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.
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...
In May, Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening appointed Harriet Tregoning as Special Secretary for Smart Growth, establishing a new cabinet post which will focus exclusively on transportation, land-use, and growth issues.
“The governor created the...
Thousands of local codes nationwide prohibit small lots and blocks, narrow streets, shallow setbacks, a mixture of uses, and other elements of pedestrian-scale neighborhoods. This reality makes it difficult for new urbanist developments to gain...
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...
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...
The City of Beaverton, Oregon, had great hopes for its transit-oriented development, the Round at Beaverton Central, but is left with a couple of building shells after construction shut down in 1999. According to the Portland Oregonian, developer...
Just as home owners can learn to improve their homes, citizens can learn to take active part in the improvement of their communities. That’s the philosophy behind Real Towns: Making Your Neighborhood Work, written by Harrison Bright Rue and...
Not since the 1940s have so many older cities enjoyed population growth.
For most of our major metropolitan areas, the 1970s were a disaster. St. Louis, for example, lost a little more than a quarter of its population. A fifth of the people in...
Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) is negotiating with a major land-use law firm to disseminate new urbanist zoning codes to municipalities.
Today, public planners and elected officials who want a new urbanist growth model for their...
Former West Palm Beach Mayor Nancy Graham is starting her own urban-focused development and consulting business, Urban Principles, which will have an office on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach. As mayor from 1991 to 1999, Graham focused on the...