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 Project for Public Spaces (PPS) has released How to Turn a Place Around, a primer on evaluating and transforming public spaces into centers of activity. The handbook favors an approach to planning that begins with the community defining the...
“Don’t let Atlanta’s environmental activists take away your right to live where you want and drive when you want. They’re trying to use laws and lawsuits to move families out of the suburbs and into downtown, and even insist we give up our cars....
Riding the crest of a strong economy, projects in New Urban News’ latest annual survey sell nearly twice as many homes as in 1999.
With the stock market in a tailspin and housing starts in decline nationally,
there is room for concern that the...
Lee Sobel is currently collecting information about troubled or failing shopping malls, or malls in any stage of new urbanist revitalization, for the next phase of CNU’s study of greyfield malls. Other retail property projects may also be...
CNU’s ninth Congress comes to the nation’s largest metropolis and will focus on both the good and the bad aspects of the city’s urban development.
This summer, CNU launches its invasion of the cultural capital, New York. We will share our ideas...
Town center residential sales in Avalon Park, a TND in east Orlando, are off to a strong start. The first day of opening presales brought the sale of 30 of the 80 townhomes planned for the town center. Prices range from $120,000 to $140,000, and...
After 12 years on the drawing board, Embry Mill (formerly Boulder), a planned greenfield development in Virginia, has won rezoning approval from Stafford County. Among other factors, a controversy over impact fees and a recession has kept the...
Many major US cities are gaining population for the first time in decades, according to the latest numbers from the 2000 census. “This is the first hard evidence that the predictions of an urban renaissance are true,” Robert Lang of the Fannie Mae...
Category: public open space. Subcategory: plazas and squares.
Most urban open space, whether it is a plaza, square, or green, is detached from the surrounding blocks by a surrounding street. An attached open space is one that shares its urban...
The Northeast Midwest Institute has published two new reports, Smart Growth and the Clean Air Act and Smart Growth and the Clean Water Act. Call the Institute at (202) 544-5200, or visit their website at www.nemw.org.
“Urbanity is not a design concept, but a notion of inclusiveness and diversity: rubbing shoulders with people of different ages, from different classes, from different backgrounds. ... Despite what architects profess, socialization depends on people...
Virginia project features new urbanist design principles and looks like another Hope VI housing program success.
6Just a few blocks from downtown and adjacent to I-264 in Portsmouth, Virginia, a new neighborhood of vibrantly colored,...