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 National Association of Realtors, 700,000 strong, has created a smart growth initiative. The Washington, D.C., based group hired Joe Molinaro, longtime editor of the National Association of Home Builders’ Land Development magazine, to lead the...
The American Planning Association (APA) does not officially endorse the New Urbanism, but its recent awards have lauded new urbanist plans. Two examples this year are the Growing Smart award, which went to Palm Beach County, Florida, and the...
More than 25 projects are under construction or in planning across Canada. The following list briefly tracks progress in some of the most prominent communities.
Lakeside
Located in Ajax, Ontario, designed by the Planning Partnership, and...
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...
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.