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.
Consumer surveys in seven cities find that around 30 percent of respondents would seriously consider a new urbanist housing product. Everyone involved in building the New Urbanism (NU) — designers, developers, and financial backers — would like...
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...
Thirty years ago, Snellville, Georgia, was a small farming town at the crossroads of two highways. In the 1970s and 1980s, when US Highway 78 became a major commuter route into metropolitan Atlanta, the city and county governments encouraged...
The American Planning Association now has a New Urbanism Division. Started by CNU members Rick Bernhardt and Gianni Longo, chairs of the Planners Task Force, it will bring New Urbanism into the APA mainstream. Dues for membership are $20 per year....
By Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton Island Press, California, 2001. 302 pp., Hardcover: $55.00; Paperback: $35.00 At the opening of The Regional City, a group of Salt Lake City civic leaders sit down to figure out how best to accommodate the...
Three major new urbanist town centers are opening in the last quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2001. Abacoa Town Center in Jupiter, Florida, Pentagon Row in Arlington, Virginia, and King Farm Town Center in Rockville, Maryland, will be the...
In making a case against sprawl, proponents of the New Urbanism (NU) have repeatedly pointed out that low-density, single-use land patterns require automobiles for all trips, eliminate mass transit as an option, and force nearly all traffic onto...