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.
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...
Morrison Homes, the nation’s 30th largest homebuilder with revenues of $518 million and 2,639 units built in 1999, is expanding its work in traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs). The company began working in Celebration three years ago and...
Recognizing that sprawl is probably the biggest local environmental issue in northern Georgia, the Georgia Conservancy has become one of the first environmental groups to become actively involved in land use planning.
Retail activity on the nation’s main streets continues its upward trend, according to a survey by the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Main Street Center. More than 400 communities in 36 states responded to the annual Main Street Trends...
A firsthand look at the development and building of a sustainable community can be found in the new book Designing Sustainable Communities: Learning from Village Homes by Judy and Michael Corbett. The book focuses on the authors’ innovative 1970s...
On the northeastern edge of Columbus, Ohio’s fastest growing metropolitan area, the new town of Easton is taking shape. While this 1,200-acre planned, mixed-use community is dominated by office buildings, parking lots, and a conventional strip mall...
Frijoles Village, a traditional neighborhood development in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is now called Aldea. More importantly, an equity investor, FCA/Holly Mortgage of Houston, has been found for the project.
Modular housing designs by Frank Lloyd Wright which have not been built in 80 years are getting a renaissance in Washington Square, a housing development which broke ground in February in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The design of Wright’s American...
Architect Daniel Parolek of Envision Design in Berkeley, California, has designed the winning entry in the New Growth Area category of the international competition Housing the Next Ten Million.