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 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...
The third phase of Heritage at Freemason Harbour, an infill development in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, was recently completed. The project now has 184 apartments and a one-block main street, which includes a 3,000 square foot grocery store....
Ellen Dunham-Jones was hired to direct the architecture program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Dunham-Jones, a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism, is leaving her position as associate professor of architecture at the Massachusetts...
Four smart growth awards, out of 17 total awarded by the State of Maryland, went to the City of Gaithersburg and projects in that municipality. The city won an award for its overall smart growth policy. An award was given to Market Square, the town...
Westbury, a good-looking Hope VI project, has begun construction in Portsmouth, Virginia. Hope VI is the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s nationwide program to redevelop failed public housing projects into mixed-use, mixed-income...
In early October, senior CNU members Shelley Poticha, Andres Duany, Phyllis Bleiweis, Roberta Brandes Gratz, Jonathan Rose, Victor Deupi, and Paul Murrain joined 30 of the world’s most prominent advocates of traditional town planning for an...
The New Jersey Office of State Planning has published Designing New Jersey, to encourage an informed debate on statewide design principles. The publication draws on the examples of communities planned and built in the state in the late 19th Century...