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.
Dave Mayfield, developer of Afton Village in Concord, North Carolina, and landscape architect Richard Burck visited cities across the Carolinas and Georgia to survey and measure porches and to discover what elements create the right balance between...
A new CNU report, still unreleased at press time, shows that the 350 to 600 dead and dying malls in the United States offer prime new urbanist redevelopment opportunities.
The report, co-written by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the Harvard...
ServMart, a Chicago area firm, has developed a retail concept that provides many services — e.g. dry cleaning, mail services, copying/faxing, video rental, photo processing, repairs, tailoring, flowers — in a single small location. The firm makes...
In New Castle County, Delaware, the proposed TND Whitehall is in development limbo after four years of extensive negotiations. Designed by Angelo Alberto, Whitehall would consist of three compact villages on 2,047 acres, with almost 5,000 dwelling...
After much controversy and a seven-month delay, Nelessen & Associates of Princeton, New Jersey, have completed a Visual Preference Survey in Worcester County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The firm will draft a growth plan for the 300,000-acre...
Addison Circle, a high-density new urbanist development in Addison, Texas, continues to be highly successful. Developer Post Properties announced the complete lease up of phase 2 in April, 2000. Addison Circle now includes 1,070 apartments, 111,000...
A traditional neighborhood development (TND) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, provides evidence that a walkable community can be popular and have a measurable impact on school traffic.
Mary Scroggs Elementary School in Southern Village has 450...
A CNU task force initiative confronts fire officials’ aversion to narrow streets.
The dilemma is one familiar to most new urbanist designers and developers.
CNU 2000 in Portland, Oregon, draws a record crowd of 1,400.
Developers, public officials, representatives from nonprofit community development corporations and municipal planners came to Portland in large numbers and made the eighth annual...
England is feeling the effects of sprawl. According to the Danish architecture magazine Arkitekten, almost 70 percent of the youngest English school children walked to school in 1971 — now less than 10 percent do so. Fearful that English cities may...
The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently released its third annual brownfields report in which 231 cities provided information on the status of industrial sites in their communities. The report estimates that the cities hold more than 21,000...
Since 1995, the City of Aspen, Colorado, has had a set of residential design standards for new construction intended to preserve the scale and character of established neighborhoods. Front facades of all principal structures must be parallel to the...