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.
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...
PrimRose Beach, a planned TND in Currituck County, North Carolina hit a snag in October, when the owner of the 80-acre property cut ties with developer Scott Shepard, who has struggled for three years to secure financing for the project....
Torti Gallas & Partners/CHK of Silver Spring, Maryland, recently completed an economic development and commercial corridor study for Charlottesville, Virginia. After studying the market and assessing the conditions in the corridors and...
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...
The developers of Mashpee Commons transform a lackluster street and balance the mix of local and national retailers.
Over the past 10 years, Mashpee Commons’ pedestrian-oriented shopping district has grown incrementally around an outdated strip...
Several emerging university centers take on new urbanist and smart growth research and education.
Universities in Maryland, Georgia, Florida, and Indiana have opened — or will soon open — centers that focus on smart growth and community building...
An audit of Illinois municipalities shows that while smart growth is a hot topic among planners, few or no towns have regulations allowing compact, mixed-use developments.
Developers and designers of new urbanist neighborhoods have long known how...
“The New Urbanism has sparked renewed interest in the work of urban designers from the late 19th and early 20th Century. In an effort to bring the insights of these generalists to today’s specialized civil engineers, town planner and engineer Peter...