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.
Creating the Not So Big House, architect Sarah Susanka’s sequel to her 1998 best seller The Not So Big House, includes a profile of a home in Habersham, a TND in Beaufort, South Carolina. Designer Eric Moser’s floor plan breaks the traditional...
A gathering of policy makers and new urbanists explore how building compact and walkable communities can help improve public health.
Unfortunately, poor urban design affects every aspect of life. Fortunately, surprising constituencies are now...
Columbus, Ohio, may soon join the short list of major cities that have adopted new urbanist codes. The Traditional Neighborhood Development Code was written by city staff with assistance from Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company and will go before the...
Despite legal challenges, work is getting underway in Lindbergh Center, a transit-oriented development in the Atlanta suburb of Buckhead (see November/December 1999). Two office buildings to be occupied by Bell South are under construction, and...
The latest project to be developed under the Austin, Texas, Traditional Neighborhood District (TND) ordinance is Brandts Crossing, a 129-acre greenfield neighborhood. The Austin Planning Commission unanimously approved the plan last November, and...
CityPlace, a 72-acre, $550 million development in downtown West Palm Beach, Florida, opened October 26th and is already bustling with activity. The project includes 600,000 square feet of retail space, with a mixture of national, regional, and local...
New Urbanism did have one success at the ballots. Voters in Westlake, Ohio, approved Crocker Park, a 75-acre mixed-use development proposed by Stark Enterprises and designed by Streetworks of Alexandria, Virginia (see October/November 2000).
Metropolitan areas in Australia and New Zealand facethe same challenges as their counterparts in North America: growing dependence on automobiles, sprawling and anonymous suburbs, and environmental degradation. But, as in the US, the New Urbanism is...
A new town center offers urban life to sprawling corporate park.
The first new urbanist town center within an existing business development is opening in the sprawling corporate park of Legacy in Plano, Texas, 20 miles north of downtown Dallas....
A new urbanist neighborhood throws away its architectural codes to promote contemporary designs.
Prospect was the first new urbanist (NU) project to get off the ground in Colorado, and now it is breaking new ground nationally with its use of...
Patience has paid off in San Jose, California, where two development projects are completed in the Jackson-Taylor neighborhood and a third is under construction. The city adopted Calthorpe Associates’ specific plan and design guidelines for the area...
HOK Planning Group, a division of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, Inc. (HOK), one of the world’s largest architecture firms with more than 1,800 employees worldwide, has formed the New Urban Studio. The studio is led by three experienced new urbanist...