination of...