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.
Construction began in January in Cherry Hill Village, a TND in Canton Township, Michigan. Unlike the majority of new urbanist greenfield projects, Cherry Hill Village is focused on, and will extend from, the crossroads of an existing community. The...
The Atlanta Development Authority (ADA) has broken ground on Historic Westside Village, the first publicly instigated new urbanist project in the city. The $140- million mixed-use neighborhood center is being built in the historic heart of the city’...
Six communities in the metropolitan Minneapolis/St. Paul area have been chosen as “opportunity sites” under the Smart Growth Twin Cities initiative, sponsored by the Metropolitan Council. Selected in a competitive process among 24 applicants, the...
An eight mile stretch of Florida’s Panhandle is acquiring a concentration of high-quality, high-end, New Urbanism. The prototype new urbanist town of Seaside — 90 percent complete — continues to slowly develop its town center and remaining...
Underwriting and financial criteria must be changed, and permitting must be expedited, to enable new urbanist developments to compete with suburban sprawl, according to the developer of Abacoa Town Center.
All’s well that ends well, but developer...
National Center for Smart Growth Research and
Education
Location: University of Maryland at College Park. Activities: Monitoring and evaluation of smart growth laws, education of public officials, research in growth management, development of...
Developers, environmentalists, Realtors, builders, planners, governors, citiizens — nearly everybody is talking about smart growth. In just three years this term has become a buzz word nationwide, a concept that makes so much sense “it’s hard to...
In the year 2018, the NIMBY wars are over, consumers have learned to recognize the difference between hybrid new urbanist developments and the real thing, and typological coding has replaced conventional zoning. These and other hopeful predictions...
CNU and the movement in general generates increasingly sophisticated coverage.
One way to take the pulse of the new urbanist movement is to see how we are being portrayed in major newspapers, magazines, and web sites. CNU continues to have a...
It’s not every day that new construction gets an award for historic preservation. But in North Carolina, the Historic Preservation Society of Durham gave its George and Mary Pyne Historic Preservation Award to the new urbanist infill development in...
The Bloomfield, Michigan, Township Board of Trustees unanimously rejected plans for Bloomfield Park proposed by developer Craig Schubiner of Harbor Companies. The master plan by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company called for 1,000 apartments mixed...
The Town of Cranford, New Jersey, still has a traditional, mixed-use downtown, and town officials are taking a proactive approach to staying competitive while keeping growth small-scale and incremental. Alberto & Associates of Odessa, Delaware,...